Bread is pain. And don’t you forget it. I sit here at my good old desk, wondering if I should share with you some of the ways you can get the sound you want out of your local Suno band, the one in your computer.
So the first thing you’ve gotta know is that you can’t ask for a band that sounds like the Beatles. In fact, no names can be used and, at least in Suno and your chatbot GPT, names are considered registered and owned.
You really can quite easily get around this limitation unless you have larceny in mind. Just select instruments and atmosphere and vocalizations using my handy “Band Hacks”:
If you want the sound of a particular band or artist, you need to ask for it by generic sounds. For instance, if you wanted to get the sound sort of like (it can’t and won’t be any closer than “sort of like”) the Beatles, you’d ask in your prompt window in Suno, 1960s British Pop, Classic, and Rock.
Okay, with that in mind, I’ll give you some indications of how you can achieve these sounds from your Suno band by placing these prompts into the genre/style box on your Suno software.
The reason you need this guidance is that Suno doesn’t recognize a lot of words, so you have to prompt within the reaches of Suno’s recognition. Therefore, don’t change these words — it will probably no longer work, unless the word you chose just happens by sheer luck to appear in Suno’s recognized-word-list..
Close Approximations to these bands:
- Fleetwood Mac — Classic Rock, Mellifluous
- Elton John — Piano Pop Rock, Theatrical, Male Vocals
- Red Hot Chili Peppers — Funk Rock, Stadium, Heavy Drums (trumpet optional)
- Taylor Swift — Pop, Alternative Folk, Emotional, Female Vocals
- Elvis Presley — 1950s Rock, Hero Theme, Male Vocals
- Beyonce — RnB, Anthemic, Danceable, Female Vocals
- Lady Gaga — Pop, Theatrical, Dance, Female Vocals
- Madonna — Dance Pop, High NRG, Female Vocals
- David Bowie — 1970s British Rock, Art, Eclectic, Male Vocals
- Bob Dylan — Folk, Storytelling, Acoustic Guitar, Male Vocals
- Shakira — Latin, Dance Pop, Festive, Female Vocals
- Michael Jackson — 80s Pop, Dance, Iconic, Male Vocals
- Prince — Funk, Eclectic, Glam, Male Vocals
- Miley Cyrus — Pop, Rock, Party, Female Vocals
- Queen — Rock, Operatic, Theatrical, Male Vocals
- Led Zeppelin — Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Epic
- Pink Floyd — Rock, Progressive, Atmospheric
- The Rolling Stones — Rock, Blues Rock, Classic
- Ariane Grande — Pop, Dance Pop, Ethereal, Female Vocals
- Bob Marley — Reggae, Peaceful, Soulful, Male Vocals
- Frank Sinatra — 1940s Big Band, Lounge Singer, Male Vocals
- Aretha Franklin — Soul, Gospel, Powerful, Female Vocals
- Whitney Houston — Pop, RnB, Emotional, Female Vocals
- Stevie Wonder — Soul Funk, Joyful, Male Vocals
- Nirvana — Grunge, Dark, Raw, Male Vocals
- Amy Winehouse — Soul, Jazz, Torch-Lounge, Female Vocals
- Aerosmith — Rock, Hard Rock, Classic
- Bon Jovi — Rock, Anthem, Stadium
- Billy Joel — Pop, Rock, Storytelling, Male Vocals
- The Eagles — Rock, Country Rock, Harmonious
- The Doors — Rock, Psychedelic, Mysterious
- Janis Joplin — Rock, Blues Rock, Raw Emotion, Female Vocals
- Jimi Hendrix — Rock, Psychedelic, Guitar Virtuoso, Male Vocals
- The Who — Rock, Hard Rock, Theatrical
- Black Sabbath — Heavy Metal, Doom
- Iron Maiden — Heavy Metal, Epic, Theatrical
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It’s a short list, I know, but by the time you’ve used some of these solutions to your “band sound”, you’ll get a good grip on it. You really don’t need to go far, but remember that ai doesn’t actually understand this stuff experientially, and some prompts you’re giving may not exist in Suno’s vocabulary.
What’s in there is in there, in the large language learning part of it, but some words are just not in the vocabulary list of Suno, so you have to find out which words ARE in there, and that’s where I might have helped you a little with the prompts listed above.
The words I used in my prompts above are definitely in the vocabulary list of Suno. I have an even larger list of many other words and phrases for the prompt box that Suno can clearly understand, and to which it can easily respond.
Remember that Suno is very literal, not like a well-trained chat bot — so learn to kind of work with it to come up with a band sound that you’ll apply in Suno, and remember the randomity factor. In Suno, you won’t ever get exactly the same result from one set of prompts. Same exact prompts will yield totally different results.
However, there is at least a partial remedy for this. You can create a “persona” that is a standardized grouping of prompts to your specifications. Summoning this persona brings about the grouping you specified when you created the persona, see?
Part of your job as a poet is to decide which band presents that particular poem in a manner that suits you.
If you don’t like your own sound, don’t inflict it on someone else. Keep trying until you get a sound with which you can live and which resonates with listeners.
Don’t try to duplicate a particular band sound, like the Doors, or the Who. That’s not a good idea in any case. Just listen and trust to luck that you’ll get a good variation out of Suno, and remember that the sound of the band is not exact and probably not repeatable anytime soon.
By the way, there really is no particular “band sound” — bands have a makeup of musicians, but they also wander in and out of various styles and treatments, so the same band can sound quite different when playing different songs.
Keep always foremost in your mind that you are, above all else, a poet. You have some control over the band, and a limited amount of control over the type of music and the choice of instruments and playing styles, but apart from that, you have no control whatsoever, except that ultimately, you do have the choice of whether to use a track or not, and — it’s up to you — keep rolling the dice — meaning ask for more variations — as long as you like, until you run out of credits.
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Yep, it’s time for the old Bardo bus video tour! Climb aboard and grab a seat!
Back in 1966, I came up with an idea for a restaurant, “Le Pissoir” which would be a toilet themed high-end steak house with a specialty of pea soup, get it?
I even had the down on the lease, but friends begged me to let them have the lease, which I did, thinking I’d find another location somewhere, and I did, but their restaurant sold tons of retail food, while mine would most likely have gone down after a few hours of operation.
Nevertheless, here is my redemption — someone actually did it, and not just one — there are a bunch of them and more on the way!
That’s a lotta videos.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby