How to Make Music From a Text Prompt Using Suno AI
Key Takeaways
- Suno AI creates music based on text prompts, simplifying music production without complex skills or equipment.
- Use Suno to create song segments, provide metatags to guide the AI, and continue the song with the Continuation feature.
- Finish the song in Suno by providing outro lyrics, use Suno’s metatags like “[silence]” for the final segment, and download the full song.
If you listen to music a lot, chances are you’ve considered creating your own music at some point. However, in the traditional sense, bringing your creative ideas to life requires a lot of skill and equipment. With Suno AI, you don’t need to worry about that anymore.
What Is Suno AI, and What Can You Do With It?
Suno AI is a revolutionary tool created by a group of musicians and AI experts to eliminate the barrier between creativity and music production. The ultimate aim of this tool is to enable anyone to create music simply by imagining it, without having to learn music theory, play an instrument, and master a digital audio workstation.
Suno generates music based on text prompts. You describe the genre, vibe, instruments, and theme of your song and Suno generates two audio segments, usually including vocals. Aside from the web app, you can use Suno through Microsoft Copilot or as a Discord bot.
On the surface, that’s all there is to Suno. If you were looking for a brief audio segment, your journey ends here once you download the piece and share it. However, if you’re serious about using AI to make a full song, there’s much more you can do with Suno. The track below is about a specific video game character, and believe it or not, it was fully made with Suno AI.
Intrigued? Get started by signing up for the Suno AI web app. Once you are logged in, you’ll receive 50 free daily credits. You can get more credits by subscribing to a paid plan, starting from $8 monthly. Now, let’s make a full-length song with AI!
1. Come Up With an Outline For Your Song
First things first, you need to pinpoint what you want to make. This is all the more important since you’ll be using credits for each generation, so it’s best if you don’t waste them. Suno AI works best with lyrics, so the lyrics are going to be the main factor determining the song’s structure.
You can use ChatGPT or alternative AI chatbots to help you out here. Here’s how I used ChatGPT to come up with an outline for my song:
I was happy with what ChatGPT gave me, so I kept it as it was. You can always ask it to make modifications to its response. Using prompting techniques can greatly improve your ChatGPT experience.
2. Make the First Segment of the Song in Suno
Now that the creative process is out of the way, it’s time to put Suno to use. Open the web app and go to the Create tab, where you’ll see a text box and a Create button. You can input a description of the song here to quickly generate two segments.
What we’re interested in is the Custom Mode toggle. Once you flip the toggle, the text box will change, and you can enter your own lyrics.
The same Lyrics box is where you’ll instruct Suno on musical queues. You can use metatags to do this; a description is available on the Suno website. Basically, metatags are lines in the prompt put in parentheses or brackets that guide Suno on what sounds to make.
Metatags are important in making Suno work as desired but can also confuse it. Results aren’t reliable or reproducible, so sometimes you’ll just have to do your best at writing the prompt and hope for the best.
So, put in the lyrics, the title, and the style, and click Create. Two tasks will appear on the right-hand side of the screen, and Suno will start generating the song segments, along with an AI-generated cover.
Once the segments are ready, have a listen and see whether you like them. More often than not, the output feels like it’s the middle of a song or isn’t relevant to the prompt you entered. In such cases, click Create again (maybe with some modifications to the prompt) until you get a good starting segment.
The v2 model of Suno AI (Basic plan) can generate a maximum of 80 seconds of music. This is too brief to be a full song, but the continuation feature allows you to build upon and extend segments. We’ll cover this later in the article.
Oddly enough, in my case, leaving Style of Music blank finally gave me the vibe I wanted. Here’s the prompt I used:
I got a 20-second clip that sounded amazing. It ignored the [Drum Solo] metatag, but the track as a whole was great. This provided a solid foundation to build the rest of the song. The next segments won’t be as random since you’ll build them on this one.
Suno can be both wonderful and frustrating. To put that into perspective, above is the other segment generated from those exact prompts. It’s an 80-second track in an entirely different genre and doesn’t even sing the words in the prompt.
3. Continue the Song in Suno After the Initial Prompts
The rest of the process is relatively easy once you get the first segment down. This is because Suno will have a better understanding of what you’re looking for, and the outputs will be less random. Continuation is one of Suno’s best features, as it seamlessly generates the rest of the track.
To continue a segment, click the three dots next to its name and then choose Continue From This Song. This will add the song to the prompt. Add the lyrics for the next part, and then click Create. To avoid any confusion, it’s best not to alter the style and title.
Here’s the prompt I used for the second segment:
Suno’s output was very impressive this time. The segment seamlessly continued from the previous one and had a very satisfying bass build-up.
From here, it’s a matter of continuing the song and changing the prompt. For the next prompt, I simply added a single metatag.
The output was fantastic. The more you give Suno to work with, the better it delivers.
4. Finish the Song in Suno
All good things must come to an end. However, finishing a song with Suno can be just as frustrating as starting it. In most cases, giving it outro lyrics will end up starting a new beat. After playing around with the prompts, I found this prompt to work best:
The beat and the excitement simmered down as the prompt had asked, but Suno still left the song unfinished. For the next segment, I input only the outro metatag:
This didn’t end the song either, but it created a very elaborate bass outro, which was a nice addition to the song. At this point, you could use any free audio editor to fade out the segment by yourself and finish the song. But if you insist on doing it all in Suno like me, here’s a prompt that worked. For the final segment, I used the metatag below:
And finally, Suno gradually removed instruments until the song faded to nothing. A perfect finish.
5. How to Download the Full Song in Suno
Although in bits and pieces, you now have your AI-generated song. Thankfully, Suno can detect which parts go together and give you the full length as an MP3 file. Click the three dots next to the final part of the song and select Get Whole Song. This will open a download page for an MP3 file.
Once you’ve downloaded it you can share it on Soundcloud or any other platform you like. If you used a premium Suno subscription to generate the song, you can even sell your music online, as stated in the Suno FAQs.
While Suno isn’t perfect and can sometimes generate irrelevant tracks, it’s still a powerful tool capable of producing full-length songs. Whether you’re an aspiring musician or just looking to experiment, Suno AI is definitely worth trying.