Software I use for songwriting: mostly Logic, also Dorico. Voice memos. Rhymezone sometimes. Rhymezone seems less and less helpful as I go on. I hardly use text editors for lyrics, paper seems to work a lot better. I end up with a lot of scribbles all over the paper.
AI suggestions for songwriting seems a bit like turning on cheat codes in a game. Cheat codes will help me beat a game faster. The cost? The game is less fun, and the whole reason I play games is to have fun. Songwriting is an activity for me, like gardening or running or something like that. Or putting together a jigsaw puzzle. If you had an AI assistant that could help you put together a jigsaw puzzle, would you use it?
There are AI tools around and some work decently well:
- Logic has session players. I don’t think they’re AI, but they are decent at putting up the skeleton of a song.
- AI-powered stem-splitting tools help you pick apart songs you like and figure out how they work.
- AI-powered song mastering tools produce dubious output. I have gone through multiple iterations with AI-powered tools and ended up happier just mastering the song myself.
LLMs seem like the great failure here.