Analog meets Digital: My AI Vinyl Record

Just like beautiful books, I love beautiful vinyl records, and for several years now, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to records. For me, it has a similar decelerating effect as reading bibliophile books. Sitting down on the sofa in the evening, consciously choosing an album, taking the record out of a beautifully designed sleeve, placing it on the turntable, hearing the crackle as the needle drops, and then fully devoting myself to listening to the beautiful music — that’s simply a very relaxing and enjoyable activity. Especially when you’re holding a high-quality record that has that wonderful, warm sound. At the same time, as a software developer nerd, I’m of course fascinated by the whole AI hype and keep testing the latest innovations from the AI world, which are currently popping up like mushrooms. Today I want to show you my first record that I created myself with the help of artificial intelligence — and it really turned out well. Even if it’s only loosely connected to literature, it’s such a beautiful and inspiring topic that I just have to write about it here.

Suno AI is an online service that provides a generative artificial intelligence algorithm that can be used to create music. The fascinating thing is that you can define what kind of music you want through a text prompt. You can freely specify the genre, style, theme, and elements you’d like, and from that information, a song is generated. It’s also possible to upload your own audio sample as a reference, and you can either provide your own lyrics or have them generated conveniently. So it’s very reminiscent of ChatGPT — except instead of a textual response, you get a song.

Anyone visiting the Suno AI website can also listen to songs created by other users, and it’s really entertaining to hear what people have come up with. For example, there’s the MIT License as a piano song. For my first test, I created a house track about how annoying it is to take out the trash (here’s the result). Then I had it generated again as an aria, and Suno actually created it as an Italian-sung aria, which you can listen to here. It’s quite impressive what’s produced in just a few seconds.

Of course, the AI was trained on all sorts of songs from the past decades, which has drawn the attention of record labels — they now want a piece of the pie and have sued Suno. I’m not a musician myself, so Suno isn’t a tool for me to create art, but as someone who enjoys good music, it’s a wonderful opportunity to create the kind of music I’ve always wanted to hear. I find it fascinating how music styles can be blended, and when you add a certain style to the prompt, you can actually hear it in the song.

There’s one record I’ve listened to a thousand times because the music is simply so good: Saudade by Thievery Corporation. I love the gentle music, the calm vocals, the mix of downtempo, bossa nova, French pop, guitar, and the sense of longing and melancholy. There’s hardly anything else quite like it, and even Thievery Corporation’s other albums have a completely different, though equally wonderful, style. Suno offers a great opportunity to generate music in this vein — something I’ve explored quite extensively.

And indeed: I find the generated songs really well done. Of course, the quality doesn’t come close to that of real artists — that must be said clearly. The sound quality of Suno songs is still far from sufficient. For example, for a classical piece or a proper pop song, the sound is still too muddy and low-quality. But for the Saudade–Bossa-Nova–Downtempo–Thievery-Corporation sound, this LoFi quality actually fits perfectly.

Of course, I wondered what these songs would sound like on vinyl, because that’s really the only — and the perfect — medium for this kind of music and this rough LoFi quality. If you search online, you’ll find several providers offering one-off vinyl pressings. It’s not exactly cheap — prices easily go up to 120 euros or more. I found Tonstudio Lorenz on Etsy, which creates an LP for 59 euros and even includes a cover sleeve. The reviews were good, and the price seemed fair to me — the Suno songs are just pleasant to listen to. So I selected the best tracks, and after only a week, I already had my record in hand. To make it a true AI project, I also created the cover using a AI-generated image (with Bing Image Creator). The images weren’t large enough for print, so (unsurprisingly) I used an AI upscaler to enlarge them. The program is called Upscayl — it’s free and does a great job scaling even small images. I wasn’t particularly creative with the title, I admit — but so what.

I’m absolutely thrilled with the result. Yes, the LoFi quality is of course fully present on the record too, but what’s added is the warmth, the crackling, and the nostalgia that only vinyl can deliver. It’s genuinely enjoyable to listen to — beautiful, atmospheric music, and the record’s pressing quality is excellent. Naturally, the songs are about beautiful things: reading before falling asleep, the fine literature of great authors, Paris, or the nostalgic sound of vinyl records.

If you’d like to listen to my record on Suno, you can do so here: Saudade on Suno

Yes, I can already hear the outcry: “Ugh, music made by AI — what’s that? No, I want high-quality music, blah blah, that can never be as good as Pink Floyd/Queen/ABBA/XYZ-commercial-artist. That was real handmade music — everything was better back then…” Or often you’ll hear: “That’s just a new rehash of what already exists. AI is actually dumb; it just stitches together probabilities of existing stuff.” There may be some truth to that, but let’s be honest — 95% of the music that floats through the airwaves and is forgotten within a few months could easily be created by AI, since much of it is just another remix of the same old formula. Perhaps not entirely new, but still, a unique and rarely heard musical mix is absolutely possible. I’m very curious to see how this will all develop in the coming years. As recently as May, Suno raised 125 million U.S. dollars in investor funding, so you can be sure the development will continue at a rapid pace.

For me personally, this is just another new source of music, and if it matches my taste, it goes on the playlist. I’m fascinated that it’s even possible to have your own record made with AI-generated music — fully customized to your preferences. A truly fascinating thing, and tonight I’ll crack open a beer, put on the record, lie back on the sofa, and enjoy the beautiful music.

Important links from this article:

• Suno AI
• Etsy: Tonstudio Lorenz
• Saudade on Suno
• Bing Image Creator
• Upscayl