What a brief with no story gets you
The song below came from a brief with a mood, a pace and two instruments, and nothing about the couple. The engine did what songwriters do with an empty page: it made a story up. Verse one fixes a loose clasp on a borrowed dress beside a kitchen sink at half past ten. Verse two counts chairs under an old oak tree while an aunt folds napkins and someone saves a crooked place card. It is a good lyric about two people who are not you.
The prompt that made it
“A tender first-dance song for our wedding, slow and romantic, acoustic guitar and soft strings”
No names, no places, no memories in the brief, so every detail in the lyric was invented. Nothing asked for a length either: the two takes ran 4:14 and 4:07.
Invented details are the real risk of a first-dance song. The friends who were there when you met will notice a story that never happened, and an aunt who does not exist is harder to explain than a plain chorus. The fix is not more adjectives. It is three facts.
The three facts that make it yours
None of them has to be poetic. Plain facts come back as lines; a vague mood comes back as a vague song.
- Where it started. “We met in a laundrette in Leeds, arguing over the last dryer.” One sentence gives the first verse a place, a season and a scene.
- A detail only the two of you know. The song he hums badly while he cooks, the dog you adopted before you owned a sofa, the flat with the broken lift. This is the line guests turn to each other about.
- The promise. A line from your vows, or what you would say with one sentence left. Ask for it in the chorus, and choose words you are happy to hear three times.
- Both names, once. Spelled the way they sound. Names alone do not make a song personal; the three facts above do.
Put together, and well inside the box, which takes 2,000 characters: “A slow first-dance song for Maya and Daniel, warm male vocal with a soft female harmony in the chorus, acoustic guitar and strings. We met in a laundrette in Leeds, arguing over the last dryer. He hums badly while he cooks. Our promise: wherever we live, home is the two of us. Put the promise in the chorus.”
How long it will be, measured
A first dance is rarely a whole song. Plenty of couples dance for two or three minutes and then bring everyone onto the floor. Wedding songs came from too few people to time on their own, so the table is the whole site. Two things make a song run long: almost nobody asks for a length, and slow songs spend longer on every line.
| What we measured | Everything made on Tunely |
|---|---|
| Median length | 3:18 |
| Run past three minutes | about 6 in 10 |
| Run past five minutes | about 1 in 12 |
| Seconds per sung line | about 4 |
| Made with the Instrumental switch on | 6% |
Lines are only a rough guide. The example above has just 28 sung lines and still runs 4:14, because a slow song leaves long spaces between them. Averaged over everything made here it comes to about four seconds a line, so thirty lines of your own lyric usually lands near two and a half minutes, and a slow song runs longer.
Three ways to a two-and-a-half-minute first dance
From the most precise to the one that needs nothing but a word with the DJ.
- Pick the length, on Pro and Ultra. In Custom mode, open Pro fine-tuning and set Length to 2:30.
- Write your own lyric, on any plan. In Custom mode the song follows the lines you paste. About thirty lines is a fair start for two and a half minutes of a slow song; listen to both takes, since they can land half a minute apart.
- Cut it at the venue, on any plan. Give the DJ or band the whole song and a time: “fade at 2:30, after the second chorus”. Almost nine in ten songs on Tunely end within five seconds of full volume, so the gentle fade you want is one the DJ makes.
Duets, two languages and your own vows
Four requests that come up with wedding songs, and how each one works in the studio.
- A duet. Pick Duet in the Voice menu, or write “male and female duet” into the brief. In one duet in our library, the lyric came back with the parts marked voice A and voice B and both voices on the chorus.
- Two languages. The Lyrics language menu sets one language for the whole song. For verses in one language and a chorus in the other, write the lyric yourself in Custom mode, which sings what you paste as written, and listen to both takes for pronunciation.
- Your vows, sung. Paste the lines in Custom mode and add a style line such as “slow acoustic ballad, warm male vocal, strings”. Lyrics taken from an existing song are declined before anything is generated, so a vow that borrows a famous line needs your own words.
- An instrumental for the aisle. Tick Instrumental and describe the walk: “a slow processional, strings and piano, building gently”. Instrumentals run 3:00 at the median, so on the free plan expect to fade it when the last person reaches the front, or pick the length on Pro.
Getting it to the wedding
Make it a few weeks ahead. Generating takes minutes, but you will want to hear both takes a few times, and the DJ will want the file early. Listening and sharing the link are free, and playing the song at your own wedding is fine on any plan. To hand over a file, the MP3 is $1.99 per song on the free plan; Pro and Ultra include MP3 and lossless WAV, which is the file a venue's sound system should get. If the song goes into a wedding film that is sold or posted for money, that is commercial use, which Pro and Ultra cover with a certificate per song.
Before you press Create
- Where you met, one detail only you two know, and the promise are in the brief.
- Both names are in it, spelled the way they sound.
- You know how you will get the length you dance to: Length 2:30 on Pro, about thirty lines of your own lyric, or a fade time for the DJ.
- The voice is decided: solo, Duet, or a harmony in the chorus.
- Any vow lines are in your own words.
Sources
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated