Three ways in, and which one is yours
People arrive at this page in one of three states, and the right advice is completely different for each.
| If you… | Do this | How common it is |
|---|---|---|
| already have words — a poem, a note, a chorus in your phone | Paste them into the lyrics box. They get sung as written; the engine does not need to understand them and will not improve them | Nearly half of first songs, together with the row below |
| have words but they are half-finished | Paste what you have anyway and let the rest be written around it, or press “Write lyrics” for a draft on your theme and edit it | Counted in the row above — the lyrics box cannot tell the two apart |
| have an idea but no words | Describe it — and the section below is about how much to write, because it is more than you think | About half |
The thing worth noticing is that nearly half of first songs here start from words someone already had. If you have been putting this off because you cannot describe music, that was never the entry fee.
The same idea, written twice
This is the most useful thing in our library, and it happened by accident. One person, one afternoon, the same idea twice: an American country song comparing life in America with life in Bosnia. The first brief was 33 words. The second, a few minutes later, was 69. Listen to them in order.
The prompt that made it
“american country song about how america is a good country with beers, trucks, and guns, but bosnia is the best because it is home and also has guns and alcohol and good food”
Everything asked for is there, and the result is generic Americana: a diner in Texas, a farm in Tennessee, blue jeans, back roads, a jukebox tune. Bosnia barely appears. The brief named a subject but gave the engine nothing about that subject it did not already have.
The prompt that made it
“american country song singing about how america is the best because it has guns, trucks, and the american dream, but how bosnia is the best because it also has guns, better food, and alcohol. each verse should highlight the differences between american and bosnian culture with an emphasis on bosnian customs and tradition. there should be one line which is sung in croatian and rhyme to an american lyric”
Twice the words, and three instructions the first one lacked: contrast the cultures verse by verse, lean on Bosnian custom, and put one Croatian line in that rhymes with an English one. All three landed — rakija, ćevapi and kajmak by name, the host who will not let you leave hungry, and a bridge that goes “Čuvaj srce, čuvaj dom, nek' se pjesma čuje / That means guard your heart and home where the good life brews”.
Two things are worth taking from that pair. The first is that the extra words bought specificity, not length — the 33-word brief actually produced the longer song, 3:48 against 3:18. More description does not mean more music; it means music about the thing you meant.
The second is what the extra words actually were. Not adjectives. Three structural instructions: how the verses should be organised, which side to weight, and one concrete device to include. That is what a description is for — the engine has plenty of adjectives already.
How long a description should be
Of the people who do describe their first song, the median writes 59 words, a third write more than 80, and only about one in seventeen writes five words or fewer. The five-word brief is the exception here, not the norm — which is the opposite of what most advice about AI music assumes.
A description that works decides six things. Anything you leave out is chosen for you, and the defaults are exactly the generic ones.
- What it is about, as a situation rather than a feeling — “the last shift before I moved away”, not “nostalgia”.
- Who is singing, and to whom.
- A genre, in the words you would use in a shop. “Outlaw country”, “90s R&B”, “bedroom pop”.
- One structural instruction: what the verses should do, or what the chorus should keep coming back to.
- One concrete device — a language, an instrument, a spoken line, a key change. The Croatian line above is exactly this.
- What should be true at the end. Where the listener should be left.
Then use the second take
Every generation returns two versions of the same brief, and they are not near-identical — the pair above was made from two different briefs, but the same thing happens within one, so play both before you judge the brief.
And if the result is close but wrong, change the brief rather than the style. A song that came back too polite needs a blunter line in the description, not a heavier genre.
Before you press Create
- Do you already have words? If so, paste them — nearly half of first songs start that way
- A situation, not a feeling
- Who is singing, and to whom
- A genre in the words you would use out loud
- One structural instruction — what the verses do
- One concrete device: a language, an instrument, a spoken line
- Listen to both takes before deciding the brief was wrong
Written and fact-checked by the Tunely team · Updated