Please follow me as I produce a cover and translation of the song 'First Spring' by the late musician Van Cao using the SUNO AI tool.
I'm tinkering with making music with AI - Photo generated by AI
During COVID-19, I was stuck at home, so I thought I would try to learn to rap. At nearly 50 years old, it was not easy. But after two years of struggling, I finally had enough confidence to hold the mic and sing, even if it was only in my own room with the door closed.
Writing hundreds of rap songs has made me understand the rhythm and rhyme in music. I have written many things in my life - writing essays, sports articles, Saigon River tour descriptions, TV shows, advertising forms from newspapers, radio to billboards, TVCs, short stories, novellas, poems, memoirs, and... "Face worship" songs. But none of them require as much technique and emotion as writing rap.
About 7 months ago, a friend introduced me to SUNO and after just a few songs, my mom said, "He sings better than you, for sure!".
Early last week, SUNO emailed me to congratulate me on reaching 1,000 posts! Actually, 1,000 versions, that number really shocked me!
How to make AI music with soul?
Today you will follow me as I produce a cover and translation of the song First Spring by the late musician Van Cao. When necessary, I also use SUNO to create a completely new song. But these days I like the cover feature, even though it means a Pro fee of 10 USD/month.
The first thing I needed were the lyrics when making AI music. After reading up on the history of the song online, listening to a few renditions, and finally – this is important – checking the sheet music, I started transcribing. I used a guitar tab to help me stay on track, a fast waltz because it’s 6/8 rather than 3/4.
As I said, my experience writing raps made me comfortable with words and flow. When rewriting the lyrics in English, I also had the help of a rhyme dictionary. And this is the result.
[intro]
[verse 1]
At long last the swallows of Spring on the grass, the news of the season the Spring we dream of has finally come, in the gentle form of a cockcrow by noon, as the sun warms every soul
At long last the swallows of Spring bring back the children on their wings, the Spring we dream of has finally come, in the crystal form of the tears as they fall on the shoulders welcomed home
This moment of love for the land first Spring in a life span, this torrent of hope for the man that he now stands a chance a sense of belonging, a sense of including, as humans love humans
At long last the swallows of Spring a forecast of the good old season, the Spring we dreamed of it never came but it's visible now, in the mist over the dam and a cockcrow that sounds so tame
Translation of First Spring made on SUNO app
Because of the song's slowness, I tried to end my lines with easy-to-sing sounds, like n, ng, m, l.
After I finished writing, I asked GPT AI writer to comment on it. She congratulated me on a good job, with only two things to review: 'mist over the dam' and 'cockcrow that sounds so tame'.
When I said that I had to keep the rhyme, she also suggested that we could use near rhyme or internal rhyme to make the sentence more natural and not too constrained. AI really knows everything!
But in the end I decided I didn't need to hear it. I liked the word 'tame', which was a bit crazy but reflected my personality and Van Cao's.
Notice in my lyrics there are some words in brackets [ ], those are commands. Some other commands I often use but not in this song are [hook] or [chorus] and [retro]. Another bracket you will use is ( ) when you want to match a specific line.
SUNO also has a feature to add lyrics to your work. But because of my pride as a writer, I have never used it.
Composing music with SUNO
First I needed to upload 120 seconds of original music. I chose a guitar tab, because when SUNO covers a lyrical version, they tend to sing off-key, to sound creative. I wanted it to stick to the sheet music.
Once I saved and had the original, I clicked on the three dots on the right, which brought up a bunch of features, including Create. Clicking on Create, I went to Cover. Persona is the most advanced feature that allows you to maintain a musical style across multiple songs, and it costs $30/month, so I didn’t bother with it.
I have the cover, I paste the lyrics above. Now the only thing left is the music style.
You can steal an existing style from someone else's music via the Reuse prompt option, but I don't like that. I want to create my own and want SUNO to surprise me.
Among the styles it suggested, Ambient was interesting so I chose it. Van Cao's songs are good not only because of a strange feeling of time but also space, Ambient is suitable for that.
Clicking Create costs 10 cents each time and gives you 2 versions, usually takes only 30 seconds.
The first 4 pieces are just harmony without singing, I had to fill in the vocals in the music style box. I chose vocal harmony because I knew The First Spring was suitable for harmony.
After about a dozen versions I had one that stuck to the melody, but the music was a bit ordinary. I decided to try something different, I would add instruments.
Try the Oriental lute - I use the Japanese pronunciation Kokyu because SUNO tends to be associated with the rich - and see what it brings.
Also, since there's a female version, I'll try a male version. So my music style box now includes ambient, vocal harmony, kokyu, male vocal.
As I thought, the music changed, more Eastern. But alas, if only this came with the fact that it was still sung to the correct sheet music!
After burning 100 coins and still not getting the desired result, I decided to stop. Maybe I should try another upload, maybe using piano, but I'm tired.
So I decided to go back to the original female ambient vocal harmony. It was a bit short so I used the Extend feature to complete the double loop as I wanted, and as the song is usually performed.
Music Processing
AI-generated images
SUNO also has a remaster feature, but it's terrible, so I downloaded it and remastered it on Bandlab, for free. In the presets, I chose ambience to be consistent with what I did on SUNO.
After trying a few ambiences I settled on wooden room, because it was warm, which was what the song needed. After saving the project I still had one more option to decide which was edit mastering. As a free user I had the option to choose universal, fire, clarity or tape.
I chose the tape because it's an old song, even though I knew it might be a bit grainy.
Done, now I download it to my computer (I use a secondhand iPad 5) and make the title on Capcut. I wanted to use the audio file but Capcut error forced me to use the video file from Bandlab. Sigh, life is never perfect.
After about 30 minutes I pasted all the lyrics in and added some animation effects.
Now I'm going to plug in my headphones and enjoy the fruits of my labor, which even though it's been less than a day, can't be said to have been painstaking.
(The English translation of the song First Spring has been approved by Van Cao's family. Thank you very much.)
Vietnamese Start-up Honored at AI Summit ParisSource: https://tuoitre.vn/toi-lam-nhac-voi-ai-suno-hat-mua-xuan-dau-tien-tieng-anh-dat-diu-lam-sao-20250214133814978.htm
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