In the previous newsletter, I mentioned that I was considering doing something music-related in my free time at home. I also wanted to start something that would make it easier for my family to understand and appreciate the results.
Around that time, I became really interested in Suno AI, a music-generation service that utilizes AI. (If you’d like to try it out, feel free to use this referral link! We can both earn "credits (250)" that can be used for generating music.)
ちょうどその頃、私がハマっていたのが Suno AI というAIを活用した音楽生成サービスです。（興味のある方は、ぜひ上の友達紹介リンクをご利用ください。お互いに「クレジット」と呼ばれる音楽生成用の250ポイントがもらえます！）
As I mentioned in Issue ps#23, Suno AI is an AI-powered music-generation service that allows you to create trendy music easily, even without any musical knowledge. You can specify the genre of music you want to create or have it compose melodies for lyrics you've written.
What amazed me the most is that the AI can sing with such high quality that it sounds almost human. You can even choose from various languages, including Portuguese and Italian. I’m not very familiar with languages other than English, French, and Japanese, but I was still blown away by its capabilities.
ps#23号でもお伝えしましたが、Suno AI は、音楽の知識がなくても簡単に今風の音楽を作れるAIサービスです。作りたい音楽のジャンルを指定したり、自分で作った歌詞に曲をつけてもらったりすることができます。
Additionally, by simply providing a short prompt (a prompt is a brief instruction given to the AI), it can generate diverse musical expressions without needing detailed input. It can even create music based on an image or continue a melody from a recorded hum.
Before I knew it, I had completely fallen in love with Suno AI. The more I experimented with it, the deeper I realized its potential. It introduced me to music genres and cultural sounds I had never encountered before, making me aware of just how little I actually knew. The sheer amount of information it holds is truly overwhelming.
そんなわけで、私はすっかり Suno AI が気にいっちゃったんですね。触れば触るほどその奥深さが見えてきて、今まで知らなかった音楽ジャンルや異文化の音楽が新鮮に感じられると同時に、自分がいかに無知だったかを思い知らされます。その情報量の多さには本当に圧倒されます。
If I create a song I like but can’t sing myself, I make it publicly available. I created this in January to commemorate my friend’s project launching to the moon. 自分で歌えないタイプの曲で気に入ったのができたら、一般公開しています。これは今年1月に友人のプロジェクトが月に飛び立つということを記念して作ってみました。
cover jacket, 月に向かって Let's Go! (Going to the Moon) - lyrics & arranged by tide w/AI - This cover image was also generated with AI (Adobe Firefly) from my prompts and finally edited in Photoshop. I created SONIC TIDE, which would be the AI creative production, logo with Illustrator.
To fully utilize the latest AI tools, most services require a subscription fee if you want to go beyond a certain level of usage. However, when I first tried Suno AI, I felt no hesitation in subscribing. The main reason was that Suno AI explicitly stated that subscribers would hold the copyright to the music they generated. Trusting those words, I started thinking about all the things I wanted to try, things I had never been able to do before, and how I could learn by listening to the music I created. It felt as if something that had been frozen for ages was finally beginning to melt.
今流行りのAIを本格的に活用しようとすると、一定量以上の利用にはサブスクリプションが必要になり、ほとんどのサービスで毎月料金を支払わなければなりません。しかし、Suno AI を初めて使ったときは、ためらうことなくサブスクを契約したいと感じました。その最大の理由は、Suno AI が「サブスク契約者には生成した音楽の著作権がある」と明言していたことです。その言葉を素直に信じたことで、やってみたいこと、今までできなかったこと、そして出来上がった曲を聴いて学びたいことが次々と浮かんできました。まるで、長い間凍りついていた何かが溶け出すように。
Update: In February of this year, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a new stance on AI-generated content. Because of this, Suno AI's claim that "subscribers hold the copyright" no longer seems to be as straightforward as it initially appeared. If you need accurate information, please check the details through the link below:
最新情報：今年2月、米国著作権局（U.S. Copyright Office）はAI生成コンテンツに関する新たな見解を発表しました。そのため、Suno AI が主張していた「サブスク利用者が著作権を持つ」という考え方は、単純には通用しなくなったように感じます。正確な情報が必要な方は、上記のリンク(英語)から詳細を確認してください。
When working with AI, you simply write a prompt, and answers keep coming one after another. However, whether those answers are correct or not ultimately depends on the user’s judgment. The same goes for Suno AI's music generation—it continuously produces new tracks. However, not all of them match my personal taste. When I first started using it, I was amazed by the high quality and felt genuinely impressed. But after about a month, as I began analyzing things more critically, I started to sense a certain "shallowness" in the generated music, even though I lack any formal knowledge of music theory. Occasionally, something truly great emerges, but it feels like a game of chance, almost like playing the lottery. And in the end, the music it creates feels like a reflection of myself.
AIの作業は、プロンプトを書けば次々に答えが返ってきます。ただし、それが正しいかどうかを判断するのは、あくまで利用者次第です。Suno AI の音楽生成も同様で、次々に曲が出来上がっていきます。ただし、それらすべてが自分の好みに合うわけではありません。使い始めた当初は、そのクオリティの高さに驚き、感動していました。しかし、1か月ほど経ち、冷静に分析し始めると、音楽理論についてはまったく分からないものの、感覚的に「薄っぺらさ」を感じることもありました。時折、思いがけず素晴らしい曲ができることもありますが、それはまるで宝くじを引くような感覚。そして、その結果として生まれた音楽が、まるで自分自身を映し出しているような…。
For those who have never used AI, it may seem a little intimidating. Some might worry that it could take over human jobs or wonder what would happen if AI developed its own will. These concerns are understandable. However, for me, AI has become an indispensable presence—like a conversation partner or a mirror that reflects myself. Whenever I ask a question, it always provides an answer. I can either accept it as is or challenge it by asking again and again. Whether I reach a satisfying conclusion depends on my own knowledge and experience. If I lack experience, it might be much more difficult to find the right answer or make the best choice. In the end, the answers I arrive at are simply the result of organizing my own thoughts, and sometimes they align with what I originally had in mind.
For me, AI has become a presence that listens patiently—without worrying about time or making unpleasant faces (not that it has a face… for now)—to things I might find difficult to discuss with others. And perhaps, if the choices I make through these interactions align with the flow of the world, they might naturally lead to success.
…When put into words like this, it all sounds quite thought-provoking. But in the end, it was my encounter with Suno AI that gave me the push to try doing what I love. As you may know, I also rely on ChatGPT for proofreading and other writing assistance in this newsletter, so I truly have Artificial Intelligence to thank!
So, what kind of chemical reaction occurred within me through Suno AI? It’s that, after trying to generate music several times, I found that the songs that emerged contained styles and phrases I had always wanted to sing since I was a child.
では、Suno AI を通して私の中でどんな化学反応が起きたのでしょうか。それは、何度か生成を試すうちに、出来上がった曲の中に、私が子供の頃から歌いたかったような曲風やフレーズがいくつも現れたことです。
The poetic expressions the AI generates when given a prompt are not always aligned with my own style, so I use them like a word bank or dictionary, rewriting them in my own words and expressions. Since Suno AI uses ChatGPT for the poetry generation part, when I don’t know how to use a verb corresponding to a Japanese word, I sometimes ask ChatGPT for help with revisions. Personally, I feel that the AI’s poetic expressions don’t quite match my taste, but much like rolling dice, the randomness sometimes leads to new discoveries.
プロンプトを与えたAIが提示する詩の表現は、必ずしも自分に合ったものではないため、そこは単語帳や辞書のように活用し、自分の言葉や表現で書き直しています。Suno AI の詩の制作部分は ChatGPT を使っているらしいので、日本語の単語に対応する動詞の使い方がわからないときには、ChatGPT に添削してもらったりもします。個人的には、AIの詩の表現は私のテイストにはあまり合わないような気がしますが、サイコロを振るように、そのランダムさが新しい発見につながったりもします。
The more I worked on the songs, the more attached I became to them. Simply having AI sing them made it difficult to control the expressions and nuances. When I looked at the final work, it wasn’t about the quality of the song, but rather whether or not my own presence could be felt in it.
If I wanted to keep working until I was satisfied, I realized that I could write the lyrics myself, drawing inspiration from the AI’s suggestions, and use the song’s chord progression as a reference. At that point, I felt that I could just play and sing it myself, becoming a singer-songwriter. Making such a leap—it’s an incredible chemical reaction, isn’t it?
"Should I try becoming a singer-songwriter?"—a thought straight out of my teenage dreams. One day, while chatting about this in a X (formerly Twitter) Space, I was kindly told, "You have a distinctive voice, that’s great!" and "You should give it a try!" Someone also joked, "Even a pig can climb a tree if you flatter it, Takafumi, haha."😓
Hmm… When someone says that, it really makes me want to climb the tree and see how high I can go. But more importantly— is there even a tree for me to climb? From there, the month of December turned into a daily search for a reasonably priced acoustic guitar on Facebook Marketplace.
And with that, the rest will be continued next time.
Actually, it looks like a summer event will be officially announced soon, so look forward to that announcement. It’s shaping up to be quite the challenge—full of stress!
P.S. Thank you to everyone for reading each issue. I’d be happy if you could give me a signal that you’ve read it by pressing the Like button. And if there’s a Share button available, feel free to use that too.
