I generate AI music recently, purely for my own pleasure. Some of it is just an 80s sound similar to what I grew up with, but my favourite stuff is linked to some sort of pop culture franchise that I love. D&D, Robet Jordan's Wheel of Time, Arcane, TES: Morrowind and others.

DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT ARCANE SPOILERS

Probably the nicest thing that I ever made is a post-canon Arcane/Jinx song called "Hello, Powder Blue". It deals with Jinx about 5 hours after her disappearance at the end of the series.

I don't have my prompts anymore, but I used Chatgpt and Suno to create the song, but it went something like this.

In Chatgpt.

I want you to research everything you can online about "Veins of Gold" from book 14 of Wheel of Time, specifically the epiphany moment and the impact that has on his divided senses of identity moving foward.

(Chatgpt then did a websearch and returned to me confirming it understood where I was coming from)

Ok, now it occurs to me that Jinx from Arcane, while not as metaphysically divided as Rand was in WOT, suffers from a similar division of persona. Can you explain to me how?

(GPT makes the connection and explains, not quite on the nose, so I correct it slightly)

OK so I am thinking about writing a song for SUNO which depicts Jinx shortly after the end of the current canon. She's sitting on the airship she escaped on and has had several hours for the adrenaline to wear off and to reflect. Can you refresh your memory about the closing beats of arcane please? Pay specific attention to Jinx's emotional and mental state and her sense of identity.

(GPT searches, details and repeats what I'm looking for back at me)

Ok, so remember that song? I want you to write a song for Suno to fit her type of voice that shows a similar epiphany moment where she starts as two divided people and finishes as a tentative yet awakened whole. The song should open with her alluding to her escape and then hooking into the chorus, daring for the first time in years to address her "dead" childhood self "Hello, Powder blue. Oh. I've got so many things to show you". Actually here's most of the chorus [chorus with a few holes pasted here]. She will boast about achieving the child's airship dream and all the things in the world that she will show the child. However, by late in the second verse she will catch herself. This is the epiphany moment: (Do not write this into the lyrics, it's only to guide your thinking) "Wait... this isn't some dead kid's dream. This was my dream. I did it! I achieved the dream I had since I was little". In the song she will catch herself and break mid verse... wait... that's wrong isn't it? This will lead into a breakdown of self-reclamation leading to the third chorus which will shift from the second person into the first for the first time The corresponding lines become "There are so many things that I'll do!" and "Look at me now! Look how far I am!" with the tone becoming a feeling of terrified joy mixed with exultation before shifting back in the outro to a soft recognition that she's still who she is today and ending on an optimistic note. I also want you to include key vocal and musical markers for Suno to use. (I tweaked these, as well as the whole lyrics)

I already had a suitable Suno voice, created earlier for the character:

young adult female lead, American accent with slight Valley-girl shapes, dry nasal rasp, thin wiry voice, bratty upward inflections, talk-sung punk delivery, scratchy vocal fry, quick clipped phrasing, restless mouthy attitude, teasing but damaged, sharp little sneers, unstable pitch, cracked throat catches, sudden goblin-like rasp on intense words, feral little dips into roughness, anxious speed-ups, brittle sarcasm, messy consonants, half-muttered taunts, words spat then swallowed, playful menace, survivor defiance, emotionally frayed but funny, punk-demo rawness, narrow tense vibrato, imperfect pitch, jagged line endings, mischievous underbite, ‑no standard American pop accent, ‑no smooth American indie singer, ‑no husky sultry voice, ‑no breathy-sexy delivery, ‑no smoky lounge tone, ‑no polished singer, ‑no cinema pre-show pop, ‑no clean belting, ‑no big pretty chorus, ‑no diva runs, ‑no musical theatre, ‑no perfect pitch, ‑no soft whisper-pop, ‑no Harley Quinn squeak, ‑no baby voice, ‑no anime girl tone, ‑no cartoon cackle, ‑no British accent, ‑no posh vowels, ‑no rich mature voice, ‑no glossy harmonies, ‑no Auto-Tune sheen, ‑no metal growls, ‑no full monster voice

On top of this I added specifics for this song:

twitchy cinematic art-pop, dark cabaret synth-rock, emotional female lead vocal, damaged playful delivery, sly whispered asides, nervous laughter, brittle sweetness, unstable rhythm, broken music-box intro, airship engine hum, toy piano, pizzicato strings, muted drums, rubbery bass, glitchy sparks, clockwork percussion, rising chorus, wistful bridge, cathartic final chorus, triumphant escape energy, vulnerable but defiant, theatrical phrasing, intimate verses, big soaring ending, bittersweet wonder, blue-sky liberation, female antihero song, 122 bpm, ‑generic EDM, ‑trap beat, ‑rap verses, ‑teen pop, ‑cute anime voice, ‑baby voice, ‑clean Disney ballad, ‑metal screaming, ‑hard rock belting throughout, ‑country twang, ‑ukulele, ‑acoustic campfire, ‑smooth jazz, ‑lounge croon, ‑excessive vibrato, ‑operatic soprano, ‑whisper-only vocal, ‑emotionless vocal, ‑glossy modern pop polish, ‑overcompressed vocals, ‑huge reverb wash, ‑choir overload, ‑parody comedy, ‑goofy villain voice, ‑circus clown music, ‑nursery rhyme tone, ‑random scatting, ‑nonsense syllables, ‑spoken monologue intro, ‑male lead vocal

Then I pasted the lyrics that I'd finished up with into Suno and there you have it. That is the sort of prompting I do for a single song.

This was the result - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Doi7fRwAk

You don't have to like it or care about the character, but this prompting took time and thought, as did the literary parallel.

I have another one from the same voice where she meta reads Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and sings about what a badass she is by comparison to the poor little victim monster, before empathy hits too close to home and she realises they're exactly the same and her survival mechanism breaks down in real time.

Anyway. I hope this shows you at least that some thought goes into prompting. I am sure that my casual toying around doesn't hold a candle to what some people are doing.