Today we continue our exploration of humanizing AI. Can these tools supercharge our authentic identity? What are the limits, and when do we step back to retain our unique voice?

Last week we introduced our experimental virtual artist, Shiun, defined her information stack (the who, what, why, how, and why it matters), created a character, and explored the tools to create the music. Now we’ll review the music-album creation process. This is a fully human writing process. AI will come later as a supporting tool, once everything is grounded in human vision. Follow along. This also serves as a crash course in branding and the creative process.

I referenced point 5 in her information stack for guidance in writing:

So, we know the album has to deliver on this. With art, I feel it needs to be practical to deliver on the “Why it matters” above, and this is also where we invite the opposing polarity, the feminine, intangible, intuitive aspect of the process. So I jammed out this concept while adhering to the copy above.

ALBUM TITLE

The title I came up with was The Cusp, an intermediate space between a symbolic death and a rebirth. This could be symbolized by the Six of Swords in tarot. The image of the boat symbolizes an intermediate space between where you were and where you are going.

ESTABLISHING THE SONGS

I did a creative jam session and settled on 11 song concepts that captured a spectrum of themes connected with the “Why it matters” copy. The chorus tends to encapsulate the core message and takeaway, so I focused on writing the choruses for all the songs first. Here is each song’s title, concept, and chorus. Feel free to skip ahead.

1. The Cusp

Concept
Opening the ceremony and naming the change. The social and personal mask falls. Truth approaches.
Chorus
I don’t know who I am anymore
Nothing is the way it used to be
I am falling in.
There must be a way.
Take me.

2. Mercury

Concept
Pushback rises. Polarization and tribal pull tighten as the mask comes off. You become a statue of what you believe.
Chorus
Choose your god
The mirror is yours
What you believe
Shapes who appears

3. Middle Men

Concept
Digitalization and automation insert brokers between people and resources. This shift robs humanity behind the scenes.
Chorus
The middle men
Takes his fee
Between the source
And what should be free

4. Friends Past

Concept
Growth creates distance from old circles. Disappointment and solitude surface as values evolve.
Chorus
I’m taking space from your urgency
Go your way, I’ll find mine
I’m taking space from your expectations
Go your way, I’ll find mine

5. Sleep

Concept
Digital grind burns us out. Nature restores balance.
Chorus
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again, with my mother
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again, I will find strength in my slumber

6. In This Light

Concept
A vulnerable voice faces the pain. Release from narcissistic ties begins.
Chorus
Backward in time, we were laughing
But now all I see is a different face in this lighting
Were you ever the person I thought of you?
Or have the roads been always crossing?

7. Hillcrest

Concept
An instrumental breath. 90s flavors meet modern adult contemporary.
Instrumental

8. Carnival Of Tears

Concept
Children get funneled into homogenized thinking and debt through higher education. Collective grief deepens.
Chorus
March in a line, voices subdued
Orders delivered, as gifts to the youth
Empty hands, pass down the lessons of pain
Children thrown into a future, that repeats again

9. The Invisibles

Concept
A bright light on subtle manipulations and micro-predatory behaviors just below the surface. These seeds shape our dilemma. The question lands: Do we trust life?
Chorus
The Invisibles
Feed on eyes
Watching silently

10. Communion

Concept
We claim our own salvation. The universe and support networks help, and we step onto the floor as ourselves.
Chorus
I am the light, I know my worth
Save me your stories, I’m here to get to work
Correcting my ways, from things denied
I am the answer, I am my own light

11. The Space in Between

Concept
A melodic contemplation with post-punk spirit. The ceremony closes with quiet resolve.
Instrumental

VERSES

With strong, human-generated album and song concepts and choruses, I began filling in the verses. At about 50 percent, I tested how well AI might support the process. I entered the artist branding, plus the album and song information I developed, to see how well it could fill in some of the verses. Results were hit or miss. I used maybe 10 percent. Mostly it functioned as a jumping-off point, clearly showing what I didn’t want, which helped me write much better verses, so I would give it D+ in this department.

HOW HUMAN CAN WE MAKE IT?

With the songs fully written, it was time to get the arrangements and chord progressions together. In suno.ai you can use prompts to specify nearly every aspect of a song. Lyrics are written in plain text. Specific sounds appear in (parentheses). All other direction appears in [brackets]. These include:

• Section tags: [Intro] [Verse] [Pre-Chorus] [Chorus] [Post-Chorus] [Bridge] [Break] [Solo] [Outro] [Refrain] [Big Finish]

• Arrangement notes: bar counts, repeats, and order. Example: [Verse | 8 bars], [Chorus x2]

• Instrument cues: what plays and when. Example: [fingerpicked acoustic guitar] [sub bass enters] [string pad swells] [hi-hat off]

• Sound design / SFX: ambience and foley. Example: [rain outside] [radio static] [tape stop] [crowd claps]

• Performance directions: delivery and feel. Example: [whispered] [spoken] [rap] [falsetto] [soft lead, close-mic]

• Vocal staging: lead vs. backing, doubles, ad-libs, call-and-response. Example: [backing vox oohs] [octave double on lines 2 and 4] [ad-libs low]

• Harmonies: simple instructions like [three-part harmony in chorus]

• Dynamics and mix notes: intensity and space. Example: [build] [drop] [wider stereo] [long reverb tail] [low-pass fade]

• Chords in brackets: section-scoped or bar-scoped progressions. Example: [Chords: Em | C | G | D]

• Tempo and meter hints inside lyrics: guidance like [slow 4/4 pulse] or [double-time feel]

• Language and pronunciation cues: e.g., [Spanish verse], phonetic hints in parentheses

• Mood and imagery cues: quick scene-setting lines that steer emotion. Example: [melancholic dusk] [uplift at chorus]

• Rhyme or structure notes: syllable targets or patterns. Example: [tight AABB rhyme] [short lines]

As you can see, human direction is nearly unlimited.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Each song follows a standard structure with a few variations. We’ll use the song Sleep as an example of how you write the copy that goes in the lyrics prompt field:

[Sleep | Key: G minor | Tempo: ~75 BPM | Time: 4/4]
[Arrangement Map | Intro 4 bars | Verse 1 8 bars | Verse 2 8 bars | Chorus 8 bars | Verse 3 12 bars | Chorus 8 bars | Solo 8 bars | Outro 4–8 bars]

[Intro | wide pad bloom, gentle room tone, long reverb tail]
[Chords per 4 bars: | Gm | Eb | Bb | F |]

[Verse 1 | intimate lead, close mic, light breath]
[Chords per 8 bars: | Gm | Eb | Bb | F | Gm | Eb | Bb | F |]
Turn a leaf
See the trees
I’m all nerves
I’m all beast

[Verse 2 | add low synth under root, subtle harmony doubles on last two lines]
[Chords per 8 bars: | Gm | Eb | Bb | F | Gm | Eb | Bb | F |]
From afar, I can see you
From a distance, I can see what I’ve become
Nothing more, nothing less
Than thoughts in thoughts, locked in a human

[Chorus | lift with stacked vocals, wider stereo, deeper verb, kick pulse soft]
[Chords per 8 bars: | Gm | F | Eb | Gm | Gm | F | Eb | Gm |]
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again

[Verse 3 | bring in light shaker, gentle sub swell on downbeats, call-and-response ad-libs low]
[Chords per 12 bars: | Cm | Gm | Eb | F | Cm | Gm | Eb | F | Gm | Eb | Bb | F |]
Stories sold, stories told
That appease my mind
Everything you wanted me, to see and buy
After years, I’ve become a statue, from the power of my mind’s eye
I will scatter, I will run, back to where it all started

[Chorus | fuller doubles, slight octave harmony on lines 2 and 4]
[Chords per 8 bars: | Gm | F | Eb | Gm | Gm | F | Eb | Gm |]
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again
Take me back to the dirt
Let me sleep again

[Solo | soft lead tone or guitar, echo throws at phrase ends, keep rhythm bed steady]
[Chords per 8 bars: | Gm | Eb | Bb | F | Gm | Eb | Bb | F |]

[Outro | voice loop, low-pass fade, pad holds tonic]
[Chords per 4–8 bars: | Gm | Eb |]
Sinking deeper

I structured all the songs in the layout above, then moved to the second of the two prompt fields: Style.

If you’re curious what the above prompt generated, you can listen to Sleep here:

GUIDING THE GENRE

So far, there has been very little AI, just a few inspiration points to glue together a few verses, guided by the strong branding we developed as the foundation. Next I added Style prompts. These guide genre and sound. Think of this as the overall palette for the song, while the Lyric prompt window fine-tunes each part of the arrangement.

For the sound, I imagined a blend of older alternative experimental electronic, a synthesis of trip-hop, experimental Radiohead, Peaches, odd time signatures, analog tape drift, dirty subs, and 80s synths… Chatting with AI helped me organize all of this into a well-articulated prompt. For Sleep the prompt was:

This came from a lot of experimenting, some of which I would never have expected. I kept submitting the lyric and style prompts, changing words in the style prompt until I started to get into the range I was vibing with.

Over a period of a week, and after hundreds of song generations, I arrived at 11 songs that I felt happy with.

THE FINAL ALBUM

To complete the process, I downloaded stems for every song (separate tracks) and performed additions, effects, EQ, edits, mixing, and mastering. Some tracks needed more extreme work. Every song needed independent vocal processing to lift it, and the bottom end benefited from extra “omph.”

From there I created the album cover using Midjourney for image generation and Photoshop for upscaling and processing.

All in all, it took about two weeks to create the brand and the album. Faster than many analog paths. I have also made full analog albums in two weeks, so not quite sure where to place it. We are in unique territory.

WERE WE ABLE TO HUMANIZE AI?

Well, yes. I pushed the boundaries of human input, and the tools are there to support it. AI is a tool. It is extremely capable. It carries deep knowledge across media creation, beyond most people’s lexicon. It is only as good as the user guiding the process. Mastery matters—both craft and prompt engineering.

This process aimed to create a fully virtual artist and to push the bar. The process felt surprisingly human. The brand, the lyrics, the chords, and the direction of the imagery and performances were human-directed. Did I perform the parts? No. Songwriters often do not perform either, and they get 50 percent of the publishing and profit. The value question seems to be relative to the input. And clearly you don’t have to do anything at all if you don’t want to.

People feel anger around AI music. The dust is still being kicked up. Sloppy AI music will exist. in my view, the future looks hybrid. It may be good to look at AI-generated parts as the new sample. Professionals can use AI to find that muse, that perfect sound that lived in their head, that beat they could never quite capture. That capability exists now. Get familiar. As this shows, AI does not need to be the vision or the writer. The visionary role remains yours.

Shiun: The Cusp

So far we have completed the album and a music video for the title track, The Cusp. I planned a whole episode on the two music videos I’m working on, but I feel like I’ve spent enough time on this for now and I want to return to my core offering of identity and branding for the next episode. If you would like breakdown on the music videos just shoot me at email at [email protected] and let me know.

The music video explores what is possible with a human-directed AI workflow. AI video trails music in believability, but the tipping point approaches - very soon. The first video is my first baby step. I am about to complete the second music video for Sleep, a big step up in cinematic quality. I’ll share that link in an upcoming episode.

Thanks for joining me on this exploration into Identity.

Listen to Shiun — The Cusp:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ISKHtgTYeP9jnFxhqSBuq
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-cusp/1838597685
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0FQ94XNZP?marketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_9B91DTncMsGPAB3ss8aiYj7Ei
YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vp9iHoSGT4&list=OLAK5uy_kPxj1MOXMrq_dSWJZaHTLronkrImqPWlw

Watch the music video for “The Cusp”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6_IIoRDJmk

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Thank you for sharing this journey. See you next Monday!
Dustin Byerley

Explore more → dustinbyerley.com
IG: @dustin.byerley
Email: [email protected]

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