Welcome...

Hello Interwebs,

I work in data and systems. Corporate, the kind of job that keeps me busy during the day. I live near London, I've got a family, and by the time the evening is done I've usually got somewhere between one and two hours before I should probably go to sleep.

That's when I write songs.

I've been doing this for about six months now. Not casually, not as a hobby in the vague sense of the word. Properly. I've got a methodology, a catalogue of nearly fifty original songs, and an increasingly unhealthy relationship with a piece of AI music software called Suno.

The way it works is this: I use Claude mainly, alongside other AI models, to help me develop concepts and refine lyrics. Not to write the songs for me. There's a meaningful difference, and it's the difference I care about most. The ideas, the angles, the emotional architecture of each song, that's mine. What AI helps with is the craft layer and the grunt work of analysis: does this lyric scan? Is this hook strong enough? Is this chorus doing two jobs at once, or just one?

Then Suno turns the lyrics into actual music. Which is, depending on your perspective, either remarkable or slightly terrifying. Possibly both.

The songs span a lot of ground. UK electropop, dark pop, festival EDM, confessional ballads, party anthems. Some of them are funny. Some of them are about things that don't look like what they're actually about. I have a principle I often deploy called the Trojan Horse: the song sounds like one thing on the surface and means something else underneath. A recent track is about walking out of an IKEA. It's not really about walking out of an IKEA.

I started this site because my growing library of songs felt like enough to warrant a front door. Somewhere to put the music, document the process, and occasionally write about what I'm learning. Songwriting craft, AI workflow, the specific pleasure of finishing something at midnight that didn't exist at ten.

Many are still unreleased. I'll get them onto YouTube first, and others are already available through streaming.

If you're a songwriter curious about AI tools, welcome. If you're an AI person curious about songwriting, also welcome. If you just heard a song and wondered what was going on behind it, that's what the Notes section is for.

And if you're a fellow songwriter, I'd genuinely value feedback on what I'm doing well and what turns out to be complete rubbish. I'm figuring this out as I go.

More soon.

Gareth