Suno AI: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Creating Music with Artificial Intelligence

Creating music used to require instruments, recording equipment, music theory, and often a whole production team. Today, tools such as Suno AI allow creators to turn a written idea into a complete song in a matter of seconds.

In our own work, we used Suno AI to create the CIBS jingle, exploring how generative music can support podcast branding and project identity.

What Is Suno AI?

Suno is an AI-powered music-generation platform that creates songs from text prompts. Users can describe a genre, mood, theme, tempo, or story, and Suno can generate vocals, lyrics, instrumentation, and overall production. It can also be used to create instrumental tracks and develop songs from a user’s own lyrics or musical ideas.

For example, a prompt could be:

“A warm acoustic folk song about discovering Hong Kong’s outlying islands, with gentle Cantonese-inspired percussion, uplifting vocals, and a hopeful chorus.”

Suno will interpret the description and produce a musical draft. Users can then regenerate the result, extend the song, refine sections, or continue experimenting with different directions.

This makes Suno different from a traditional royalty-free music library. Instead of selecting an existing track, creators can generate music that is designed around a specific topic, atmosphere, or campaign.

Our own example: the CIBS jingle

We also used Suno AI to create the jingle for our CIBS programme. The process allowed us to experiment with musical styles, moods, melodies, and vocal ideas before selecting a direction that matched the identity of the project. This demonstrates how Suno can support branding and media production—not only by generating background music, but also by helping organisations develop a recognisable audio identity.

Our experience creating the CIBS jingle also showed that human input remains essential. Suno helped us generate and explore musical ideas, but the final choice depended on our understanding of the project’s tone, audience, and identity.

How Does Suno Work?

A typical Suno workflow looks like this:

1. Describe the idea

   Enter a prompt describing the style, mood, subject, and sound you want.

   
   

2. Choose how much control you need

   You can allow Suno to generate the lyrics, or provide your own lyrics and instructions.

   
   

3. Generate several versions

   AI music generation is not always predictable. Creating multiple versions helps you compare melodies, vocal styles, and arrangements.

   
   

4. Edit and extend the song

   Depending on your plan and available features, you may be able to extend a track, change parts of it, separate stems, or refine the arrangement.

   
   

5. Review the final output carefully

   Listen for awkward lyrics, strange pronunciation, unwanted repetition, poor transitions, or similarities to existing songs.

Suno’s official website describes the platform as a tool for producing complete songs with vocals, lyrics, instrumentation, and production from a text prompt. Its paid plans also promote features such as song editing, stem separation, audio uploads, and more advanced production workflows.

Suno may be useful in a wide range of creative and educational projects. However, the music should always be checked against the platform’s usage rules and the creator’s commercial licence.

Education and workshops

Teachers and workshop facilitators can use Suno as a creative learning activity. Participants might write lyrics about:

1. Environmental protection

2. Local history

3. Inclusion and diversity

4. Community identity

5. Personal dreams

6. Sustainable living

   
   

For important commercial projects, keep records of:

• Your original lyrics.

• Your prompts and creative instructions.

• The date and plan used to generate the song.

• Your editing and arrangement decisions.

• Download receipts or subscription records.

• The final version you actually used.

  
  

Avoid copying a named artist too closely

Instead of prompting for “a song exactly like [artist],” describe the musical qualities you want, this approach gives the AI a clearer creative direction without asking it to imitate a specific performer too directly.

The most responsible approach is to treat Suno as part of a creative workflow rather than an automatic shortcut. Use it to explore ideas, revise the output carefully, document your process, and confirm your rights before publishing or monetising the final track.