What does Suno mean for us producers & musicians?

 I've been thinking about this for a month or two now, and there is still a lot to process (obviously).  In a way for us musicians and producers, it feels like a "pencils down" moment... The teacher looks at the clock, stops everyone, and we all have to hand in our work, wherever we are at.  We either wrote good/recorded songs that made a splash, or we are now going to drown in the sea of auto-produced stuff that people are about to unleash on the world of music consumption.  The reality we are about to witness is one where disposable songs are literally created on the spot by an app for an ephemeral job posting, a birthday wish, or tomorrow morning's alarm clock sound... And then maybe never played or heard again.  The value of a song is on a different level altogether, one that is hard to relate to... And it seems unlikely we will ever live again in a world where so-called "classics" are made, or at least where everyone agrees on them as such.  The quest of breaking the barriers of producing great music, something that I have literally been training half my life to do, is over.  The barrier doesn't exist anymore, for anyone. 

That's kind of a bleak outlook.  But there's another side to this.  The fact that music making will now be a fully democratized commodity actually secretly elevates some particular aspects of music making. Consider the fact that making music without AI (especially weird stuff that is really outside the bounds of what AI is good at), will now be at a premium.  Humans will remember, and even seek out stuff that exists outside the norm.  We can think of the New Wave movement, in the early-mid 80's, as being sort of an analogous shift.  The LinnDrum was invented, MIDI, tons of studio automations... All of a sudden, there was a new sound and it was extremely low cost / high margin.  The big labels pushed it hard and it found its way to saturation, which led to... The punk music movement. This direct response was the antithesis of all that. It rewarded grass roots, real instruments, garage sound, edgy lyrics, people working their asses off without a $1M advance, just for the love of the craft.

If you carry that out, it's believable that people are still going to look toward bands and songs that are outside AI in some way.  I'm not trying to be a luddite here - being an AI collaborative band is something that will be very interesting (and, as far as I know, still yet to be any sort of a Zeitgeist), but the thing people will latch onto is: "this doesn't sound like AI!"...  Specifically, once everyone has access to make and (knowingly) hear generated music, it will immediately follow that real people, w/ real instruments, shot on real video cameras - making real music that is catchy and says something meaningful - will be held in higher regard because of the scarcity laws.  Mistakes, imperfections, even un-exciting, monotonous aspects of a song being allowed... flies in the face of everything I have seen in generated music thus far.  It will stick out like a sore dick in a whorehouse, and "no news is bad news".  

I really like the idea of the hybrid approach.  Write music from the heart, use AI to complement your skill set, create something that transcends, and be transparent about how you did it.  People love to know the process.  One of the things I have enjoyed the most about my friends playing with Suno is when all of the inputs are disclosed ("I made a recording this way, used a click, slider 1 at 25%, added style cues of blues + 4 on the floor backbeat, added lyric corrections", etc.).  The only thing greater than people's hate for being deceived is their love for being brought along for the ride of making a song. This is how some bands born on Youtube have gotten to be so big.  They don't just make the music, they take you on the journey and share the human experience.  At its core, making music is a very human experience, and that doesn't have to stop just because someone involved AI.  I would love to watch a video where someone makes a great record using elegant, judicious applications of AI within the process.  It's fair to say that, within our combined skills, we have decent musicianship, production, and to various extents, recording and mixing, but we lack in some areas like arrangement and repeatability.  If we use AI to fill in that gap, but show how we used it to make a great song, then learn and play it for people and bring them joy, that's a win.

So far this year, the stock market seems to be headed towards rewarding companies that have defensibility against AI takeover, and I think this theme dovetails perfectly within the music regime.

 

Building the ChordCaster Stomp: A Peek Inside My New Harmonizer Pedal

Every once in a while, a project grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go. For me, that project has been the ChordCaster Stomp - a compact, musician‑friendly harmonizer pedal built around a Teensy microcontroller, a custom audio front end, and a handful of ideas that have been rattling around in my head for years.

I wanted something that didn’t exist yet: a pedal that could grab a single note, understand the musical context, and generate harmony that feels intentional rather than robotic. Something that could switch between diatonic intelligence and unapologetically synthetic fixed‑interval parallel harmony. Something that guitarists, synth players, and experimentalists could all use without needing a theory textbook.

So I built it.

Here's a very quick & low effort demo of it in action. I plan to put together a full tour at a later date.

The Hardware: A Custom Brain in a Custom Box

The first prototypes ran on a Teensy 4.1 with the standard audio board - great for development, but not something I’d ever want to ship. Once the firmware stabilized, I moved everything over to a Teensy 4.0 and started designing a custom audio board to match the needs of a real pedal.

The stock Teensy audio board is a solid reference, but it’s built for general‑purpose use, not guitar. I needed a proper high‑impedance input buffer so the pedal behaves like a real instrument input, not a line‑level consumer device. I needed a cleaner, more robust line output that plays nicely with amps, interfaces, and other pedals. And I needed a compact layout that fits inside a stompbox enclosure without a rat’s nest of jumper wires.

So I kept the heart of the Teensy audio board - the SGTL5000 codec - and rebuilt everything around it. The digital side stayed almost identical: I²S for audio, I²C for control, clean 3.3V rails, and the usual decoupling. But the analog side is all mine: a JFET input buffer, proper AC coupling, a stable output driver, and ESD protection so the pedal doesn’t fry itself the first time someone plugs in a cable on a static‑heavy stage.

The USB port is panel‑mounted, too. No more dangling micro‑USB connectors waiting to snap off.

Harmony That Feels Musical

The ChordCaster Stomp has one job: turn a single note into something bigger. Hit the footswitch while you are playing a single note - the pedal “grabs” the note you’re playing and holds the harmony until you release. It’s like a freeze pedal, but for harmony. Great for ambient swells, pads, or turning a single note into a chordal drone. That's the basics, but there are many variations available, which is sort of where the fun begins:

Diatonic Mode

This is the “intelligent” mode. You pick a key and a musical mode (major, minor, modal mixture), step on a footswitch, and the pedal chooses the correct harmony interval based on the scale. It’s the kind of harmony that follows you around like a well‑trained bandmate - always in key, always musical, but keyed off only the notes you want it to pay attention to.

Fixed‑Interval Mode

This one is pure attitude.

Instead of following the key, the pedal applies the same interval no matter what you play. Want everything harmonized a major third up? Done. Want parallel fifths like a medieval monk with a distortion pedal? Go for it. Want to stack weird intervals and make synth‑like textures? Absolutely.

This mode ignores theory and just does what you tell it to do.

Arpeggiator Mode

This is the mode I didn’t realize I needed until I built it. Instead of playing all the harmony voices at once, the pedal cycles through them one at a time, turning a single note into a rhythmic, evolving pattern. The tempo is fully adjustable: you can dial it in through the menu or simply tap the second footswitch to set it on the fly. It’s a surprisingly expressive feature - great for ambient pulses, sequencer‑like textures, or adding motion to otherwise static chords. It feels less like a harmonizer and more like a tiny, obedient arpeggiator living under your foot.

Other Features

Beyond that, it features multiple outputs, reverb, FX and lots of other goodies.

The Idea: A Pedal That Understands Musicians

I’ve always loved harmonizers, but most of them fall into two camps:

1. Too simple - fixed intervals only, no musical awareness

2. Too complicated - menus, presets, MIDI, and a learning curve that scares off half the people who might enjoy them

The ChordCaster Stomp sits right in the middle. It’s musical, but not fussy. It’s expressive, but not overwhelming. It’s smart, but not bossy.

You turn the knob, pick your mode, and play. The pedal does the rest.

Where It’s Going Next

Right now, I’m refining the PCB layout, tightening up the analog noise floor, and polishing the UI so it feels natural on stage. The firmware is already solid - the Teensy 4.0 has more than enough horsepower for real‑time harmony, and the 360K of flash I’m using fits comfortably.

Once the hardware is locked in, I’ll start thinking about enclosures, graphics, and maybe even a small production run (but no promises).

For now, I’m just enjoying the process of turning an idea into a real, playable instrument.

If you’ve ever wanted a pedal that understands harmony the way you do - or the way you wish your bandmates did - the ChordCaster Stomp might be exactly what you’ve been missing.

The software is available on my Github, if you want to "check it out" (haha)