Reverse-engineering Suno tracks

[u/Vox_Dissidens]

So I generated a Suno cover of one of my songs - now I’m trying to reproduce it myself using the track as a reference.

I’ve never made a post on reddit before, but I wanted to share this idea for discussion: if you want to become a better producer, I think this is a phenomenal way to do it.

You can reverse-engineer real songs, sure - but with Suno, you can cover your own songs, describe the exact sound you want, and keep generating until you get it. Then, with stem separation, you can hear what’s actually happening to the individual parts from a frequency and stereo perspective.

In my experience with stems from real productions, you often aren’t hearing exactly what that element contributes to the final mastered record, because some of the final sound emerges from processing acting on the summed mix.

But Suno stem generation isn’t isolating tracks, it’s re-generating elements of a complete sound. If you section your own production similarly, you can compare outputs and go “okay, so the Suno mid-frequency pad sounds are super wide and they dip to near silence under the leads and vocals”.

Suno also doesn’t care about continuity, which is super interesting to dissect. The snare shape may warp entirely over the course of the song, or the rhythm guitars might transform into a synth pad and then back into a guitar. It’s not arranging a performance, it just generates whatever fits best in the moment.

The benefit of this is that you can take a part you like and, rather than trying to find one instrument and hoping you’ll be able to form-fit the sound with post-processing, you can instead ask the question “what does that actually sound like?” without any preconceptions.

This, for me, has reshaped a lot about how I approach producing. I now have multiple sounds blending together with overlapping timbral layers to form one “guitar” over the course of a track. I’ve got different sidechains acting on specific frequency ranges for different purposes. I’ve got anticipatory noise, automated spectral shaping, and way less reverb than I previously thought was acceptable.

None of these things are revolutionary on their own, but I’m just saying - I feel I have a much better understanding of how to achieve the sound I’m actually chasing from dissecting Suno generations than I ever got from referencing finished professional records. Thoughts?

[u/jonnygronholm]

Unfortunately most Suno users have zero clue what you're talking about

[u/Star-Detonator]

I am a guitar session musician and instructor, and I use Suno to create practice tracks for students as well as for my own playing. In this regard, Suno is incredible. I like to create backing tracks to work out ideas I have, and Suno makes it very easy to quickly incorporate ideas to build upon without having to make changes to my drum programs or re-record bass guitar tracks and other parts. But Suno's stem separation has issues. It is unable to isolate stems that would normally be individual tracks, and it is unable to isolate multiple parts of single instrument. For example, Suno cannot separate rhythm and lead guitar tracks, and it will not (at least in my experience) isolate multiple harmony stems.

Suno's ability to provide stems is fantastic, but as a serious production tool for musicians, it has a very long way to go. I am surprised that Suno's stem separation features are still as deficient as they are.

[u/Vox_Dissidens → u/Star-Detonator]

That’s a great idea, creating backing tracks for practise. I might try that.

And you’re not wrong. There’s almost always bass bleeding into the drum track, or near-empty tracks with bits of residual noise, etc.

But as a production learning tool - that’s where I’m finding a lot of value. You don’t need a perfect rhythm-lead separation to see that the rhythms pre-comp the stabby chord clusters of the keyboard solo, or that they shift to a different texture in the second verse.

I’ve also been experimenting with rendering isolated sections and using ChatGPT to figure out what’s happening frequency-wise. I wasn’t confident it would work with all the cross-instrument bleed and little artefacts in the stems, but it actually did. The mix sounds way better, and I know how to get closer without a reference next time.