My first song, from keyboard to studio
終於走了出來 (Found The Way At Last) is the first song I've composed, and it's now on YouTube! I wrote the melody and chords, then worked with a lyricist and singer for the first time to turn those early recordings into a finished song.
I played the chords on keyboard and recorded them in GarageBand. I hummed the melody into my phone, added that recording to the keyboard track, and passed the demo to the lyricist.
Once the lyrics were ready, I recorded myself singing them and used ACE Studio's AI vocals to improve the demo. I then used Suno to explore accompanying instrumentals and variations in singing. After choosing a version with vocals and instruments, I found a singer to record the song.
I wanted to provide the singer with a score for reference, but preparing it digitally was challenging. I worked on both simplified notation and a five-line staff score, trying MuseScore Studio, Chordify and the Mac app 吉他简谱.
To prepare for the studio session, I used ACE Studio to separate the demo into stems: individual audio tracks for recording and mixing. The singer recorded the vocals, and a sound engineer mixed the voice and instruments into the finished song.
I also explored cover art with Google Gemini Nano Banana and ChatGPT. The final cover was based on a photograph taken by the lyricist, who felt its scenery captured the mood of the song.
What began as a melody hummed into my phone is now a song we can share. I'm so happy to have made my first song with this team, and excited to see it published.
