Finding Your Sound on Udio
Hello and welcome to my guide on finding your sound. There are a couple ways to approach this. I’m going to go through each one with examples.
Option 1:
You know what kind of sound you want, it’s a famous musical artist or you know what you’re going for.
Let’s start with everyone’s favorite musical artist: Nickelback. We’ll start our exploration at rateyourmusic.com. In the search bar at the top, we’ll search for Nickelback.
As you can see, there are a few genres to start exploring and generating: Hard rock, Post-Grunge, Pop Rock, Alternative Rock, Alternative Metal, and Country Rock.
Depending on what sound you want, you should start generating from these genres. Let’s start with Hard Rock. I’m going to generate 8 clips in the Hard Rock genre and see what these sound like, comparing them to my favorite Nickelback songs. I typically go at 55% prompt strength to make sure the prompt is followed, but that Udio has some room to be creative.
Now that we’ve generated our songs, let’s have a listen. Well, the songs I generated with just ‘hard rock’ sound a lot like songs from the 70's/80's that are your classic hard rock—think AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, and Iron Maiden. We need to adjust this to come more into line with our favorite band, Nickelback.
Let’s try adding Post-Grunge and Alternative Rock. From the 8 songs we generated, we have one song that sounds similar to our favorite band Nickelback. Now, we can go ahead and take this song, or we can try to refine it further. I typically take the more difficult route of trying to refine the song further. We will want to give it some more distinct features that our favorite band Nickelback is famous for. So let’s listen to a few Nickelback songs and see what we can think up.
How You Remind Me
The first song we’re listening to is How You Remind Me. This song has slow rhythmic drums, metal guitars playing progressing chords in the background, and Chad Kroeger’s silky smooth grunge voice singing. There are moments when the music is calm that there are cleaner guitar sounds over the top, playing singular notes. You can continue to clarify the sound until you get what you want.
This is our first example for how you can find a sound you’re going for. Let’s continue to the next option.
Option 2:
If you’re not sure exactly what sound you want, but you have a couple genres you’re interested in, you can go for this option! Unlike our first option, we’re not looking to copy an artist or capture their sound. This is our unique experiment into what the AI is capable of.
Put the genre in Udio, add some flair with mood specification, instruments, technical specification, and vocalist instructions if you’d like. Let me share an example that has some of these elements.
As you can see in this picture, we have 3 different genres: Downtempo, electronic, and trip hop. The flair we’ve added has helped shape this piece with mood, instrumentation, and some technical specifications. Emotional, cinematic, and ancient are mood specifications. These will tell the AI we want to be impactful and evoke an emotional response from the listener. Ancient will draw on old-world influences, make the piece more spiritually aligned, or evoke mystery. Piano and snappy drums are instruments; we’re giving an example of what instrumentation we’d like in our song. Light but impactful and repetitive melodic hook are technical specifications. They let the AI know we want something light that hits in the right moments and that has a catchy melody that is repeated throughout the song.
Once you’ve created a prompt like this, you need to determine if the specifications you included are what you’re really looking for. This part is where it’s very important to really use your ears and know what you love. Do you really love the sounds you’d imagine in an old temple? Perhaps the perfect cinematic moment hitting and expanding the sound is your preference. Something you hear is going to light up your world and that’s when you know you’ve found your sound.
If you’re not getting this feeling, you know you need to change up your prompt. Something is going to spark your joy. Try to hone in on what elements feel good to you and what could really use some changing.
Perhaps you have an amazing melody and really love the drumming in a track. Don’t be afraid to throw that piece in a remix to get some variation that you might love even more. Remember to stay curious and look for those phrases that make your music exactly what you want!
Now we’ve explored this second option, let’s look at a third more explorative option.
Option 3:
You’re not sure what genre you want and you want to explore sounds.
Now, this is MY personal favorite. I’m not sure exactly where I want to start, but I have the will to explore genres and find some fusions or just come out with a single genre.
We go to the best website everynoise.com and we use the scan option, or just scroll through ourselves trying to find that special noise. After you find a genre, two or three, we’re going to throw them in Udio and see how they blend, or if they give you a sound you’re interested in.
Sometimes it’s not going to be exactly what you want, so you need to keep exploring and see if you can balance these genres into something that catches your ear.
This is likely the most expensive option on your Udio credits because you’re attempting to blend genres that you might not even know.
A couple tips for selecting genres:
Try to find genres that complement each other’s sound
Use one genre as the foundation, and another to add a twist
If a genre even sounds interesting to you—throw it in! We’re exploring and want to take risks.
As you continue exploring genres, you’ll find that some genres play different roles. Some give the song structure. Some fill in the sounds. Some bring instruments to the table. You can refine and choose what you like with these genres to customize your sound even more.
Thank you for taking the time to read my guide for finding your sound. I may come out with a more comprehensive guide later. Take some time to explore our website, there’s a lot more to discover. We have a lot of really awesome and talented people on Udio that want to share their process and insights with you.
🧠 Contributor: Tele
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