Samuel Smith spent years writing songs with a guitar in his hands. Now, the London-based singer-songwriter is using artificial intelligence(AI) tools to help him continue making Americana music after Parkinson’s disease largely took away his ability to play guitar.
Smith, who was diagnosed with the progressive neurological disorder in 2020, recently released his second album, “The Art of Letting Go.” For one of the eight tracks, an instrumental piece titled “Horizon,” he relied on platforms that use AI to generate music to create demo arrangements that would convey his vision to the musicians who recorded the song.
The demos he created by humming rough melodies into his phone and uploading the recordings into song generators like Suno and Udio weren’t for mixing into the final studio version of “Horizon,” Smith stressed. But tremors, stiffness and fatigue, which are common symptoms of Parkinson’s, caused his guitar skills to deteriorate during the more than a year he worked on the album, he said.
Generative AI has divided the music industry, whose artists and record labels have complained of their copyrighted work being used to train the models behind AI-powered music tools. Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records sued Suno and Udio in June 2024, although Universal later reached a settlement and partnership deal with Udio and Warner did the same with Suno.
Less discussed is what those platforms can do when employed by a serious musician like Smith, whose disease affects the tools central to his songwriting and identity as a guitarist: his hands. He released his debut album, “In the Springtime,” in 2023, saying he wanted to give his two sons a way to remember when he could perform and record music himself.
“I’d always written, I’d also played, I always sung,” he said. “And immediately it became clear to me that I was in trouble, that my music was going to be seriously compromised.”
From prompts to convincing demos
AI music generators use systems trained on large datasets of recorded music and audio. The platforms analyze patterns in melody, harmony, and rhythm before generating new audio based on prompts or uploaded recordings. Users don’t need musical talent to end up with a serviceable song, or even a popular one.
Smith said producing convincing demos from the synthetic tracks the apps generated often required “50, 100, 150 attempts” and extensive editing “to get something that sounds close to my music.” After humming a song into his phone and uploading the recording, he gives prompts describing instrumentation, mood and style. .
“AI is not replacing anything for me,” he said. “It’s unlocking, it’s enabling. It’s allowing me to keep writing. I upload my lyrics; AI doesn’t create my lyrics. I upload my music; AI does not create my music.”
He added: “It then brings it to life in a way that I can play to session players and say, ‘Here, that’s what I’m thinking, that is what I’m hearing.’”
A bittersweet guitar duet
The album was produced by Grammy-winning pianist and producer Matt Rollings, who assembled a group of established roots and bluegrass musicians for the project. They included dobro player and 16-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas, Grammy-winning banjo player Alison Brown, fiddler Stuart Duncan, guitarist Bryan Sutton, bassist Viktor Krauss and singers Jonatha Brooke and Glen Phillips.
For Smith, the experience of singing in a Nashville studio alongside musicians he had admired for decades was “an extraordinary moment.”
Grammy-nominated guitarist Julian Lage, known for his jazz and acoustic recordings with Blue Note Records, performed on the album’s title track and on “Horizon.” The latter recording became a bittersweet high point in Smith’s career; despite the progression of his disease, he managed to play a guitar duet with his friend.
“I hadn’t been able to play for months, but I kept telling myself that if I wrote something to take to the studio, perhaps the clouds would part for a few minutes,” Smith said. “That’s what happened. I had a window of about 10 minutes in the studio when my arm freed up. … So in the end, I was able to capture the last breath of my guitar playing.”
