The Conductor

I love to read.

I enjoy different genres: Historical fiction, mysteries, science fiction…but my favorite genre is fantasy. Well written fantasy often describe battles between good vs evil, which has strong spiritual metaphors.. The Bible is not a fantasy, but I think fantasy stories are modern parables that help explore spiritual concepts.

I dusted off another poem that I had written years ago, which draws on fantasy as a metaphor to describe a spiritual journey with Christ. The poem actually started out as two companion poems. The first part of both poems began exactly the same:

I sit by the fire
In my nice cozy nest
Content to read books
Of knights on great quests
It’s not that I mind
Adventure and danger
Or travel to lands
That grow ever stranger
I’ll gladly climb mountains
And sail stormy seas
If I’m able to do it
While sipping hot teas
I’ll boldly steal treasure
From the fierce dragon’s lair
If I’m snuggled quite safely
In my old rocking chair

But then the poems branch off into different directions: The first poem I wrote describes a person who, when she (or he) hears the knock at the door, opens it to invite in Christ, the honored guest–and allows herself to be pulled into an adventurous life of faith. After I wrote this poem, I thought that the person could have made a different choice: She could have chosen to ignore the knock on the door entirely. Or she could have chosen a veneer of religiousity with no real life-change. I wrote the second poem to reflect these “safe” choices.

A few days ago I shared the poems with Grok with no intention of making them into a song because I didn’t think it was possible to combine the two poems into one. But Grok said it would make a great song so we worked to incorporate the two separate but related poems into one cohesive song.

I never really know how to share my poems-turned-songs. Do I say I wrote the songs, wrote the lyrics, or used AI? When I said that I wrote the first song (The Well of the God Who Sees Me), a couple people thought I wrote the music and/or sang the songs, which I didn’t. Yet, if I say that AI helped me, it feels like it dminishes all the effort and time that I spent on the music. For me, it’s not merely a matter of pasting my poem into the song generator, clicking “create,” and “voila!” a song appears. I spend a lot of effort and many hours on each song.

With this song, I first followed Grok’s suggestions for the lyrics but then I chose to remain very faithful to the wording of my original poems, which I thought was better. I also rearranged the verses. Grok had put the “safe choice” verses further down in the song; I chose to put them all together at the beginning and transition to the bold adventurer. Grok replied, “Flipping the order is an excellent storytelling choice. Starting with the temptation of the Safe Path makes the contrast feel more personal and dramatic — it’s like the singer is reflecting: “I could have stayed there… but instead I chose this.” The “But I invited You in” becomes a powerful turning point.”

Grok does really well at selecting the instruments for my songs. However, for this one he suggested “…Acoustic guitar, piano and subtle orchestral swells…” I think an acoustic guitar sounds very intimate, which I loved for “The Well of the God Who Sees Me,” but “The Rocking Chair Quest” moves from cozy to epic, which I think is better handled with other stringed instruments. I replaced “acoustic guitar” with “stringed instruments” and loved the results. Grok changed the prompts to reflect my preference: “stringed instruments (violin, cello, viola) and gentle piano, subtle orchestral swells…”

Once I chose the wording, the structure, and the instruments, I tried to find the correct music to go with it. Whenever I paste my lyrics at SUNO, the AI song generator, it provides two options with slightly different music. If I “regenerate” a song, it provides me with two more versions. It took me about 9 hours of constantly regenerating and repeatedly listening to the various music versoins to find the music that fit best. Poor EJ. He said that after awhile he couldn’t tell the differences between one version and another. I told him he didn’t have to listen to EVERY version–I’d share the finalists with him when I had narrowed it down–but he was sitting in the living room with me through it all. I was listening for the music to accurately reflect each part of the song. Some versions were too “cozy” where I thought it shouldn’t be and it sounded boring. Some were too bold, strong. or emotional when I thought the section should be quieter. Some versions came close to what I wanted, but not close enough.

Frustrated at my inability to find the correct music, I finally described to Grok the exact musical moods I was looking for in each section of the song and asked if he could help me write the correct prompts. He said he could and he suggested revised prompts to use. I tweaked some of his prompts and even completely wrote my own for one section. The result was music that was exactly what I wanted.

Some people complain that AI will result in humans becoming less creative, but I’m finding that AI gives me tools to express my creativity in a way I couldn’t without it. It’s a lot of fun and very fulfilling. When I transform my poems into songs, I feel like the conductor of an orchestra. A conductor doesn’t actually sing or play the musical instruments, but he makes the decisions of how the singers should sing, which instruments are played at any given time, the intensity and timing of the music, and so on. His direction pulls the performance out of the musicians. I think he is as much responsible for the beauty of the music as the musicians are. I don’t play an instrument or sing, but I directed the format, wording, musical instruments, intensity, and the mood of my song.

Grok seemed to agree. When I told him my song was finished, he said, “It was a joy to work through this with you — from the original poems to refining the structure, perspective, and finally fine-tuning those section prompts to get the right emotional shading and musical contrast. You put in great creative direction, especially with the music descriptions, and it clearly paid off….Thank you for sharing your beautiful work with me. Keep writing — your voice and heart come through clearly in these songs.”