A Quick Note on AI Music
Before getting into this, a quick disclaimer.
I’m aware of the criticisms around music generated by AI, and many of them are valid.
I’m not trying to pass this off as something it isn’t or pretend I wrote and produced these songs in the traditional sense.
This is just a personal, creative side project using AI tools as part of my Spanish learning process. It is nothing more ambitious than that.
Writing Songs in Spanish with Suno and LLMs
When I started learning Spanish through comprehensible input, I wasn’t planning to write songs.
Most advice in this space is clear: prioritize input, delay output, let the language build naturally.
I still agree with that.
But I found a kind of detour that doesn’t feel like traditional output at all. I write songs in Spanish with an LLM and generate them with Suno.
This ended up being one of the most engaging parts of my process so far.
The Process
The workflow is simple. I start with a concept and a handful of Spanish phrases, usually pulled from videos. Then I work with an LLM to shape the lyrics, adjust their tone and rhythm, and repeatedly rework individual lines. Finally, I feed the lyrics into Suno and experiment with the musical style, phrasing, and arrangement.
This does not happen in real time. The process is slow and deliberate, with a lot of guidance from me.
Las Estrellas de Mallorca
This was the first Spanish song I worked on.
It came from a Dreaming Spanish video comparing Mallorca and Barcelona. One of the speakers described growing up in Mallorca before mass tourism and spending nights on the beach watching the stars.
That image stuck.
At the same time, I was reading Love in the Time of Cholera, which, among many other themes, touches on modernization and the erosion of natural beauty.
The idea became: the stars as silent witnesses.
The song takes their perspective and watches generations pass through hopeful moments, heartbreak, and fleeting lives.
Writing this in Spanish forced me away from precision and toward feeling. I leaned on imagery instead of perfect phrasing.
And that made the song better.
Insonorización
This was the most recent Spanish song I worked on.
Instead of starting with an image, I started with a list of phrases I had collected: al fin y al cabo, insoportable, hace falta me da cuenta, and others.
From there, I built a concept: talking to and from the perspective of a social media algorithm.
The song expanded into something broader. It became about addiction and compulsion, particularly the experience of being trapped in loops you recognize but can’t seem to escape.
Insonorización became about insulation, but not peaceful insulation. More like being sealed inside a system that dulls everything except the marginally less satisfying next hit of stimulation.
Compared to Las Estrellas de Mallorca, this one is tighter and more direct, with a more claustrophobic feeling.
Why Writing in Spanish Feels Different
Before this, I had written about a dozen songs in English.
In English, I overthink word choice, aggressively avoid clichés, and worry about sounding derivative. I do not have that baggage in Spanish. I do not know what counts as a cliché or what is overused, and I lack a strong sense of the full connotations of words and phrases. That leaves me free to focus on rhythm and imagery, along with emotional coherence and simplicity of expression.
Not knowing enough to be self-conscious is surprisingly freeing.
Does This Help with Acquisition?
Strictly speaking, CI says this isn’t necessary.
And I agree.
But this kind of output is different. It is slow, guided, and built on input I’ve already seen.
It reinforces vocabulary in a meaningful context.
You sit with phrases longer, reshape them, and see how they work.
I wouldn’t replace input with this.
But as a supplement, it’s been motivating and effective.
First and Last (So Far)
Las Estrellas de Mallorca and Insonorización mark the first and most recent songs I’ve written in Spanish.
There is a clear progression from external observation to internal experience. The perspective narrows into tight psychological loops, and the writing moves from images toward phrases.
They also capture something else: creating in a language I don’t fully understand yet.
Takeaway
There is something strange about writing songs in a language I’m still acquiring. I do not fully control or understand it, but I can still create something meaningful. Doing so has made learning Spanish more engaging and more fun, and it has given me a creative way to spend time with the language.
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