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For AI-music creators

Why AI songs sound the same, and how to break the defaults

AI songs sound the same because a short prompt leaves most of the musical decisions open, and a tool fills each open decision with the usual answer: a middle tempo, a plain backbeat, four chords held a bar each, the same few sounds. Name the patterns you want and each name replaces one of those defaults. Below you can hear the defaults and the named versions side by side.

This is an argument from how the tools respond to words and how popular music is built, not a measurement of any tool. Where it is opinion, it says so.

Hear it: the defaults, then named patterns

Prompt without pattern words

“an upbeat track with piano”

With pattern words

“house, 124 BPM, four-on-the-floor kick, clap on 2 and 4, off-beat open hats, off-beat bassline, piano stabs, seventh chords, sidechain pumping”

120bpm
4 bars
Kick
Snare
Hats
Bassroot notes
Chordsheld
  1. Bar 1Am
  2. Bar 2F
  3. Bar 3C
  4. Bar 4G

Neither version was made by an AI tool; both play on Swung’s own engine. “The defaults” is our picture of the musical middle the short prompt leaves room for. “Named patterns” is exactly what the longer prompt describes.

Learn the words that break the defaults

The course teaches the patterns by ear, one lesson each, so you can name them in a prompt and hear when they are missing. Unit 1 is free with a Google sign-in.

Pick up where you left off

Carry on with Unit 1; every pattern you learn is one more default you can replace.

Start Lesson 1 free Continue learning

Why it happens

Every choice your words don’t make, the tool makes for you. A text-to-music tool turns words into music that fits them. When the words are few, a great many tracks would fit, and the safe pick is the usual one for those words. That is a sensible thing for a tool to do. It is also why many people typing “an upbeat pop song” get songs that sound related: they asked the same short question, and the usual answer to it does not change.

The usual answers are well known. They are the conventions of popular music: four beats to a bar, a tempo between about 100 and 130 BPM, the snare on 2 and 4, a loop of four chords such as I–V–vi–IV, sections eight bars long, a piano or a pad holding the chords. None of these is bad on its own. Stacked together with nothing named on top, they are the sound of a song nobody chose.

Mood words leave the parts open. “Chill”, “epic”, “dark” and “upbeat” describe how a track feels, and thousands of very different tracks feel that way, so those words say little about the drums, the bass or the chords. Pattern words describe the parts themselves. “Four-on-the-floor kick” settles the drums; “off-beat bassline” settles the bass; “piano stabs” settles how the chords are played.

What this page claims, and what it doesn’t

We haven’t measured the output of any AI tool, and there are no statistics here. We don’t know how any particular tool works inside, and the argument doesn’t depend on it. It rests on two things anyone can check: these tools respond to the words they are given, and popular music has strong conventions. The step from there to “vague prompts land on the conventions” is our reading of how they behave.

Five defaults, and the words that break them

Each player starts on the default. Switch versions while it plays to hear what each set of words changes; the words for every version are under the grid.

Default 1

The middle tempo

Pop usually sits between about 100 and 130 BPM, a speed almost anyone can clap along to. Ask for “upbeat” and you are asking for that band. A different number helps, but a number on its own only changes the speed: the same beat, faster. A feel word changes the beat itself.

120bpm
1 bar on repeat
Kick
Snare
Hats
  • Backbeat120 BPM
  • Backbeat, faster140 BPM
  • Half-time140 BPM, half-time, snare on 3

The second version is the first one sped up: still the default. The third is just as fast but feels half the speed, because the snare lands once a bar, on beat 3.

Every genre’s tempo range · How half-time works

Default 2

The plain backbeat

Kick on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, a hat on every eighth: the beat under most pop and rock. It is a good beat, and it is what fills the gap when nobody names a drum pattern. Each drum pattern name replaces it with something specific.

100bpm
1 bar on repeat
Kick
Snare
Hats
  • Backbeatbackbeat, eighth-note hats
  • Boom bapboom bap drums, swung hats
  • Dembowdembow rhythm
  • Two-steptwo-step drum break, ghost snares

Four drum patterns, four different records. Much of what you hear as genre comes from where the hits fall.

Default 3

Four chords, held

A loop of four chords, three plain notes each, held for a bar on a piano or a pad. In our opinion the loop of four is not really the problem; plenty of great songs use one. The bigger default is how the chords are played. Name the colour and the rhythm and the same four chords sound like another record.

100bpm
4 bars
Kick
Snare
Chordsheld
  1. Bar 1Am
  2. Bar 2F
  3. Bar 3C
  4. Bar 4G
  • Held triadspiano chords
  • Jazzy ninthsjazzy ninth chords, electric piano
  • Piano stabspiano stabs, seventh chords, off the beat

The chords are Am, F, C and G every time. Only the colour notes and the rhythm change.

To change the chords themselves, name them by number: Roman numerals such as vi–IV–I–V say which chords come in which order, in any key.

Default 4

Dead straight time

A machine plays every note exactly on the grid unless it is told otherwise. A lot of the music people call groovy has some swing: every second note a little late. Name it, and give it a number.

86bpm
1 bar on repeat
Hats
Kickbackbeat, guide
Snare
  • Straightstraight 16th hats
  • Swung, 62%swung 16th hats, 62% swing
  • Heavy, 68%heavy swing, a shuffle

Same notes, same tempo. Watch the quiet hats move to the right on the grid as the swing goes up.

Default 5

The same few sounds

A clean piano, a plain bass, a standard kit. Sound words are the easiest to add and the easiest to hear, so they are worth one or two in every prompt. They change how a part sounds, not where it plays, so they work best next to a pattern word.

100bpm
4 bars
Kick
Snare
Hats
Bassbass
Chordspiano
  1. Bar 1Am
  2. Bar 2F
  3. Bar 3C
  4. Bar 4G
  • Piano and basspiano, bass, drums
  • Lo-fi soundsdusty drums, Rhodes-style electric piano, vinyl crackle
  • 808 and pad808 drums, 808 bass, dark pad
  • Supersaw and Reesesupersaw chords, Reese bass

Every version plays the same notes in the same places. Only the sound words change.

How to break the defaults

  1. Give the tempo as a number, with a feel. “140 BPM, half-time” or “86 BPM, 62% swing”, not “upbeat” or “groovy”.
  2. Name the drum pattern. Four-on-the-floor, boom bap, dembow, two-step. This one word changes the most.
  3. Say what the bass does. Off-beat, a sliding 808, a Reese, on the 3-3-2.
  4. Say how the chords are played. Held, stabs, jazzy ninths, supersaw.
  5. Add one or two sounds. Electric piano, 808 drums, vinyl crackle, sidechain pumping.
  6. Change one word at a time. Listen for the part it names. If that part didn’t change, the word didn’t land; try the plainer name for it.

Every one of these words, each with a loop to hear: AI music prompt words. To try them on a grid you can see, the beat maker’s composer (free with an account) takes the same words and shows you which boxes it filled.

Our opinion

The quickest way to better results from any of these tools isn’t a longer prompt. It is knowing the thirty or so words for the parts of a track, and being able to hear them. A prompt is a description of music, and you can only describe what you can hear. That is why Swung teaches every pattern by ear first.