Make a reference track for Suno
Suno lets you upload a piece of audio and build a song from it. Most people reach for a record they love, and Suno turns it away: uploads are checked against known recordings. The alternative is a loop you made yourself. The Swung beat maker builds one in a few minutes, from real drum machines and named patterns, and saves it as a WAV that starts on the bar line. Upload that, and Suno follows your groove, your tempo and your key, in a song that is yours to release.
Swung is not affiliated with Suno. Suno is a trademark of Suno, Inc.; the names of its features are used here to explain how to use them.
- Free plan upload
- up to 60 s
- Pro and Premier
- up to 8 min
- Swung's WAV
- 16 bars, from the bar line
- Who owns it
- You do
Learn what makes the reference work
The course teaches the patterns the beat maker plays, one lesson each, by ear, so you can hear what a generation got wrong and fix it on the board. Unit 1 is free with a Google sign-in.
Pick up where you left off
Your next lesson is ready; the beat maker is one tap away from it.
Why upload a reference at all
A text prompt gets you the average of a genre. "A deep house track" comes back at a tempo Suno chose, with a groove Suno chose. A piece of audio pins down the things words are bad at: exactly where the kick falls, how much the hats swing, how long the bass notes are, what key it is in. Suno hears those from the file and keeps them, as closely as you ask it to.
That is what a reference track is for. It does not have to sound finished. It has to say one clear thing about rhythm and tempo, and leave the rest to the prompt.
Why not a song you already love
Suno's terms ask that you hold the rights to anything you upload, and since late 2024 uploads are fingerprinted against a catalogue of known recordings. A commercial track is usually refused on the spot, and people report that a clumsy edit of it (slower, noisier) still leaves them with a song they cannot release. Even a cover you sang yourself carries someone else's composition.
A loop you built has nothing in the catalogue to match. The drums, the bass line and the chords are a pattern you chose, played by a drum machine, at a tempo you set. It is the plainest way to be the owner of the reference and of what Suno makes from it. (This is a description of how uploads work, not legal advice.)
How to do it, step by step
- Open the beat maker and pick a loop. Every genre page has a loop that opens in it at its own tempo, on its own kit: house, techno, lo-fi hip hop, trap, phonk, synthwave and more. Or start empty and tap the boxes: a kick on every beat is house, a kick on 1 and a snare on 3 is trap.
- Set the tempo and the key. Both are in the top bar. Suno keeps them, so set the tempo of the song you want, not of the loop you happen to have. The bass and chord rolls only show notes in the key, so whatever you draw fits.
- Make it say one thing. Drums and bass are what Suno hears most clearly. Take out anything you would rather Suno invent: a melody you are not sure of, a pad you added for fun. A reference with four tracks beats one with ten.
- Press Download WAV. The loop keeps playing while sixteen bars are recorded from the next bar line (eight bars at a slow tempo, so the file stays under a minute). The file is a plain 16-bit WAV named after your loop and its tempo, and it loops cleanly.
- In Suno, upload it. On the Create page, choose to add audio and pick the file (Suno's help centre calls this Audio Uploads). On the free plan the clip can be up to 60 seconds; Pro and Premier take up to 8 minutes. The loop lands in your library.
- Choose Cover or Extend. Cover asks Suno to make a new song in the shape of your file: same groove, same tempo, new sounds and, if you want, vocals. Extend carries on from the end of your file, so your loop becomes the first bars of the song. For a reference, start with Cover.
- Set Audio Influence. The slider appears once an upload is in play. Low, and your loop is a suggestion; high, and Suno stays close to it. Half way is a good first try: the rhythm comes through and the rest is open. Each example below says where to put it.
- Write the style prompt in the loop's words. Tempo, the pattern names and the key: "124 BPM, four-on-the-floor, off-beat bass, A minor". The words and the audio agree, so Suno has no reason to drift. Why pattern names work.
- Generate, listen, go back. Suno gives you two takes. If the groove is right and the sound is wrong, change the prompt. If the groove is wrong, change the loop: move a kick, lengthen the bass, turn the swing down, download again. The whole round trip takes a minute.
Three examples, with the prompt to paste
House
Open the house loop in the beat maker, then: Keep the kick on every beat, the clap on 2 and 4, the open hat between the kicks and the bass in the gaps. Leave the chords out: Suno will add its own, and the groove is what you want it to copy.
Audio Influence: Around 50%. The four-on-the-floor and the off-beat bass come through; the sounds and the top line are Suno’s.
Four-on-the-floorBackbeatOff-beat open hatOff-beat bassPiano stabs
Deep house, 124 BPM, four-on-the-floor kick, clap on 2 and 4, off-beat open hats, off-beat bass, warm piano stabs, A minor, steady and hypnotic, instrumental
Lo-fi hip hop
Open the lo-fi hip hop loop in the beat maker, then: Boom bap drums with the hats swung, a round bass that sits under the kick. Add the jazzy seventh chords from the Sounds panel on an electric piano if you want Suno to keep the harmony too.
Audio Influence: Higher, 60 to 75%. Lo-fi lives on its swing, and a loose setting lets Suno straighten it out.
Boom bapSwung 16th hatsJazzy seventh chords
Lo-fi hip hop, 82 BPM, boom bap drums, swung sixteenth hats, round bass, jazzy seventh chords on electric piano, vinyl crackle, A minor, late night and dusty, instrumental
Trap
Open the trap loop in the beat maker, then: A half-time snare on beat 3, hat rolls where the loop breathes, one long 808 note per bar. Keep it sparse: the fewer things in the file, the more clearly Suno hears each of them.
Audio Influence: Lower, 30 to 40%, if you want vocals. The half-time feel and the 808 survive; the rest is left to the prompt.
Half-time snareTriplet hat rolls808 glide
Trap, 140 BPM, half-time snare, triplet hat rolls, long 808 bass with glides, dark bell melody, A minor, heavy and sparse, confident rap vocals
What the audio says, and what the words add
| From the file | From the prompt |
|---|---|
| Tempo | Instruments and their era ("Rhodes", "analogue synths", "a 1990s sampler") |
| Where the kick, snare and hats fall | Vocals: whether there are any, the voice, the language, the lyrics |
| Swing and feel | Mood and energy ("late night", "festival", "tense") |
| Key and the bass line | Structure ("a long intro", "drop at the chorus") |
| How busy the groove is | Production ("wide", "lo-fi", "clean and bright") |
When the two disagree, Audio Influence decides who wins. Keep them agreeing and the slider stops mattering so much.
Questions
- Will Suno accept the file?
- Nothing in a loop you built matches a known recording, so there is nothing for the check to find. The file is a plain 16-bit WAV, which every upload form takes. If an upload is still refused, the usual causes are a clip over the plan's limit or a network hiccup; try once more.
- How long should the reference be?
- Long enough for the groove to settle, short enough to fit the plan. Swung records sixteen bars, which is about 30 seconds at house tempo and 45 at lo-fi tempo, and drops to eight bars when sixteen would pass a minute. On the free plan a clip can be up to 60 seconds.
- Cover or Extend?
- Cover, if the loop is a reference and you want a whole new song shaped like it. Extend, if you want the loop itself to open the song and Suno to carry on from it. Both read the tempo and key from the file.
- Does this work on Suno's free plan?
- Yes. The beat maker needs no account at all, and Suno's free plan takes uploads of up to 60 seconds.
- Can I get MIDI out as well?
- Not yet. Suno Studio reads MIDI on its top plan, and a MIDI download is on the list. For now, the WAV is the reference and the share link is the way to keep the loop itself.
- Does it work with other generators?
- Any tool that takes an audio reference, or a sample to build on, takes this file. The prompt advice is the same: write the tempo and the pattern names.
- What are the sounds in the WAV?
- The beat maker plays the same free sound bank as Strudel: drum machines such as the TR-909, TR-808, LinnDrum and MPC60, plus synths and General MIDI instruments. The pattern is yours; the sounds are instruments, the way a piano is.