The Hollow

For a long time, I've navigated a form of depression that often left me feeling emotionally numb and completely isolated. The world felt muted, and the part of me that loved life and life experiences went quiet. At the beginning of this year, I discovered technology that allowed me to create music with AI. I toyed with it for a while not making much of it but in time it became a breakthrough. I began a journey, using language models such as Genmini to write lyrics that captured feelings I couldn't articulate on my own, because I simply didn't know how. I soon started creating an incredibly personal album expressing what I couldn't express physically, all about my particular form of depression and the inner turmoil I struggled with on a daily basis. This song is called The Hollow and it is a track from this album. It’s an attemot to express in song my experiences with loneliness and numbness. In an effort to convey this preoperly, I wanted to be very strict with the lyrics and structure. There is no recognisable verse - chorus pattern, there are no words conveying specific emotions, there are no words describing anything tangible. Despite all this I've endeavoured to convey the sense of being isolated, the feeling of loneliness and emptiness I have been struggling with. I've done my utmost to convey this through the music as well as the lyrics. I hope it resonates with others out there.

The AI hasn't been the source of the emotion put into this track, that has been all mine, through conversations I've had with Gemini. AI was the instrument, a collaborative partner that helped me translate the static of my inner world into the words and sound you experience. This process of creating an album has been more healing than I can describe.

Before I started writing lyrics I spend hours speaking with Google Gemini. I let it learn about me through conversaton. I believe It was one of the LLM's that suggested I turn to lyrics as a form of release. I wrote the base lyrics myself and then used Gemini to brainstorm how to fit the strict criteria I had set myself for the song. (no verbalised emotions, nothing physical, tactile or tangible in the song etc) and through this process I eventually settled on lyrics I was happy with. I then turned to Suno with these lyrics. This was the trickiest part as I wanted the song to have no conventional structure or pattern. I knew how I wanted it to sound in my mind. I knew the framework I wanted. I wanted it to be a conversation with no one that would eventually burst in frustration.

This is where the endless refinements came, over several days. A cycle of generate, research, tweak, refine. Lots of forums visited, lots of shared google docs read through. Lots of trial and error until I had something I was satisfied with.

I then used Audacity, Suno's own remastering software and Another AI mastering website to polish the song until I had my final version.

The video came together a lot more simply. I had the idea of the seperated, silhoutted couple just come to me. I thought the imagery would fit the tone of the music perfectly. The idea for the simple story was to symbolise isolation and loneliness but also to show that there is always hope and always help, even in the darkest of times.

I used Veo3 to generate the clips exclusively over a period of weeks. Ensuring I always maximised the allowance of 3, 8 second clips a day. of course, as always, this was a lot of trial and error. An exercise that required very specific prompt inputs to keep the imagery and continuity as cohesive as possible. Safe to say, it took a while! I used Filmora to build the video and add polish, the result being the final video.

My hope is that the song not only connects with anyone who has ever felt this way, but also shows how technology, when guided by human experience, can be a powerful tool for good. This is what a human-AI collaboration can look like.