What a week. I've just released my first single - properly released, on streaming platforms and everything. It started as a bit of exploration into AI music generation and ended with me hitting publish on something I'm genuinely proud of.
The thing is, everyone keeps saying "well, anyone can make music with Suno now." And look, that's technically true. But here's what they don't tell you - turning that into something that's actually yours takes work. Proper work.
The Reality of AI Music Production
I spent days on this. Hundreds of tweaks and refinements. Hundreds of persona adjustments in the AI. Back and forth between Suno and my DAW, Studio One, trying to get it to sound right. It wasn't just "prompt and done" - it was more like having a very talented but slightly unpredictable collaborator who needed constant direction.
The AI could generate impressive sounds, sure. But making those sounds feel intentional? Making them mine? That required understanding what I was after, being able to articulate it clearly, and having the patience to iterate until it matched what was in my head. The tool doesn't replace taste or vision - it just gives you a different way to execute them.
Spinning Plates
Meanwhile, I've been juggling three other projects. There's a bespoke POS platform I'm building (which is brilliant fun, by the way), a personal trainer website that's nearly over the line with its own CMS backend, and we've just launched a WordPress site for an estate agent. My AI agent Serene has been helping map out the platform architecture for the POS system, and we're about to start building in Vercel.
Honestly, without AI assistance, I'd probably be managing one project at a time and feeling stressed about it. Instead, I'm spinning multiple plates and actually enjoying the process. The AI handles the boilerplate, the repetitive architecture decisions, the "I've done this exact thing fifteen times before" moments. That frees me up to focus on the interesting problems - the parts that need human judgment.
The Fear Is Real
But here's what's been on my mind - the fear around AI is real. I get it. I had those same thoughts a few years back when it became clear which direction this was all heading. The "oh my god, what do I do with this" moment.
The power AI gives me to manage multiple projects and deploy MVPs at speed with built-in scalability is incredible. But I think it's crept up on people. They're paralysed by the possibilities rather than energised by them. There's this sense of being overwhelmed before you've even started.
I see it in conversations with other developers, with business owners, with creatives. Everyone knows AI is changing things, but knowing that and knowing what to do with it are very different problems.
Finding Your Use Cases
What's helped me is finding my use cases. Not trying to AI-ify everything, but documenting my everyday work and figuring out what can be AI-driven and where I sit comfortably as the human in the loop. With the music, I was the creative director. With the development projects, I'm the architect and problem-solver. The AI handles the grunt work and offers suggestions.
That said, I'm still learning. Each project teaches me something new about where AI helps and where it gets in the way. The estate agent's WordPress site? Mostly traditional development. The POS platform? AI is helping with architecture and boilerplate code. The music? AI generated, but human-curated and refined.
Here's what I noticed - right, here's what I noticed - is that the projects where AI works best are the ones where I have the clearest vision of what I'm building. The AI isn't replacing my judgment; it's accelerating the execution of ideas I already understand. When I'm fuzzy on what I want, the AI just amplifies that fuzziness.
The Human in the Loop
The single I released this week sounds nothing like what the AI first generated. It's been shaped by my decisions, my taste, my understanding of what works and what doesn't. The same is true for the development work - the AI might write the code, but I'm the one deciding what we're building and why.
I suppose the question isn't whether AI will change how we work - it already has. The question is whether we'll let fear keep us from finding our place in that new reality, or whether we'll start experimenting and see where we fit.
For me, that place is as the creative director, the architect, the person with taste and judgment who uses AI to move faster. Not replacing the thinking, just speeding up the doing.
I'm curious what that looks like for you. What are you building? What feels exciting rather than threatening? Because I think once you find that use case - the one where AI genuinely helps rather than just complicates - the fear starts to shift into something more useful.
