When I first dove into Riffusion, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I just started feeding song concepts into a large language model, eager to see what kind of musical chaos it would unleash. The initial results were, well, eclectic to say the least!

I found myself mostly drawn to the comedy of the mundane. Imagine classic ’80s hits retold from a completely different perspective, like “Stacy’s Mom” reimagined as “Mom’s Decaff, Not Your Dream Girl.” Or jingles for things nobody asked for, like pencil cap erasers or a bag for toenail clippings. Tongue twisters, punk anthems about domesticated life (featuring a loofah of Lucifer, naturally), and gospels dedicated to the peculiar (“Mustard Seed Hustle,” “Thread the Needle, Brother Camel”) all made an appearance. Even minor inconveniences got the full dramatic monologue treatment, resulting in masterpieces like “A Totally Normal Meeting” and “I Held in a Fart and Killed a Bird.”

I even branched out into other languages, creating operatic Latin odes to farting dogs at the dinner table (“Canis Meus Flatum Dedit”) and a heroic cat with a penchant for cheese (“Fellis Fortissimus”). And yes, a few genuinely creepy tracks emerged, taking listeners to the depths of hell with “The Great Dairy Reckoning of 3:17 a.m.” and “Screaming at Pipes Since Tuesday.”

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From “No One Wins on a Tuesday” to “The Existential Workday”

Then came “No One Wins on a Tuesday,” my original playlist concept chronicling a workday filled with existential dread and passive-aggressive appliances. I absolutely fell in love with the idea. However, a snag emerged: commercializing these Riffusion creations required an upgrade. Anything I’d made on the free plan couldn’t be sold. So, the obvious next step was to embrace the paid plan and remaster everything. This led to the creation of my new album, “The Existential Workday,” which builds upon that initial spark.

This is where the real work began. I took the existing playlist and essentially started rewriting the songs from scratch for the album. I kept the core idea of each track but infused them with a ton of personal experiences, observations, and overheard anecdotes. And let me tell you, songwriting is a massive undertaking. It’s far more complex than just rhyming every line – in fact, often, it’s better to only rhyme a few lines, depending on the genre.

What makes this project particularly wild is how the music genres shift throughout the workday to set the mood. This means I’m learning a ton of genres all at once! Beyond rhymes, there’s rhythm and syllable count to consider. Then there are the words themselves – some just don’t fit, or you have to relentlessly tweak them to get the right punch. But you can’t deliver that punch too early, or the rest of the song might fall flat.

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The Devil’s in the Details (and the Latin)

Every song on “The Existential Workday” tells its own story, but also contributes to a larger narrative, meaning continuity is crucial. I had a moment where a manager gave me a task, but then later in the song, I talked about him being asleep from a previous Zoom meeting. How did he hand me a task if he was asleep? Those are the kinds of conflicts you have to iron out.

I’m creating a more cohesive album by weaving in callbacks to earlier songs, ensuring each track still stands strong individually. To match the personified, somewhat demonic objects in the lyrics, I’m subtly dropping in ominous Latin phrases. Sometimes these are cheeky, almost-Latin concoctions with English suffixes for comedic effect. The real fun is that anyone who translates them might uncover a mundane “spreadsheet message” from earlier in the day, like a “generational curse of lukewarm coffee” or a cryptic hint about “Karen’s disappearance in 2003.”

This project is packed with insane wordplay. I’m constantly battling to find words that resonate with listeners, avoiding vague language to ensure every line lands with maximum impact. I’m layering in dry humor, irony, and theatrical elements, personifying even more objects and adding richer character and imagery to amplify the comedic situations in each song. I’ve also built in transitions to seamlessly connect the tracks and provided more specific musical directions within each section to guide the AI in setting the lyrics to music.

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Riffusion: A Game Changer (Mostly)

Despite the creative challenges, Riffusion is fascinating. You don’t need a band or even the ability to compose music to get radio-quality songs. You just input the lyrics or tell it what kind of lyrics to create for you, and boom – you’ve got a song.

Once I moved to a paid plan, even more options opened up, giving me greater control over the sounds at different points in the song, and allowing me to adjust the “lyrical strength” and “weirdness.”

Riffusion also gives you the ability to swap out vocals or other tracks of a song known as “stems”, or use them to create new songs. I believe you can upload your own voice as a stem, but I haven’t tried it. You can also download the stems in a zip file containing four mp4 audio files – vocals, bass, drums, and other. Other is your lead melody. Once you have the stems, you could record your own voice as a separate track to replace the generated vocal track.

While the program’s “hallucinations” can lead to skipped, repeated, or even gibberish words – a quirk of large language models – paid plans offer greater control. My primary frustrations, however, lie elsewhere: the inability to create duets or incorporate sound effects using the platform itself. Pronunciation can also be an issue; my “corgi” often becomes “Core-Gee,” and “Live” is consistently mispronounced regardless of context. A more technical gripe is the music’s fidelity: despite the 44.1 kHz wave file created, the audio is limited to 16 kHz, a restriction that’s puzzling given the format’s capacity for higher frequencies and perfect human hearing going up to 20 kHz.

What truly sets Riffusion apart from many other AI-powered services is its generous free tier. While most platforms quickly hit you with a paywall after a few uses, Riffusion lets you keep creating. You might have to wait five to ten minutes in a queue for your song to be processed, but the fact that you can continue to experiment and create without immediate financial commitment is a genuine game changer.

What kind of mundane musical masterpieces would you create for “The Existential Workday”? Here are the playlists I’ve made and the songs they contain, to give you a sense of the comical nature of what I’ve created.

The Bard of Bizarre

Shakespeare in Sweatpants (monologues)

• How I Earned a Nod from the Smoking Cashier
• Shelter Me Gently, You Wounded Beast
• How the Cat Won the Pizza War
• The Office Chair That Tried to Kill Me
• Janet, This Is Not About You (It’s About the Itch)
• Wore All the Weird Socks
• I Held in a Fart and Killed a Bird
• Gerald the Ficus is Dead
• The Day the Self-Checkout Tried to Destroy Me
• This Is Why I Don’t Go Outside
• A Totally Normal Meeting
• I Don’t Work Here, But Emotionally I Do
• She Took the Blanket (and Left My Soul on the Floor)
• The Coffee Goat in the Breakroom
• The Day I Fought Cardboard
• Double Tap for Justice
• The Ants Have Spoken

Domesticated Punk: “Spin, You Cyclical Sorceress”, Spoons and Emotional Damage, “Monsters at the Door, No Snacks in Store”, The Boyfriend’s Guide to Pads, Desmond’s Digestive Betrayal, “Sir, This Is a Gym, Not a Stage Play”, “I Screamed, She Smirked”, Receipt Wars (The NEver-Ending Scroll), “Regift Me Not, O Fickle Heart”, My Girlfriend Asked Me to clean the Sink So I Accidentally Performed an Exorcism, “Cleanse Me, O Loofah, But Leave My Soul”, Victory Tastes Like… Microgreens?, Hell Froze Over and She Brought Cocoa

Chronicles of Mundania: Pickle Jar Fight, Waiting for The Pop, Lost Sock, Warm Seat Blues, Sock Salvation, Brain Static, Price Tag, Bin Shot, Loose Again, Where’s The Remote, Microwave Minute, Bathroom Legacy, Dust Bunny Run, A fly named Carl, Wait… What Was I Singing About?, Parallel Parking PTSD, Everything Must Go (Even My Pride)

Cursed and Curated: Seat 13 Is Cursed and Rick Has Theories, Screaming at Pipes Since Tuesday, The Great Dairy Reckoning of 3:17 a.m., Ted Talk Squirrel of Shame

Gospel Oddities: The Parable of the Fig Tree (But Only the Leaves), Mustard Seed Hustle, Two-by-Two… but Not Me, Loaf #13 (Left in the Basket), Third Goat from the Left, “Thread the Needle, Brother Camel”, Even the Toenails Survived

The 80s, But Make It Weird:

Original	Parody
Stacy’s Mom	Mom’s Decaf, Not Your Dream Girl
867-5309/Jenny	Sorry, Not Sorry (I Blocked You)
Last Christmas	Dear Santa, Take Him Back
Take On Me	Amnesia Love Song
Jessie’s Girl	That’s Not How Friendships Work, Bro
Don’t Stop Believin’	Midnight Bus to Nowhere (and Back Again)
	Praise Be to Looney Tunes

Veni, Vidi, Risi (I Came, I Saw, I Laughed):

Latin	English
Canis Meus Flatum Dedit	My Dog Farted
Canit Piscis Aureus	The Goldfish Sings
Felis Fortissimus	The Strongest Cat
Silentium Ridentium	Silence of the Laughing Ones
Titus Torquet Lingua	Titus the Tongue Twister
Laudes Ignavi	Praises of the Cowardly

Don’t Trust the Beat (But It’s Fire): Skynet Works Retail Now, Aisle Five Is Where the Revolution Starts

The Bug Report: I Yelled at the Fridge and Now It Won’t Talk to Me, My Printer’s Got a Demon (and I Still Hit Print)

Corgi Ballads & Belly Rubs: Low to the Ground, High on Life

Catchy Junk You Didn’t Ask For: Lint Roller Love, Two Left Socks, Cap Erasers (They Still Exist!), Clip ‘n’ Keep!

Songs to Trip Over Your Teeth: Stanley the Slippery Sandwich Snatcher, Benny’s Blueberry Balaclava Blunder, Bartholomew Bled in the Bell Tower

Absurdity with a Purpose: Spaghetti Moonboots on a Jellyfish Parade, Banana Satellites and Disco Soup, Teacup Thunder and Velvet Tornadoes

Gibberish Grooves: Snizzle Snarf Revival, Zibble Zabble Zap!