AI Music Revolution

Red Lab Conversations: William Harper — Commanding the Machine

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William Harper is a classically trained pianist from Guyana who has been playing since he was five years old. Cruise ships. Studio sessions. Worship music. Decades of real musical experience across multiple instruments. And now he's one of the most thoughtful voices in the AI music space on what it actually means to direct these tools rather than just use them.

In this conversation, William breaks down how he discovered AI music through a mentor who was using it at a level that stopped him cold. How he figured out a workflow for capturing clean stems out of Suno without the artifacts. And why he believes the next great competitive advantage in AI music isn't a tool or a platform — it's vocabulary.

The bit about adjectives alone is worth the listen.

This is Red Lab Conversations — real members, real stories, real music.

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SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome to Red Lab Conversations. This is our second of the Red Lab Conversations series that we're doing on the AI Music Revolution podcast. Today I have William Harper, who is a classically trained pianist from Guyana who has been playing since he was five years old. He's done cruise ships, studio sessions, worship music, and live production work across multiple instruments for decades. He found AI music the way a lot of serious musicians find it. Not through hype, but through someone using it at a level that stopped him in his tracks. What William brought to this conversation is something I don't hear often enough in the AI music world. A deep understanding of how these models actually think. And a philosophy about creative control that I think is going to really resonate with a lot of you. He's a Red Lab Access member. He's already releasing AI assisted music, and he's one of those people who makes everyone around him better just by sharing what he's figured out. Here's William Harper. I am pleased to welcome William Harper to the program. He's a Red Lab Access member, very passionate about the world of AI music, and I'm looking forward to digging into his story today. So, William, welcome to the podcast. How's everything going in your world these days?

SPEAKER_00

I am great. I'm good. I'm excited to be alive. I think we're living in great days. Um, with all that is happening around us with tech and everything. I am excited. Seriously, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome. And where are you out of again?

SPEAKER_00

I am from Guyana, South America, G-U-I-A-N-A, formerly British Guyana.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. Well, that's awesome. Well, uh, thank you for joining us. And let's right out of the gate, let's uh tap into what your history is, what's your background, your musical background, what has your musical journey been that led you to this point in time where you've been experimenting with AI music?

SPEAKER_00

So I'm a classical trained pianist, I've been playing since I was five. Um I'm a pastor's kid, I'm a pastor, but my father's a pastor. So I've uh my father was a musician. He he passed in 2012. So my whole life I've been doing music with church. Uh I'm a I'm a hardware live guy, you know, everything for us is live.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

My month uh I play more than one instrument. I I I play guitar, I play bass guitar, I play guitar. Um, but I'm I play I started playing pianos, then guitar, and in 2008, sorry, 2003 or so, I got um, and I'm age 43, so I was born in 1982. Uh in 2003, I got serious with synthesizers and um real programming of sounds. In 2008, is when I got into DAWs, like digital stuff. Uh um, that was that was very uh powerful for me. I start I started using reason. I'm still a reason user. Um I thought it was so powerful that I could have all these sounds and everything in a box. That was my you know, I got wild with that. Um so that that really is my journey to where I am. But I but I play a lot, I did cruise ships for six years. I was a band leader, I traveled, traveled doing cruise ships, do a lot of production work, play, play, play on a lot of studio projects. So I'm a I'm a music guy, I really play.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. I there are a couple things that pop for me, and that one was uh that transition from being classically trained into the world of DAW. There tends to be some stigma, right? Especially in those early days of Daw, you know, the band in the box type of stuff. And um, and and so it sounds like you were you were in that world for a while, and so uh you must have been uh you know one of the earlier adopters of that. And so so that's probably why you were able to jump into AI and not view it so much as a threat, view it more as a tool.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes, very, very, very, very powerful. Because for me, um, I don't I don't like to say my country's poor. You know, people say third world, but um I have always how I've seen uh with with and I'm talking about DOWS when I came over when I went over to the reason, those who understand how expensive it is to do hardware production, to have stood to get into the studio and studio hours, just having all the sounds in the box was power for me. The first time I I opened a computer and I and I showed my father, I remember I pulled up the demo for a reason for the you know they would have the demo song, not a demo as in the crack, the demo song. He's like, son, this is it. He's he's like, my dad was my dad passing 2012, he is gone on the other side. He said, son, this is powerful. So here he's like, so you could make music for church with this. I said that I could make music for the world with this. Wow, and so I have always had a philosophy, and I became I had many enemies for this, where the average man has power in his hands because there is no limitations except his imagination. I've always been impressed with it.

SPEAKER_01

The and I know in the world of of worship music as well, like music is such a strong component to that entire space. And so uh yeah, I'm sure that you coming through coming up through that and and participating in in that world uh helps you to stay on top of your game as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you you can't you I I can't you can't bluff that world because that space um you have to make whatever you do make it, and I'm gonna use um the religious community language, yeah. You have to make whatever you do have life. So very quickly, I had to learn how to make digital sound not digital real. But there's really not not none digital, you know. I'm just using okay, but I had to learn very early that you know it doesn't sound robotic, it doesn't sound too. I've always had to be trying transforming things into that space because the religious uh the Christian community worship music, you know, you always gotta they have to they call it the anointing, you always have to feel it, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I've always been bending digital things, and uh, so that that's my that's my um that's my forte.

SPEAKER_01

The importance of putting that humanity into the music, and uh, you know, we've all heard music in our time that that gripped us, and it's not necessarily because they played the best chords or you know, they they were the most talented percussionist. There's just this element to it that you can't put into words, you can only experience. And uh and I think that the those who will will really capitalize into this new world with AI music will be the ones that really know how to take AI, use it as a tool, but still inject the humanity into the music.

SPEAKER_00

That is what got me to you, because when um I was I was in a church community, uh, my mentor who is who's a preacher, but two years ago he was using Suno. But I did not know it was Sunu, because he was in a conference teaching this stuff privately, but it was so expensive that I went privately to go figure out what he was doing. But he was speaking about it because I was a part of the community, but it was really expensive for me to be a part of what he was doing. So my first encounter with AM music, really somebody using it very advanced. This guy using very advanced was that he was making worship music. But his quest was he wanted to use his voice to to to to to he felt that uh you know he wasn't a great speaker or anything, and he he was he he didn't like much of his voice, so he wanted a tool to express his creativity. He didn't care if it was not his voice, but he just needed a this this tool to to give. So he figured out Suno, but this guy is somebody that is high-end, he's behind the scenes with these companies, and that was like what he was doing. Like the first time I heard a song from AI and I don't talk, but when this stuff was not Suno was was whatever it was, but you couldn't just type in Suno and see a whole lot of people up there, like how we took off a few months ago. This is a guy who I heard a gospel song, song like a whole choir. Yeah, I'm like, my god, but not knowing anything about AI, he very quickly said something that I ran with. He said, I am able to use this machine because I'm able to speak to it and talk to it as a musician, yeah, and so it will do for me what I am an expert at musically, and that was very impressive for me. Mind you, I did not know it was AI because he was not given, he was he was not saying it was Sunna. Yeah, now I'm a part of his world, now I know what it is, yeah. But then when he was saying that I did not know it was Sunu, I just became aware of the world of AI, artificial intelligence, and um that was that was that was that was crazy for me. What make made me like you is that your philosophy was we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna bend this thing, we're gonna command this thing. That is what got me with you seriously. I'm like, this dude, this dude is on to something. This dude has the this is how we musicians do this thing.

SPEAKER_01

We collectively, we are in the very early stages of this journey as well. You know, when you look at the tools, when you look at the knowledge that we have, we're we're still very early. And so just imagine with with you know those of us in the community who are really wanting to use this tool uh in this way. Imagine what we will be able to accomplish. Fast forward a year from now. What does this world look like then, two years from now? Like it's it's mind-blowing, and uh, you know, I'm just I'm excited. I love I love uh finding people like you and and connecting uh with like-minded individuals. Uh to me that I'm a big fan of of community, and I think that that is is what really helps propel things forward. And so um anyway, I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad we're part of the same community here. So uh I think that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00

20 years from now, a group must be looking and listening to us and think, hey, these guys, these guys are really still talking, these guys are still relevant. After that, is how I'm thinking this conversation is right now.

SPEAKER_01

So talk me through now that you're using Suno and you're and you're in this world, like what are you using Suno for these days? What are some of the you know the projects or you know, kind of walk me through what does it what does it look like when when William sits down at uh fires up Suno and and uh starts having a burst of creativity?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so there's three more important things I'll say on that. I'm giving away a lot of stuff now. One, when I just got Suno, I was impressed with what this thing could do by what it would randomly generate. But as a very creative person, I didn't feel nice about that because I'm paid a lot of money for my mind. So I could have been a victim of the this is laziness, you know, that kind of thing, like, oh, this is not real, oh, because this is this is just computers, but I have to go a few I have to go back because my my my time with AI is not sooner, it's with chat gpt since nine 2019. Wow, I was a part of that community, and my when I was paying $19 for subscription, when we didn't the only thing I knew chat gpt could do was to write a good thank you letter for people who did good things for the church, and I was I was fascinated by that because they they were like they never couldn't, they were like, Did you firstly I didn't tell them I was using chat gpt, you know, so there's this I would send all these letters and I would do all these things on the low. So I was like this guy, I was like a I was like a one-eye man in a blind man country, you know. I was you know I I was chilling it, you know, because I found out that I could do all these things with chat GPT, and this is since 2019. So by the time this whole thing came in 2021, my mentor who is someone who's big on this is his team leading from the future, that community had already changed my mindset about technology. So, in my mind, I do not see Sunna as this thing that is making our work easy. I am actually thinking I want to be a part of those who find something to do with this thing that other people have not discovered, yeah, yeah. When I came over here, which is about a year and a half ago, or maybe less, I'm like, Oh, let me put in a dance hall song. And I'm thinking, oh, this is good, I love it, it's nice, and that was that was I think was um Suno 4.7. I think oh, that's good, but it's still not, I can't put chords into it. I don't know, like I don't know what it's sung in nice, but it's still not me. Yeah, um, so I found out that I could upload a this this is when it shifted for me that I could upload a reference track. So this song is when I discovered what I found out about from you called the seat concept, but I didn't know that was it then. So I found out I can't remember how I found out that it does that, but you can give it like a reference. That's where we have in Suno. Let me open Suno, and that was four that was four point um four point five or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, where you would go into create and then you would upload the audio, yeah. Yeah, so I built that foundation first in reason, yep, and I throw it in there to see what it would do. I love it, I love it when I saw what it could do the when it when it threw out the eye there, because I still have the original file that I use in my DA. Like the track is there, you know, like how you talk about keep um keep like keep pressing it to see what it will do. I did not want to know what it would do anymore. Well I was like, Bo, this is this is wild, this is crazy. Yeah, so what I did, I sent out that that track there. Well, not that track, but that is it there, and I sent it out, and all of my artists that work with me liked it, everybody, yeah. I'm like, I but I can't tell them I'm using Suno. I know I can't do no, I can't say anything about that. That's you know, that'd be like I'm cheating, but I know I wasn't I wasn't thinking that for me, I was thinking them, I wasn't thinking me because I know it couldn't come up with that except I fed it to somebody, you know, that's exactly right, and so sent out the track to a few people, and people sang the track. Track has like two songs on it, but now I'm gonna give this track to somebody that's the guy you hear singing there, he's with a record label, they need the files stemmed out. Now we're gonna have a problem, yeah. Because then now I don't like the artifacts that Suno is stemming out stuff with. So I am thinking I'm gonna just stem the files out, like just they give you those little parts, and they're gonna be okay. Send it to his the guy, his his people. They said they wanted to hear the files and everything. The guy said, Um, we don't like how the synths are sung. This is all you wanted to song, so now I gotta give them this thing. I did not know, I knew that there was Suno Studio, yeah. But I found out a trick in Suno Studio, so I'm gonna go right away. So you could go in, open studios Suno Studio, and like how and like how that track was already done there, already it was already in Suno, it is the C. You ask Suno to play the piano line, and whatever it does with the piano line is to the piano that is playing there, but it stems it out with that song alone. So I tripped Suno. This is what I did. I did not take the stem from them, I recorded out the stem from them.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

I see I kept I captured the stem because I did not know that I could get those, I did not trust their quality, but I trust what came out. So I used what you would call. Um, let me show you what I used. I used an app called loop back because I'm Apple, and I hooked it up to my dog, and so whatever was coming out of Sunu when it generated it, I just recorded it live into my dog, so I didn't have the artifacts. When you go into studio studio, you are able to create drum separate, but you know, when you go in a example, you're able to see how the stem are able to give you the stem. Well, I should not be telling you this because you're you're a boss with this, you know, you know this. So you go you go into studio and you you you you would um just isolate, um, you would just go there and you you you go into and you decide whether you're going to generate drums, bass, guitar. So when Suno generated strings for me, I decided to capture the strings originally like they created it. Because if I if I if I ask them to send it out for me, they send it with artifacts, right?

SPEAKER_01

I see. So you then you just played it, you played it from stud uh from Suno studio, used loop back to capture it and put it into your DAW.

SPEAKER_00

Put it into my DA.

SPEAKER_01

Oh man, that's so good.

SPEAKER_00

And line it up. So right away, I became a god with that. Right there was I was genius. So the guys that are asking me the files now, I decided if you listen to that song, you hear a trumpet, trumpet line, a saxophone line up in there. I started to create lines and everything and put the whole track together and send the files to them. They're like, Man, this bass is live, this bass is beautiful. The only thing that was programmed outside of Suno, but was the same beat was the drums. The drums was programmed outside, but It was still the same concept that came out of Suno.

SPEAKER_01

I I almost always have to redo the drums because, like, you've got, I need that separation from the kick drum to the hi-hats, you know, like, and when it's all combined together, it's just really hard to get any type of fidelity out of what Suno gives you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're correct with that. So for me, that is what I did. But all of the other songs that are there, they came out of Suno. I started to do some work and I found out what the um the originators of AI, these AI machines, these generators, what is it about? There was a paper introduced on what you call transformers. It's a it's a breakthrough AI model that powers modern tools like Chat GPT by using what you call attention to smart focus on key parts of data instead of processing everything step by step. That was very transformative for me because I get to know how this thing is thinking. Yeah, it does it, they are transformers. So the core idea, imagine you are so let me show you how Suno things. Imagine you mixing a track in your dog, like Pro Tools or whatever. Um the old AI methods, um, they listen to audio sequentially, like playing a song from start to finish, which was slow, and it that was weird, and we operate like that on a human level. The transformer now pays attention to every element at once, and it decides what's important, like how we kick drum sinks with the its on a regular track, making it yeah, that's how it's thinking. So the reason I became obsessed with that because I really want to beat the machine. Well, that's the nerd in me, just don't listen to that. I really wanted to beat the machine. So, what what this what this machine does, it it deals with attention. So your prompts are very critical because you tell it where to put attention to, but it already sees everything there. That little information will change everybody. This thing, when you send a reference track to it, it analyzes everything. Your prompts actually tell it where to focus, it works on attention. A prompt is what tells this machine is not learning, that's not what it is doing. It is quick, it is advanced, it is not trying to get better. You cannot get better than that, it knows everything. So, as you put that thing up there, it analyzes everything. What your prompt does is to say, This is what I want you to pay attention to. So you have to see prompt as attention in the world of AI. There is only one part of English that you need to understand, it is adjectives. Because adjectives describe. So, I'm gonna give a secret away that will never go vague, will never become outdated, even a million years from now. The more you know how to describe what you do, the machine will be a slave to you. Your greatest weakness would is in not understanding the language of the music you're trying to create. So, so so the next great, I believe, the next great reservoir of um protected data will be what you call things. People are going to have codes like like the next the next reservoir or the next world of secrecy will be what I call that drum, what I call that thing, because the reason you will not be able to get what I get out of Suno, you do not know what I call what I do. Yep, I love it. You do not know what you you have not found what to tell it. Yeah, because you're thinking, oh, let me say a piano chop. Maybe it doesn't hear, it doesn't hear what you want it to hear when you say chop, it might respond to what you want when it hears chopper chop, and there is where I beat you every time because I understand that it hears chopper chop. So I'm going to say this for all of the naysayers, those who think that AI is cheating. I actually want to say that AI will make a lot of people not be able to play. Because what is gonna happen? Those of us who can command the machine will become gods in the earth. So so let me tell you why you are important to me. Yeah, because I believe that the mind has very addictive nature, it is it's it our minds as creatives, we become junkies to the last innovation in our space. We are junkies, we need to go to reap. Let me tell you what I mean by that. If you if you only knew how to play drums with sticks, and somebody told you you can play your drums with your slippers, you're gonna have a problem. Because your mind will not permit you to be comfortable playing drums with your slippers. We don't do that. You have to have enough reinforcing of the mind. So, this is what is happening, and this is where we musicians, maybe like yourself, is important. What makes you a god amongst us? You have rewritten or you have content on the next library or reservoir of mindsets that we need around this piece of this tool. So, what people have to do is to take what you have written and keep reading it so that our mindsets can shift from seeing AI or Suno as this piece of thing that is cheating us. But you gotta get past the noise of like, oh, AI is this, oh uh copyright law and all of the foolishness, all that is noise. That that's that's all of the things that's trying to get you not to plunge into the game. So when I when I when I when I bought your book first on, I bought one of your books on Amazon. I'm like, this dude, let me tell you the first thing I learned from you. Yeah, you reading your book, you made me realize that my music has money, like like music, yeah. Um publishing is investment, so you know that I read your stuff. Yeah, like I don't even think the music industry wants this guy to become popular because he's going to frick up the whole game.

SPEAKER_01

William, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. What are your parting words of wisdom for myself, for the listeners?

SPEAKER_00

So I believe that there is fear because AI is disrupting our narrative of how we have created, not creativity. It is disrupting the methods, the tools that we have used. Imagine you talking to your grandfather 60 years ago about me being on Zoom, and I actually said Zoom, I will be going on Zoom to talk with granny on my Android phone. Every one of those words would have never made sense to him. Zoom needed Android. To have a conversation around that then would have been crazy. What are we having now? We are seeing a community that has accidentally disrupted and brought in a possibility of what we can do. And instead of us jumping on the bandwagon, we start to become judges of what is ethical. That has always happened. That is why the ugly guy in class gets the beautiful girl, because you're still thinking that you are this cute guy and you should have her. By the way, you have not spoken to her as yet. The ugly guy talks to her, and she falls in love with him because he actually talks with her. But you are still cute, but you tremble every time you pass her. With all good as you are, you are still not talking with her. So the ugly guy always gets the nice girl because he's not ashamed to mess with her. I believe that AI, soon know, and what is happening with music, if you are smart, get your ethics and all of the craziness out of the way. Let the lawyers deal with that, let the fools around us deal with that. But take this thing as a tool and begin to have it to transform your world. Because we have learned one thing about history and change. There are changes that don't give a damn about what you think. And you will have a serious problem because you might be you might be alive long enough for your grandchildren to say, my grandfather was a fool. He was alive, like grand granddad, what were you doing when Zuno came out? We should have had shares in Zuno. Like, why you didn't think of Zuno? And you were ashamed to say, Oh, your grandfather, uh, back then, you know, I wasn't smart. So you do not want to be that grandfather. Let's jump on on the boat on board with it. If the ships sink, we still have our old meta to go back to, but you don't want that ship to leave you on the shore.

SPEAKER_01

That was William Harper, classically trained pianist, cruise ship band leader, and now one of the most thoughtful voices I've encountered on what it actually means to command these tools rather than just use them. The bit about adjectives that that one is going to stick with me for sure, the more precisely you can describe what it is that you hear in your head, the more the machine becomes a slave to your vision. That is lane two thinking at its finest. William, thank you for your time and being so generous with what you have figured out. I have a feeling we'll be having you back. If today's conversation sparks something for you, if you're starting to see what's possible when serious musicians bring real musical knowledge to these tools, Red Lab Access is where the journey continues. The books, the research, the blueprints, the community of directors doing this work every day. One price, lifetime access, everything included. jgbeatslab.com slash red hyphen labhen access. Link is in the show notes. Red Lab Conversations drop every Tuesday. AI Music Revolution drops every Friday. Don't miss either one. I'll see you next time.