I sang my first song ever — and built the editor to mix it

Last week I made my first song: a parody of Ed Sheeran's Shape of You, about AI taking over everything — "Shape of AI." I wrote it, sang every line myself, and mixed it with an editor I built during the same week. Here's what I learned.

Why music

I wanted to learn how to communicate emotions. Music is the right place for that — a song sort of sticks in someone's mind in a way an essay never does. If you want to cement an idea in people's heads, sing it to them.

Writing with AI

I wrote the lyrics with AI, and what it really did was expand my options. I brought the idea; it gave me variations; I just picked the ones I liked most and the ones I could actually sing. I stayed the one choosing — that's the part that matters.

One thing I noticed: the newest model I used wrote genuinely good takes. It thinks from first principles instead of just following the obvious patterns other models fall into. The difference shows up in the lines you keep.

Singing was the hard part

I had never created my own music. I'd sung other people's songs my whole life, but singing something I made — that was mostly fear. My voice needs a lot of work: the emotion, the melody, making it easy to listen to. You can hear all of that in the song.

I published it anyway. And honestly? I loved the whole thing. I don't know why I didn't do this before.

Building my own editor

I started mixing in Logic Pro and hit a wall of buttons — so much interface, so much customization I didn't need. So I built my own mixer: a small editor in the browser, a Python render pipeline, one JSON file as the whole project. Exactly the features I needed and nothing else.

I think this is the future of software. When a tool feels too old, too heavy, or just not yours, you build your own — tailored to your needs, in days, with AI. A world where everyone builds their own software. I liked it so much it became Hackdaw.

What's next

My next goal is simple: the next song should sound a little better. Better voice, more melodic, more emotion. That's the whole plan — repetition. The first one exists; that's what the first one is for.

🎵 The song: watch on YouTube ☕ If it made you smile: buymeacoffee.com/lout33 🔴 Everything was made live on stream.