A singer with Parkinson’s has used AI to continue his music career after symptoms made guitar playing increasingly difficult.
London-based singer-songwriter Samuel Smith, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2020, recently released his second album, The Art of Letting Go.
For Horizon, an instrumental track on the album, Smith used AI music generation platforms to create demo arrangements that helped him explain his ideas to session musicians.
His process involved humming rough melodies into his phone before uploading the recordings to AI tools including Suno and Udio.
Smith said the AI-generated demos were used only as guides and were not intended to appear in the final studio version of Horizon.
The approach became necessary as Parkinson’s symptoms, including tremors, stiffness and fatigue, affected his guitar playing during more than a year of work on the album.
Smith said: “I’d always written, I’d also played, I always sung.
“And immediately it became clear to me that I was in trouble, that my music was going to be seriously compromised.”
Generative AI has divided the music industry, with artists and record labels raising concerns that copyrighted work has been used to train AI-powered music tools.
Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records sued Suno and Udio in June 2024, although Universal later reached a settlement and partnership deal with Udio and Warner reached a similar agreement with Suno.
Smith’s case points to another use of the technology for people whose health conditions affect the physical skills involved in creative work.
He released his debut album, In the Springtime, in 2023, saying he wanted to give his two sons a way to remember when he could perform and record music himself.
AI music generators are trained on large collections of recorded music and audio.
They analyse patterns in melody, harmony and rhythm before generating new audio based on prompts or uploaded recordings.
The tools can also produce a serviceable song from voice or text prompts, even for users with little musical ability.
Smith said producing convincing demos often required “50, 100, 150 attempts” and extensive editing “to get something that sounds close to my music.”
After humming a song into his phone and uploading it, he would add prompts describing instrumentation, mood and style.
He said: “AI is not replacing anything for me.
“It’s unlocking, it’s enabling.
“It’s allowing me to keep writing.
“I upload my lyrics; AI doesn’t create my lyrics.
“I upload my music; AI does not create my music.
“It then brings it to life in a way that I can play to session players and say, ‘Here, that’s what I’m thinking, that is what I’m hearing.’”
The album was produced by Grammy-winning pianist and producer Matt Rollings, who brought together a group of established roots and bluegrass musicians for the project.
They included dobro player and 16-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas, Grammy-winning banjo player Alison Brown, fiddler Stuart Duncan, guitarist Bryan Sutton, bassist Viktor Krauss and singers Jonatha Brooke and Glen Phillips.
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