AI Music

Turn a Voice Memo or Guitar Riff Into a Suno V6 Song

By Eddie Mathews·September 11, 2026·11 min read

The most underrated thing in Suno V6 is that you no longer have to describe a melody in words. You can hum it, play it on a guitar, or sketch it at a piano, upload that, and have the model build the song around your idea. For anyone who has spent twenty generations trying to write their way to a tune they can already hear, this changes the job entirely.

This guide is about starting a new song from your own recording — not about covering something that already exists, and not about preserving old generations. Different jobs, different rules.

Suno V6 audio input explained — upload a voice memo or riff, the Audio Influence slider appears, melodic contour and rhythm carry over, and you should start from material you own

The short version

Audio is now a first-class input. V6 takes direction from combinations of text, audio, images and video.

Contour and rhythm carry. Timbre does not. Your tune survives; your voice is not what you are supplying.

A phone recording is fine. Steady tempo matters far more than audio quality.

Audio Influence appears once you upload. It is the control that decides how tightly the result tracks you.

Generate the same brief with and without it. That comparison is the fastest way to learn what the upload does.

What actually changed in V6

Suno's 9 September launch described V6 as able to work from combinations of text, audio, images and video, using vibe, genre and inspiration as richer creative inputs. Buried in that sentence is a real shift in what a prompt is.

Until now, every musical idea had to survive translation into English before the model saw it. You heard a melody, you wrote "rising, wistful, wide intervals", and you hoped. Audio input removes that translation step for the one part of music that words are worst at describing. That is why this matters more than it sounds.

Input types in V6

8–16

Bars is plenty

New slider, on upload

Runs to learn the feature

The workflow, start to finish

Five-step Suno V6 audio input workflow — record the hook on a phone, upload as audio input, write the brief, generate with and without the audio, then clean the export before release

Record the hook on your phone

Eight to sixteen bars. Sing it, hum it, or play it. Keep the tempo steady — that is the one capture decision that genuinely affects the result.

Upload it as audio input

The Audio Influence slider appears once you do. That control decides how tightly the generation tracks your recording, and it is the most consequential setting in the interface for this generation.

Write the brief you would have written anyway

Audio replaces the part of the prompt that was straining to describe a melody. It does not replace genre, instrumentation, vocal identity or arrangement direction — you still owe the model all of that.

Generate the same brief twice

Once with the audio, once without. This isolates the upload as the only variable and shows you exactly what it contributed, which no amount of reading can tell you.

Adjust Audio Influence, not the recording

If the hook came back unrecognisable, raise it. If the result feels trapped by your rough take, lower it. Re-recording is almost never the first thing to try.

Clean the export before release

Your hook being original does not change what a distributor's scanner looks for in the generated file. That gate is unaffected by where the melody came from.

What carries over from your recording

Getting this right saves a lot of pointless re-recording. Audio input is direction, not sampling.

What carries over from an uploaded Suno V6 recording — melodic contour, rhythmic phrasing, tempo and mood usually survive, while timbre, exact pitch, room sound and anything past the uploaded section do not

Usually does not carry

✕Your actual voice or timbre — describe the singer you want in the prompt instead
✕Exact pitch across a whole phrase, especially if the take wandered
✕Room sound, mic character and background noise
✕Anything after the section you uploaded — that part is the model's invention

Usually carries

✓Melodic contour — the shape of the rise and fall
✓Rhythmic phrasing and where the stresses land
✓Tempo and the overall feel of the groove
✓Broad mood and energy of the performance

The practical consequence is liberating: because timbre does not carry, you do not need to sing well. You need to sing clearly and in time. A hesitant hum at a steady tempo is more useful to the model than a confident performance that speeds up.

The Audio Influence slider

This is a fourth creative slider that only exists when you upload, which is why most guides to Suno's controls never mention it. It sits alongside the three text-oriented controls and does a job none of them can.

Symptom	Direction	Why
The hook came back unrecognisable	Raise it	The generation is treating your audio as loose inspiration rather than as the melody
The result feels stuck and will not develop	Lower it	It is tracking your rough take too literally, including its limitations
The melody is right but the genre is wrong	Leave it	That is a text-prompt problem, not an audio one — fix the written brief
Your style tags came back rewritten	Set Variety to 0	A different slider entirely. Suno documents Variety as adjusting and updating your style prompts

The three text controls are a separate subject with their own documented definitions, and mixing them up with this one wastes generations — we set out each one in the guide to Variety, Style Influence and Weirdness.

How to record the hook

Do the things that matter

Use a click or tap your foot audibly and keep it steady. State the idea completely — a phrase that resolves is far more useful than a fragment that trails off. Record two or three takes and pick the one that is most confident rhythmically rather than the one that sounds prettiest.

Stop doing the things that do not

Do not reach for a better microphone, do not add reverb, do not tune it, and do not spend an evening getting a perfect take. None of those properties survive into the generation, so every minute spent on them is a minute not spent on the brief, which does survive.

The comparison that teaches you most

Generate the identical written brief twice, with and without the audio attached, then listen to those two against each other. Not against what you imagined — against each other.

Most people are surprised in the same direction. The audio contributes more to melody and phrasing than they expected and less to arrangement and production than they hoped. That is genuinely useful information, because it tells you the written half of the brief is still carrying most of the load on everything except the tune, and that is where the next improvement will come from.

Use material you actually own

Worth stating plainly because the tool will technically accept whatever you give it. Uploading your own hum, riff or sketch keeps your rights position clean and simple: you originated the melodic idea. Uploading a commercial recording you do not own is a different act with different consequences, and the fact that a feature accepts a file is not a statement that you are entitled to use it.

This matters more than usual with this feature precisely because the best use of it is so personal. Start from something you made, and the question never arises. We cover the broader picture in our guide to copyright and AI music.

Releasing the result

Here is the misunderstanding worth heading off: originating the melody yourself does not change what happens at a distributor. The output is still a Suno generation and carries the same signal-level markers that any other generation carries. Screening runs once, at submission, and looks at the file rather than at the provenance of the tune. A flagged upload does not come back with a warning — it does not go live, so it never earns.

Undetectr covers that stage and works with Suno V6 output — its homepage leads with "Tested with Suno V6". It removes the AI watermarks and generation artifacts distributors screen for: embedded watermark signals, C2PA provenance metadata, vocoder spectral peaks and noise-floor patterns, so the track clears intake at Spotify, Apple Music and the rest of the DSPs and stays live. Roughly ninety seconds a track, MP3, WAV or FLAC out, €39 one-time.

Works with Suno V6

Your melody, your rights — and still the same scanner at upload.

Undetectr removes the AI watermarks and generation artifacts distributors screen for — embedded watermark signals, C2PA metadata, vocoder peaks and noise-floor patterns — so the song you started from your own hook clears intake at Spotify, Apple Music and beyond. €39 one-time.

Clean your Suno V6 tracks →

Keep reading

Frequently asked questions

Eddie Mathews — AI Music Editor, Erasy

Eddie covers the craft side of AI music for Erasy — prompting, arrangement, vocal direction and the workflow between a generation you like and a file you can release. They test on their own material and say plainly where a technique stops working.

Can you upload your own audio to Suno V6?+

Yes — audio input is one of the headline changes in the V6 generation. Suno's launch materials describe working from combinations of text, audio, images and video, so direction is no longer text-only. In practice this means you can hum a melody into your phone, play a guitar riff or sketch something on a piano, upload it, and have the model build a full arrangement around that idea. A dedicated Audio Influence slider appears in the interface once you upload, controlling how tightly the result tracks your recording.

Does the quality of my recording matter?+

Far less than people expect, because the features that carry over are structural rather than sonic. Melodic contour, rhythmic phrasing and tempo tend to survive; your actual timbre, room sound and mic character generally do not. A phone voice memo with a steady tempo is more useful than a beautifully recorded take that wanders. The one thing genuinely worth caring about at capture is keeping time, because a drifting tempo gives the model an ambiguous grid to build on.

Will Suno copy my voice if I sing the melody?+

Not in the sense of cloning your timbre — that is a different feature. What the model takes from a sung upload is mostly the shape of the melody and how you phrase it, then it renders that through whatever vocal identity your prompt describes. This is usually what people want: your tune, sung by the voice the song needs. If you specifically want a particular vocal character, describe it in the prompt rather than expecting the upload to supply it.

What is the Audio Influence slider?+

It is a fourth creative slider that only appears when you use Audio Upload, which is why most slider explainers omit it. It governs how closely the generation tracks the audio you supplied, as opposed to the three text-oriented controls — Variety, Style Influence and Weirdness. If your uploaded hook is coming back unrecognisable, this is the control to raise; if the result feels trapped by your rough take and will not develop, it is the one to lower.

How long should my uploaded hook be?+

Eight to sixteen bars is a sensible working range — long enough to state a complete musical idea, short enough that you are not committing the model to a full structure before you know it works. Remember that anything after the section you uploaded is the model's invention, so a short clear hook plus a good written brief usually beats a long meandering recording. You can always upload a longer take once the short one proves the idea lands.

Is this the same as covering an existing song?+

No, and the distinction matters legally as well as creatively. This workflow is about starting a new song from material you created — your hum, your riff, your sketch. Uploading a commercial recording you do not own is a different act with different rights consequences, regardless of what the tool will technically accept. Use original material, or material you have permission to use, and the whole rights position stays clean.

How do I tell what the audio actually contributed?+

Run the same written brief twice — once with the audio attached and once without — then compare those two against each other rather than against the version in your head. This is the single most informative test available with this feature, because it isolates the upload as the only variable. You will usually find the audio is doing more for melody and phrasing and less for arrangement than you assumed, which tells you where to put your effort in the written part of the brief.

Does using my own hook mean the track will pass distribution?+

No — and this is the most common misunderstanding about audio input. Originating the melody yourself is good for your rights position, but distributor screening is looking at signal-level markers in the generated file, not at where the tune came from. The output is still a Suno generation and carries the same markers any other generation does. Clean the export before submitting it to Spotify, Apple Music or any other platform, exactly as you would for a text-only track.

Disclosure: Erasy is an independent guide to AI music cleanup, and Undetectr is the tool we recommend and link to. Audio input is confirmed in Suno's 9 September 2026 launch materials; the guidance on which features of a recording carry over reflects early community reports rather than published model documentation, so verify it on your own material. Figures current as of 11 September 2026.