AI Tools for Musicians: How to Use Moises, Suno, and Chord AI in Your Practice
Step-by-step guide to using AI for stem separation, chord learning, and music generation.
AI has reached music in a genuinely useful way — not to replace musicians, but to remove the friction in specific parts of practice and production that used to be time-consuming or expensive.
Three tools are worth knowing: Moises for separating audio stems, Chord AI for identifying chords from any song, and Suno for generating complete tracks from a text prompt. Here's exactly how to use each one.
Moises: Stem Separation Step by Step
What it does: Moises splits any song into individual stems — vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano. You can isolate or mute any layer.
Why it's useful: You can remove the vocals from a track to practice singing, isolate the guitar to learn a riff by ear, mute the bass to practice your own part over the original recording, or get a clean instrumental for a cover.
How to Use Moises
Sign up for free at moises.ai. The free plan gives you a limited number of separations per month — enough to try it properly.
Upload a track. Click "Upload song" and select an audio file (MP3 or WAV). You can also paste a YouTube link — Moises will pull the audio automatically.
Choose your separation type. The standard option splits into 4 stems: vocals, drums, bass, and "other" (everything else — guitars, keys, synths). The "2 stems" option just separates vocals from the backing track. For learning, 4 stems is usually more useful.
Wait for processing. Depending on track length and server load, this takes 30 seconds to a few minutes.
Use the mixer. Once processed, you'll see a mixer interface with a fader and mute button for each stem. Mute vocals to practice your own, or solo the guitar stem to loop and learn a section.
Download individual stems. On the free plan, you can download the full mixed file with stems muted. Downloading individual stem files requires a paid plan ($4.99/month billed annually).
Practice exercise: Take a song you want to cover. Upload it to Moises. Mute the vocals and play it through once. Then loop the section that feels hardest and practice alongside the isolated backing track. The difference in focus compared to practicing over the full mix is significant.
Chord AI: Identify Chords From Any Audio
What it does: Chord AI listens to a song and displays the chords in real time as it plays, with timestamps. Works on recorded audio or live through your phone microphone.
Why it's useful: Learning chords by ear is a skill, but it's slow. Chord AI compresses hours of figuring-out into minutes. Use it as a starting point, then verify and refine by ear.
How to Use Chord AI
Download the app. Chord AI is available on iOS and Android. There's a free version with ads and limited features, and a pro version ($5.99/month or $29.99/year) that unlocks everything.
Import a song or use the microphone. In the app, tap "Import Song" and choose from your music library. If you're trying to identify chords from something playing externally (a record player, a friend playing guitar), tap the microphone icon instead.
Let it analyse. Chord AI scans the track and generates a chord chart with timestamps. This takes a few seconds.
Play through the chart. Tap play and watch the chords highlight in real time as the song progresses. The display shows the chord name, duration, and often the voicing.
Export the chord sheet. Tap the export button to save the chord chart as a PDF or text file — useful for practice sessions or sharing with bandmates.
One important note: Chord AI is highly accurate on clear recordings with distinct harmonic movement. It struggles with complex jazz voicings, dissonant passages, or muddy recordings. Treat the output as a strong first draft — verify anything unusual by ear.
Practice exercise: Choose a song you already know well. Run it through Chord AI and compare the output to what you thought the chords were. Pay attention to the transitions Chord AI flags that you hadn't noticed — often these are the moments worth slowing down and studying.
Suno: Generate a Complete Song From Text
What it does: Suno generates complete songs — with lyrics, melody, instruments, and production — from a short text description. You type what you want, it creates a finished track in about 30 seconds.
Why it's useful: Songwriting inspiration, generating reference tracks in a style you're aiming for, creating custom practice material, or just experimenting with arrangements you wouldn't be able to produce yourself.
How to Use Suno
Sign up at suno.ai. The free plan gives you 50 credits per day, with each song generation costing 10 credits — so you can generate 5 songs per day for free.
Write a prompt. Click "Create" and type a description in the prompt box. Be specific about style, mood, tempo, and instrumentation. Examples:
Upbeat acoustic folk song about a road trip. Fingerpicked guitar, light percussion, warm male vocals. 120 BPM.
Melancholic piano ballad with string arrangement. Female vocals. Minor key. Slow tempo. Cinematic feel.
Choose lyrics mode. Suno defaults to writing its own lyrics. If you have your own lyrics, switch to "Custom Mode" and paste them in. You can also add a style description separately from the lyrics in custom mode.
Generate. Suno creates two variations of your song simultaneously. Both are fully produced tracks, typically 2–3 minutes long.
Listen and iterate. If neither variation is quite right, adjust your prompt and generate again. The more specific your description, the closer Suno gets. Genre tags (blues, jazz, lo-fi hip hop), decade references (70s rock, 90s R&B), and mood words (melancholic, urgent, euphoric) all make a difference.
Extend a track. If you like a generated track but want it longer, click "Extend" and Suno will continue the song from where it ends.
Practice exercise: Think of a musical style you want to understand better — say, bossa nova, or 70s soul. Write a Suno prompt in that style. Listen to what it generates, then pull the song into Moises and separate the stems. You've just created a practice track and a stem-separated version of it to study.
Using These Tools Together
The real value comes when you chain them:
- Find a song you want to learn. Upload it to Moises and isolate the stem for your instrument.
- Run it through Chord AI to get the chord chart while you practice with the isolated stem.
- Use Suno to generate a track in a similar style for additional practice material — or to hear how a different arrangement of the same chords might sound.
Three tools, a few minutes of setup, and you have more targeted practice material than you'd get from most lesson plans.
Want the Full Musicians' Guide?
The Cleo AI for Musicians Guide covers these tools in depth plus additional AI tools for music production, ear training, and songwriting — with step-by-step exercises for every workflow. Instant PDF, $19.