Music can help your students learn. Suno (suno.com) creates custom songs for you in a minute — songs that can support learning and the classroom. Here’s how.
Music is a connector in learning.
Want to connect students to a new concept so they can remember and understand it? Put it to music.
Want to connect WITH your students? Listen to their music — or try to understand why they listen to it.
Great teachers across the centuries have understood this. There are countless catchy little songs that teachers have made to help students learn. For me? I can still recite the 50 states song, the prepositions (“every one when followed by a noun!”) and countries/capitals of Spanish-speaking countries.
In the past, creating songs for the classroom has taken some time — and a decent amount of creativity.
Now, anyone can generate a song in a minute — and press play to listen to it — using Suno (suno.com).
What is Suno? How does it work?
Suno is a music generator. You provide an idea for a song and Suno writes the lyrics, composes the audio, generates a vocal track, and mixes it all together. All you have to do is push play.
I’m a big fan of Suno’s commitment to teachers. They started a teachers program and offer ideas for using it to create music for the classroom.
Here’s how you can create a song with Suno:
- Type a simple description of the type of song that you want — the theme of the song, the type of music, the feel, etc. The click “create.” In about a minute, your song will be ready.
- Option: You can toggle “instrumental” to create music without lyrics.
- Option: If you toggle “custom,” you have much more control over the finished product. Write your own lyrics. Describe the style of music you want. Even give it your own custom title.
- Option: You can upload audio of singing, humming, pencil tapping, etc. Suno will use that when creating a song.
When it’s done, you can click play to listen to it. It also displays all of the lyrics. You can organize your songs into playlists.
If a song isn’t long enough for you, you can click the three dots menu button and choose “extend” to extend it.
Terms of use: Suno users must be at least 13 years old — and if under 18, they must have parent/guardian consent to use the platform. (Note: The teacher can generate music as the user and then provide the music to the student legally under the terms of use.)
How much does Suno cost?
The Basic (free) version is really good. You get 50 credits that are replenished daily … enough to make 10 songs per day.
The paid Pro and Premier plans offer lots of credits per month and other perks.
If you run out of credits on your free plan, you can always buy more credits.
How can I use these custom songs in the classroom?
There are SO many ways to incorporate your custom music in Suno into class. Here are some ideas …
- Book/literary/historic character — Give Suno the name and details of a character in a book. It’ll create a song about them.
- Event in history — Give Suno important events and details of something that happened in history for a song about it.
- Abstract concepts — Ask Suno to make a catchy song about fractions or balancing equations.
- Classroom transitions — Make a song you can play when it’s clean-up time … or time to go to art class … or time for lunch.
- A class anthem — Create a song that represents the identity of your class.
- Birthday celebrations — Create a song about students on their birthdays as a gift — complete with lots of important details about them.
- Custom background music — Create ambient music without lyrics to set the mood for studying and student work.
- Student writing — When students do creative writing, use the subject of their writing to create a song about it.
- Celebrate school/community events — Make a song to celebrate a big win by a sports team or to commemorate a school festival or event.
- Music for video projects — If students create video, they can use Suno to create background music — or a song to include in it.
