Hi-new here-songwriter with blocks

[Pete]

Hi all, I'm Pete — a piano and guitar player who writes his own songs. Like a lot of us, I've got a folder full of half-finished ones: plenty of sparks, not enough finished.

I got frustrated enough with the blank page that I ended up building a small tool for myself, and since there's a board for exactly this, I'll be honest about it. It's helped me more than I expected — I've finished songs I'd otherwise have left half-written, and every friend I've shown it to has walked away with something. A couple who "don't really write songs" ended up with a verse and chorus they were genuinely proud of.

What it does: you tell it what the song's about — your story, the mood, a genre or an artist's feel, a chord progression if you've got one — and it hands back a starting draft: a verse and chorus with a chord progression you can hear and see on a piano. From there you rewrite it in your own words, add verses, swap chords around. You keep the pen.

My honest take on AI in songwriting: it won't write the song for you — it has no lived experience or memories of its own, so a fully AI-written lyric comes out generic. But for breaking the blank page and getting momentum, it's genuinely helped. A drafting partner, not a songwriter — it doesn't replace the feeling or the editing. If anything, it makes the editing the part that matters most.

Curious how others here handle it — do you use it at all, and where do you draw the line?

(If you want to poke at it, it's https://www.thesongfriend.com — free to try. I'd love your feedback on it — anyone can email me at pete@thesongfriend.com.) Or just message me here. I think you can do that on this, yes? I just joined, so I'm not too sure.

Thanks! And Cheers!

Pete
https://www.thesongfriend.com