PROLOGUE / AT TWENTY-ONE

At twenty-one, I gave up on becoming a professional musician.

Nothing dramatic happened.
Nobody told me I had no talent.
The band hadn’t suffered some devastating failure.

If anything, nothing was happening at all.

I saw other bands who were serious about going professional. Playing shows, writing songs, building their lives around music.

Watching their commitment, I wondered:

“Am I prepared to go that far?”

Before I found an answer, I lost my nerve.

I thought about what I should do.
And what I actually wanted.

Then I chose work over music.
I changed careers and moved into IT.

I thought I would never make music publicly again.

1993 / THE BAND

Muddy demo tapes.
A whole future ahead.

Osaka, 1993.

BOØWY, KATZE, UNICORN, PERSONZ, ICE.

We were drawn to melodic, straight-ahead, eight-beat Japanese rock. The style was often called Beat Rock. We wrote our own songs and played them together.

The band was called Beatrose.

I sang, played guitar, wrote lyrics, and composed songs.

We took each new song into the rehearsal studio and played it again and again. Guitar, bass, drums, then vocals. Record it on the multitrack recorder. Change something. Try again.

I spent countless hours making muddy-sounding demo tapes.

Building music on a screen. Finding ways to make it beyond playing an instrument.

I didn’t know where any of it would lead. But I sensed there was something there.

I had no idea that PC would lead me toward my future career.

One of the songs I wrote back then had a line about:

Everyone passing along
rails running straight forever. FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF BEATROSE / TRANSLATED FROM JAPANESE

More than thirty years later, those words make me smile a little.

Life wasn’t straight at all.
And those rails weren’t laid out by somebody else.

In the end, they were my own.

1994 / THE STOP

And then Beatrose stopped.

I wasn’t ready to take the next step.
So I stepped away.

Looking back, perhaps I could have kept going. Perhaps there were other paths I could have taken.

But that’s easy to say thirty years later.

At twenty-one, I chose another road.
The name Beatrose stopped there with me.

I worked in IT.

I learned the job. My surroundings changed. My responsibilities changed. My life changed.

Music gradually became something I described in the past tense:
“I used to play in a band.”

I wasn’t an active musician for those thirty years. I wasn’t releasing records or playing shows.

But I never stopped listening.

“I like melodies like this.”
“I like the way those chords move.”
“I wish this part sounded like this.”

Those instincts were still there.
The old songs were still there too.

They hadn’t disappeared.
I had just stopped sharing them.

MAKING MUSIC, AGAIN

The songs I most want to hear.

Suno can create a song in a remarkably short time.

Having written and sung songs myself, I can feel just how much has changed. Remembering the time and work it used to take, I find it genuinely revolutionary.

And once I could make music again, there was always another song I wanted to make.

Beat Rock connected to the original Beatrose. City Pop set against late-night streets. Neo-Soul textures and slightly melancholic melodies.

What I carried from the old days began mixing with everything I’d listened to over thirty years, through the tools I have now.

What is the song about?
Which words belong in it?
What kind of melody or voice am I looking for?
What stays, and what needs to change?

I work with AI to find the sounds I love.

And ultimately, I decide what I’m willing to release into the world as a Beatrose song.

Being able to generate anything
doesn’t mean I want to generate everything.

I want to hear it and honestly think, “I love this song.” I want to want to hear it again.

Every time a new song comes together, I somehow become its biggest fan.

Right now, that makes me happy.

BEYOND THE RELEASE

Putting music out.
Actually reaching someone.

Make a song.
Create the artwork.
Make the video.
Release it.

Music once played inside a rehearsal studio now appeared on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube under the Beatrose name.

From the perspective of my younger self, that alone was unbelievable.

But being available doesn’t mean somebody will find it.
Or listen.

Getting music onto a platform and getting it to a listener turned out to be very different things.

How should I introduce it?
What kind of video should I make?
Where should I share it, and what should I say?

Finishing a song left me with plenty more to figure out.

Share something.
Nothing happens.
Rethink it.
Sometimes, somebody says something I never expected.

AI lowered the barriers to making music. Beyond them, I’ve found another set of challenges.

I want more people to hear these songs. And of course, earning something from them would be wonderful.

But I’m already enjoying the life I’m living on the way there.

Making music. Listening to it.
Trying to help it find someone.

All of that is part of being back in music.

I’m also keeping the methods, mistakes, and discoveries that come out of the process. As the work expands into video and communication, I’m developing those activities through Beatrose Studio, with music at the center.

WHY I SUPPORT SUNO

What gave me the joy
of making music again.

I want to support Suno.

Because I’m one of the people this technology helped bring back to music.

Creators’ rights deserve respect. So does the possibility that new technology can let people create things they couldn’t create before.

I heard an old song of mine in a new voice and felt moved. I became able to release music I sincerely love.

The happiness I felt in those moments was real.

At twenty-one, I couldn’t commit to making music my career. More than thirty years later, here I am, completely absorbed in it again.

And the thing that gave that joy back to me was, after all, Suno.

Thank you, Suno.