About Paddy

Paddy

Independent AI-music hobbyist, guitarist and maker of small useful free things. Also writes as Paddy Picho over at Sacred Frequency.

Hi, I'm Paddy. I play guitar badly enough to keep it fun, fly drones well enough to keep them out of trees, and I'm the entire staff of Paddy Prompt Studio — founder, writer, tester, help desk, and the person who forgets to update the copyright year in the footer.

How did you learn guitar?

On somebody else's broken guitar, at fourteen, with my mates. I genuinely don't know whose it was. It turned up, it was half-wrecked, and a few of us passed it around until we could make recognisable noises with it. That was the whole music education: no school, no grades, no teacher telling me I was holding the pick wrong. Just a broken guitar and too much free time.

These days it's a Cort CR 200 Gold, which is a real guitar with all of its strings, and I still catch myself playing like the kid who was worried the neck might come off mid-song.

That's also why this site is free, and why nothing here is gated. Someone handed me a broken guitar once and never asked for it back. This is the digital equivalent: take it, make noise with it, don't worry about returning it.

Where does the music actually get made?

In my bedroom. Not a "bedroom studio" in the way YouTubers say it while standing in front of a wall of acoustic foam — an actual bedroom, with an actual bed about a metre from the desk. It's what I can afford, and it turns out it's enough.

The whole rig: a laptop doing the heavy lifting, a second screen for Vidmuse, a pair of closed-back headphones so the neighbours don't have to hear the forgettable takes, a little NUX mini amp that's far louder than something that size has any right to be, a notebook full of half-lyrics, and the Cort leaning against the portable air con within grabbing distance — which, in an Aussie summer, is the most important piece of gear in the room. That's it. No mixing desk, no rack of outboard gear, no treated room.

In the photo the laptop's showing My Guardian Angel by Paddy Picho — one of mine. Written at this desk, prompted at this desk, played back at this desk at an unreasonable hour. If anything on this site convinces you that you need expensive kit before you're allowed to make music, I've written it wrong. You need an idea and something to play it on. The rest is optional.

What happened before all this?

Corporate life. It paid, and it took more than it paid. I won't do the long version, because you've either lived it or you're lucky — but I came out of it worn down in ways that took a while to even name, let alone fix.

I'm on the other side of that now. Healed, in the way people mean when they say spiritual and you brace for the sales pitch — except there isn't one. I got quieter, got outside more, paid attention to what actually helped, and kept the practical bits. I still read the terms of service. I still back things up. I'm just no longer doing it at 11pm for someone else's quarterly target.

Best stretch of life I've had, honestly. Which I'd rather say out loud than be mysterious about — while fully accepting that I'm a bloke with a guitar and a drone, not a guru.

What's with the wombats?

Have you seen a wombat? Built like a furry footstool, absolutely convinced it owns the place, and correct about that. Nature is the thing that got me back to level, and wombats are nature showing off.

Drones are the other half of the same habit: mostly an excuse to look at landscapes from a slightly rude angle. Tech and nature aren't opposites in my head — one is how I go and look at the other.

Why build free AI music tools?

Because I got into Suno and Vidmuse as a hobbyist, made about a dozen genuinely forgettable tracks, and slowly worked out that the difference between generic and intentional is almost always the prompt. Figuring that out took me weeks of guessing. Writing it down took an afternoon.

So the site is the notes: the guides I wish I'd had, plus a couple of free tools — a drum machine for hearing a groove before you prompt it, and a guitar tuner, because of course there's a guitar tuner.

I try to help anyone who's into the same things, and honestly anyone who isn't. If you've got a question about a prompt, a pattern or a tempo, ask. Worst case I don't know, and I'll say so.

Who is Paddy Picho?

Also me. Sacred Frequency is my other free site — browser-based tone and frequency tools for relaxation and meditation, generated on your own device, nothing stored, nothing sold. Same approach as here: free, honest about what it is, and clear about what the evidence does and doesn't say.

Two sites, one person, one stubborn habit of building small free things instead of sitting still.

Say hello

If you make AI music, play guitar, fly drones, like wombats, or just want to argue about whether chips count as a vegetable — I'm easy to reach. Questions about a Suno prompt get answered. Requests to buy a link do not.

Drop me a message, or come and see what the fuss is about.