Somebody asked me recently “How do you come up with your ideas?” Well, this project is a good example.

First I wanted to explore a variety of art styles and decided to do a portrait series of mixed-race young women in a limited pallet of blues and violets.

That made me think of Duke Ellington’s song “Mood Indigo.” I actually looked up the lyrics and was going to print them in this post, but then I thought, “I’ve paid to use Udio for creating music, so I dropped the “Mood Indigo” idea and proceeded to create a new song with Udio.

Because of the blue colors and the sad and lonely mood I prompted for the image results, it was natural to create a blues song. I asked Udio to write the following—a slow New Orleans blues song about rain and loneliness sung by an older woman with a gravely voice. I selected a few button settings—blues, vocal, R&B, New Orleans blues. It then created 2 30-second tracks which I then extended my preferred track by an additional 30 seconds 3 times.

Udio never gave me an ending nor did it repeat the refrain, so I brought the soundtrack into CapCut and edited the track.

Because of the lyrics, I had to create a few additional images to tie in with the lyrics. I then assembled them in the appropriate order in time with the music and then added a bunch of CapCut effects to give me the rain, lightning, and transitions.

So I guess that’s the evolution of the idea of this music video entitled “Echos of Your Goodbye.” Hope you enjoy it!