The House Deck

A daily songwriting prompt — one constraint a night

Dealt at midnight, identical worldwide, gone the next night.

Suede Muse deals a daily songwriting prompt at midnight: one card from the House Deck, one creative constraint, the same card for every musician on earth, gone the next night. Flip tonight’s card, give it ten minutes, and Muse — a musician companion — sits with you while you work. Free, in the browser.

How the House Deck works

The deck is 32 cards across four suits: INK for words, WIRE for melody and harmony, PULSE for rhythm and groove, SMOKE for tone and texture. The deal is date-seeded and deterministic — no algorithm reads your mood. Each card names a specific constraint with a physical first move and a ten-minute timer.

The scarcity is the mechanism. A prompt library you can browse whenever is a library you’ll never open; one card a night is an appointment. And because every musician on earth flips the same card, a stuck night stops being solitary — the same wall, every hand pushing against it differently.

Tonight’s card is on the table. Every past night has a shareable permalink at /night/YYYY-MM-DD.

Beating writer’s block with an AI songwriting assistant

Muse is the other half: an AI songwriting assistant built for the stuck moment, not for generating songs. Flip the card and she knows which one you’re holding. She coaches you through the constraint, answers the theory question that’s blocking the bridge, and asks what happened when the ten minutes are up. She is deliberately not a ghostwriter — a machine’s lyrics are competent and dead, and the docs say so.

The long version of the method is in Creative blocks do not respond to inspiration and Songwriting with an AI companion.

Is the daily songwriting prompt free?

Yes. The card is never behind the paywall — it’s the same card for everyone, paid or not, and it always will be. Chatting with Muse about it is free for 5 chats a night, no paywall mid-session; the count resets at midnight. The paid plan is $4.99 a month on the web: unlimited chats, session history across devices, priority response. The full breakdown lives on the pricing page.

What if tonight’s card doesn’t fit?

You get one burn a night. Burn the card and Muse asks where you’re actually stuck — words, melody, rhythm, or tone — and deals the replacement from that suit. One veto keeps your agency without letting you shuffle until a card flatters you. Endless redraws are just the blank page wearing a costume.

If you want a different deck

Credit where due: this is old technology. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies is the lineage, and the original deck is still excellent if you want general-purpose creative prompts rather than music-specific ones. And if you’d rather browse a long list of songwriting prompts at your own pace, a prompt library serves that better than Muse ever will — the one-a-night ritual is the product here, and it is deliberately incompatible with browsing.

House rules: one card a night. One burn. Ten minutes. Nobody checks your homework. More in the FAQ.