● Johnny Suede · The catalog
The full shelf from the desk that wrote THE SIGNAL CHAIN — the books, the essays, the apps, and the company underneath them
One catalog for the whole body of work — Jason Colapietro, who plays as Johnny Suede. It starts where this site starts: guitar and tone, a book about six strings and the life around them. From there it widens to three more books on AI and who owns what a creator makes, the apps I build for musicians, and Suede Labs AI, the company that puts ownership back in the artist's hands. Pick a shelf and start reading.
This is the writing the whole site is built around — guitar, tone, and the parts of a record that never make it onto a lead sheet.
A guitarist's history of amps, effects, and electric tone, braided with memoir, theory, a songbook, and 50 song lessons. Chapter one free.
Read the book →Nine free essays on tone and dynamics — Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, the loudness war, the compressor, the sound of the room itself.
Read the essays →Every effects pedal worth naming, ranked 1 to 100, head to head. No honorable mentions, no genre excuses. The list the press won't print.
See the ranking →Same hand, different string. These titles trade the fretboard for the bigger question: who owns creative work once the machines can make it too.
Suede Labs: The Human Authenticity Layer↗
The case that origin and ownership are the only marks AI can't fake — and the layer Suede Labs builds to prove them.
Read on Amazon →How to build systems that hold up when nobody trusts anybody — proof baked in, not bolted on. The blueprint under the registry.
Read on Amazon →Speeches and hard truths on flipping the AI onslaught into an asset you own — autonomous agents, real claims, generational wealth.
Read on Amazon →Five tools built by a guitarist who got tired of practice apps that nag. A coach that answers in plain English, three studios that take your craft seriously, and a companion that pushes back.
Ask your guitar coach anything, any hour, and get a straight answer — tuner, metronome, chord and scale tools, song help, and an ear trainer built in
Try it free →A real guitar studio on your iPhone: tuner, timing drills, chord tools, a rig workbench, setup diagnostics, room health, and session capture
Get it on iOS →Map your range, watch your register shifts, and build voice routines that hold up. Local-first — your practice stays on your phone
Get it on iOS →Think out loud with a dry-wit bandmate who works ideas with you and tells you when they're bad. Not a yes-man
Open in browser →A workspace for AI-assisted musical ideas that keeps the rights yours: provenance notes, ownership context, and signed creative records
Get it on iOS →Suede Labs AI is the substrate under everything else: tooling that lets a musician prove they made a thing, define who can use it, and get paid when it gets used.
The company under it all. Proof of creation, programmable rights, and royalty settlement — so artists hold the title to their work as AI eats the room.
See the platform →Register a work, prove you made it first, and set the terms anyone licenses it on — ownership and provenance, on the public record.
Open the registry →Beyond the books and apps above, here's the rest of the Suede ecosystem — every public surface, grouped. Some of the app's deeper tools need a free Suede account.