Inspomia is the creative synth-pop trio behind “Photos on the Wall” and “Dancing in the Night”. From the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia producer, musician and songwriter Michael Lobb describes Inspomia as an outlet for his passion for well constructed pop music like PVRIS and The Naked and Famous, while still allowing him to experiment with his heavier prog-rock influences such as Frost* and Steven Wilson. Inspomia originated as an experiment to use artificial intelligence tools embedded into the songwriting and production process, but along the way gathered an organic creativity that comes naturally with collaboration.
Along with Presh and Kyle Alexander, Michael engages a select handful of musicians and contributors to bring about tracks that bring to life stories of focussing on mental health, positive body image, strength in friendships and relatable characters.
Inspomia will be releasing their first EP “Beautiful Too” on 7 Jan 2022.
The process
It’s not going to be easy to describe the process but I start with a variety of AI tools and use them to create something that resembles a pattern I enjoy. I use publicly available APIs to analyse a set of songs and return the basic structure, key, tempo and a few other details.
I then decide which of these to keep and which to throw out.
I put what remains into a basic structure and use another AI-based tool to construct chord patterns around the song. At this stage, it’s bloody boring, but it’s taking shape.
Then I leave it for a few days.
I come back with a fresh mind and try playing over it. Guitar, piano, bass, maybe putting together a beat, or even tapping the drums out on pads. Slowly it comes together.
When I’m at a point that I feel like it’s moving in the right direction, but way before I’ve committed anything I’ll use another AI tool to help me generate lyrical content. It’s normally a phrase or a short sentence, or maybe a title. This will provide me something to begin working on.
In terms of melody, I don’t use any AI at the moment. I’ll sing or talk random words, normally something like the sentence that I got previously, sometimes weird sounds that sound like a language. I’ll eventually arrive at a couple of melody points and then I can start the lyric and melody writing.
This stage can come easily or it can be hard. There’s songs that I’ve got sitting there because I can’t figure out the melody, the lyrics or both. But I keep trying. The ones that come easily are the ones I will stick with.
When I’m done, I’ll put together a scratch track. Normally piano, bass, guitar and drums plus a rough vocal guide. I’ll then reach out to the session musicians in my network starting with a drummer (currently Kyle Alexander) and ask them to interpret their parts. Before I go to a vocalist I’ve normally got all the parts done.
When I’ve got all of the tracks back I’ll load them in and start the mixing process. And yes, I use AI to a degree here to get a starting point but obviously there’s a lot of work to get it from there to the final result.
The mastering process is very similar. In the past I’ve used other mastering engineers but wanted to give this a go with the AI available and my own ears. Partially to learn and partially to stick with the AI-guided process.
So that’s my process for Inspomia and it’s in complete contrast to my other projects which tend to form organically or through collaboration with other humans.
Some people may not like (or even take offence to) the idea of using AI in music, and I get that. For me, this is an experiment and I want it to be a positive experience.
So far, I’ve found collaborating with AI is harder than working with other musicians in some ways. The AI doesn’t always get your ideas like a person would. It can be very random and requires a lot more to get from idea to structured song. However, it always turns up on time and will never ask you to take them through the McDonalds drive through for a six pack of Chicken McNuggets after practice.
Lately though, through collaboration, we have managed to write more organically than I originally intended. As this project becomes more of a ‘group’ than a project with contributing musicians I can see that the creativity has become less and less inspired by any of the AI tools we originally set out to use.
Any questions? Reach out to me on Twitter @inspomia
Michael Lobb