Prior to fully committing to the VISIØN project, I experimented with another. I have long played various games and have a particular fondness for table-top role-playing games. A while back I GMed a Starfinder campaign, set in my own homebrew setting of Voidfinder. The PCs were a synth-metal band who worked as freelance mercenaries and salvagers between gigs while they built up their fan base. To add some extra flavor to the campaign, I decided to breathe some extra life into the music by writing some of it. Thus the band The Voidfinder was born.

Part experimental laboratory, part sci-fi story, The Voidfinder allowed me to try out actual songwriting using a few AI tools while I learned the technical aspects of sound engineering. Learning how to use the AI tools was probably the most challenging, as I wanted it to be MY music, not something simply prompted. Some AI models are better than others in this regard, and a lot of research went into finding the right tools that allowed me to express my own artistic vision.

As I learned, I shared my finished music with my players and surprisingly got a lot of positive feedback. Inspired, I continued to write and refined my process. Before I knew it I had a dozen songs and thought, why not publish them? This led me down a complicated rabbit hole of self published music in which I learned a lot more of the industry. And gave me time to continue perfecting my songwriting and production skills. But I found I was able to produce and publish a full album.

Though I wasn’t done with The Voidfinder, I found the inspiration and motivation to work on something more personal to me. VISIØN. Though my rpg based songs are more or less behind me now, the sci-fi gene continues to be a source of inspiration as I continue to write new music.