The music of Mindgasm

Well.. Mindgasm has become my day job since... 2022 or so?

Before, I’ve been producing royalty free music and selling it via my own platform, and others. Happy I don’t do this anymore, as AI has absolutely devastated that business..

And before that I worked for a music software company, producing loops. Like Garage Band.

I’ve always been doing all genres. I used to call myself, bad translation, an audio whore. Whatever I was paid best to do. But smooth ambient and chillout have always been my go-to if I just let it flow. And EDM.

Started early.. first steps were on Amiga 500 with ProTracker 😉 Instantly hooked. Became clear right away that I don’t want to do anything else ever..

But it was hard af.. making a living from music. Likelihood is soo low. I can’t tell you how privileged I feel to be able to.

Comes with a downside though too. At times it very much becomes a job. Still beats anything I could imagine.

You learn to, if you have no alternative.. then again, to me it always came naturally.

I had to make a soundpool for Oktoberfest music. It kind of was terrible. But every music style has its.. looks up English word.. raison d’être. Lol, comes back with a French word.

I had to embrace it. And it always was fun, to get the essence of a style. It became my thing, when working at that music company. Whenever they had an idea for an obscure soundpool of loops, they came to me.

Yes. I wish I didn’t have to. But I have to.

Then again, it has become second nature after doing this full time for.. close to 30 years now.

How long does a track take to make? Well that obviously depends on the complexity..

A 3 minute exercise might take something from 2-10 hours, depending on if I have pre-composed building blocks and how much I “paint over it” as I like to put it.

While the lessons all took much much longer. Eternal Flame took me 3 months + quite some later fine tuning that probably adds up to another 2 months.

Different every time. But more often it’s the music. Then the texts happen parallel along the way.

Connections, it was 100% music first and narration later, though the basic idea for the script was first. But doing it that way often leads to losing track completely 😉

Hmmm... not sure if I remember.. I think it started with the dragonfly sound. I often just browse through presets of my many software synths, that inspire me.. then I finetune and build around them. And things just happen.

Most of the time, for the really good tracks, it just happens. And days later I wonder how the hell I did this or that.. like I’m not even there, consciously.

Dragonfly was another one where the music happened first and I built the narration on top, just trying to give an idea what to do with the sounds, how I use them myself.

I certainly have my go to elements, like what sounds work for base vs what works for top. It’s kind of obvious to me. I use a lot of browsing through countless presets, collecting those that are promising and then tune them to my liking. I have built quite a collection to choose and mix from.

In the beginning I intended to use very fixed sounds.. always the same for top, always the same for center. But that became boring for myself. And reactions on Reddit and here showed me that it isn’t so much about really understanding every cue. It helps during the early stages, but later on, even those with little musical background seem to “get it”..

I had an exercise for producing new stuff, challenging myself. Two boxes filled with little papers with a) music style, and b) emotion. Then giving myself limited time, like finish in 4 hours.

Some funny tracks were produced this way.

Oh.. when you work on a project for so many hours, it kind of becomes your home and you just know your way around. But the larger ones like Eternal Flame were challenging af.

I definitely have to do cleanup rounds. Sorting, colouring, naming, adding markers.. and I still get lost.

The main problem is that with all those very slow long sections, with 20+ tracks playing at the same time, and you need to follow developments of single tracks for many minutes.. it’s veery time consuming.

Asked earlier in a form he read differently, his first answer was shorter: “I don’t and I do lose track all the time. There always are so many interesting musical ideas I could follow, and I am usually just following the flow. And that often leads to an evening of production leading down a completely wrong or unusable path.. discarding that stuff is hard. But usually necessary. It’s part of the process. Finding out what doesn’t work..”

What I often do to avoid that is just taking notes. I practice, but have my laptop next to me, and just hammer in notes on the fly, like:

Then the next time I’m in the studio, I just work through that list. “Just”...

I’d get nowhere if I tried it all in realtime..

Funny story. I played some of the piano parts, those calm, random notes, while my kids were here, running around, asking me questions in between, distracting me.. I feel it kind of became part of why it does work the way it does.

I felt like in one of those timelapse videos, where the world around me sped up, running by, and I was the only one staying calmly in the center.. I cherish those moments and takes..

Tbh, I don’t. I test them myself and only release them once they work for me. That’s the most important part. If it doesn’t do something significant for myself, it’s not good enough.

I actually have this problem, that I have to avoid “rendering” early versions as wav. It sets things into stone. And I listen to it for a few days, and I become unable to change anything, because I get used to stuff, even if it is not good enough.

So.. that’s a no for music betatesting, sorry. Not even the team members get early listens, most of the time. The input from others kills my flow and makes me doubt my own intuition which is the most important thing in creating.

Welll.. not every technique or lesson works for everyone. And habituation is quite a problem for myself. Tbh, I can’t listen to the older lessons anymore and practice..

I wish there were like 20 variations of it, always changing. I had been toying with the idea of using FMOD like Hidden Orchestra, an artist I very much admire, did on the Creaks soundtrack. But that’s a whole different level of complexity. Pairing that with guided lessons... nope. Maybe some day, if Mindgasm can ever afford a broader team. But not as long as I do this all on my own.

I know them 110% by heart. Including so many decisions I discarded or that I regret.. it’s hard for me to actually practice Mindgasm.

I guess that’s the price I have to pay. But it is also the big motivation to create new shit. Because that makes it work again for me.

You’re doooomed. Dooomed I say!

Jk.. but yeah, there’s no “one size fits all”. If you’re into heavy metal or hiphop exclusively, Mindgasm likely won’t work.

I try to vary quite a bit, and want to venture out more in the future.

I wanted to achieve the mythical super-o myself. And wasn’t able to follow through with the instructions I found scattered all over the web. I got heavy ADHD and sticking with something, concentrating for longer periods is super hard. Never was able to meditate. So I first and foremost built it for myself. Had the idea that music cues would help. And they did.

The structure? It formed itself in the beginning. And later on, it involved a looooot of braining.

I mean.. could there be a more beautiful thing? Or nicer effect my music could have? I can’t imagine.

I think that’s at the very heart of music. Creating emotions and feelings. I just went a step further than most.

Because it is my goal and the full intention and the experience of producing music of over 30 years.

Finishing lesson 8... 😉

Not since a looong time. I mean I do record a lot of live stuff for Mindgasm. On my own. I played drums and later keyboard in bands in my youth. But never been a stage guy.

But.. playing some outtakes of Mindgasm on the chillfloor of a nice psytrance festival would be something I’d actually love to do at some point.

Not actively. But it happens along the way often.. I do like some high energy psytrance, it seems to pair very well.

Also Carbon Based Lifeforms do something to me. Their music just clicks. If they’re new to you.. lucky you, enjoy exploring!

People in my little village don’t know what I do. It’s working for a small meditation app, for them.

That’s also why we removed most of the toy stuff from the early days. Not really what helps people during first contact, and to share about the experience.

Aw.. I miss the early chat days here, when I felt I could just say shit like that.

It’s become too much of “users take everything too literally”, putting too much weight into my words. I’m exploring all these techniques just like you guys..