The End of Music Production
There are decisions in life that have an impact on your daily routine for several years. When I decided to produce electronic music at the end of 2019, it was one of those decisions. I had a lot to learn as I hadn’t made music for more than 20 years and the 120 or so productions also took time.
As a former music professional, it was not compatible with my individual soul patterns to treat music as just a hobby. So I also had to familiarize myself with modern music marketing. That took a lot of time and this effort had to be balanced with the results at some point.
Unfortunately, as so often in my life, success was visible but not tangible. I achieved around 2 million plays of my songs in four years, which can probably be chalked up as a so-called “respectable success”. If I were still young, this would give me reason to patiently continue to improve and develop until a breakthrough is achieved. I know this from my first career as a musician, which bore solid fruit after about 10 years, but ended in a burnout just 10 years later.
Firstly, I didn’t want to repeat this drama and secondly, I no longer have enough time in my life for such efforts. Yesterday the weather was lousy and I was also totally exhausted from strenuous renovation work in my living and working environment. In this depressive mood, I spontaneously decided to give up music production and concentrate on creative writing. I was immediately shocked by this gut decision, but looking back on 4 years of electronic music production confirmed my decision. Things had developed organically in this direction without me having consciously controlled it. There was the last album called “Artificial Soul” that I had just finished. The eleven songs had all been created with the help of artificial intelligence and had sufficiently satisfied my curiosity about new technologies. So that chapter was closed.
Even more significant was my musical development in the last three songs, which I will be releasing soon. As if an inner voice was at work, I rearranged and produced two songs from the first weeks of my musical comeback. In those early days, I had imagined a “Spaceship Entprima”, where the intelligent coffee machine Alexis produced music to entertain the guests in the dining room of the spaceship. In the new arrangements, I used everything I had learned over the four years. I was overwhelmed by the results, because they unintentionally closed a circle and represent the quintessence of my late musical work. And at the very end, there was the song called “The Curse of Futility”, which came about almost incidentally. After I decided to stop, a shiver ran down my spine at how clairvoyant the title was.
In the end, it all came down to mundane financial matters. As my skills grew, so did the demands on my equipment. I had learned so much about mixing and mastering that I naturally wanted to put this knowledge into practice. My 10-year-old computer would no longer have been able to cope and my production workstation would no longer have met my own requirements. In the end, the logical consequence was to simply stop at the peak of what was possible.
On the day this article is published, my book “Tanze mit den Engeln” will be released. It is about the interplay of body, mind and soul. There I have worked out the basis for the possibility of my clear decision. And once again a circle closes. A detailed introspection is also part of this book and leads to the realization that a deep awareness of ambivalence is one of my most outstanding talents. That is why the subject of music is not finished for me with this step. I am not acting in frustration, but logically. After all, my music is not a perishable commodity and is still available to everyone. It will also be a pleasure for me to keep referring to songs in my writing work so that my musical work does not die.
I began my probably penultimate journey musically on the fantastic “Spaceship Entprima” and will return to the spaceship with my creative spirit alongside my physical-spiritual appearance on planet Earth. I have found that this hack is very helpful if you want to observe what is happening on Earth from an outside perspective, so to speak. Just think of the overwhelmed astronauts who were able to observe the Earth from space for the first time. They could hardly put these feelings into words.
Addendum dated April 23, 2024
The previous one sounds so final, but nothing is final. Nevertheless, it is very deep-seated. Now, with this addendum, I don’t want to reopen a door that I have just closed … Wait, why not? Every day we close doors that we sometimes open again very quickly. Let me put it in a nutshell. Of course I still have a passion for music and I would love nothing more than to produce music all day long, but due to the reasons listed, it’s unlikely as long as these reasons don’t change and that’s not to be expected. If it does happen, I am of course ready to start a new chapter. Time will tell.