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Although now primarily a trance artist, minomus has had an extensive experience with music, learning piano from a very young age before rising through the age of tracking and then settling into sequencing. A relative newcomer to CTG, he isn't so active on the forums just yet, but is usually around in IRC and ready for a good chat. We take a look at just who is minomus in this interview.
Gopher: So, Minomus, tell us a little about yourself.
minomus: Well, I'm 21-year-old Finnish guy. After my studies, I'll be a dentist (yeah, isn't that nice? I can hurt people and get money for it!). I've studied piano for about 13 years, played in many differently-styled bands and I started tracking in middle of 90s. Later, trance became my main style, so I left trackers and now I'm using mostly Reason and sometimes Logic nowadays. I like beer, football, and eh... girls of course!
Gopher: Before I go on, can you just explain a little about your nickname "minomus"?
minomus: Haha! Well... Actually that's quite a funny thing. I started tracking with some stupid nick, AnE (quite lame, it comes straight from my first name), and then I wanted a new one. This name just came to my mind; I thought for maybe 3 seconds and decided that this will do just fine. After years I googled "minomus" and found out that it's also name of some fish and a western form of writing some Japanese girl's name! And now I've started to release my latest trance stuff under
"Andy Piney", because under "minomus" I've already so many kind of stuff from tracker music to theater music, etc.
Gopher: Okay, just to backtrack a little, you said earlier that you have 13 years experience on the piano, how that start?
minomus: We had a piano at home, and my dad can play a bit. I think I was 5 or 6, when I started to try to play same songs I had heard. Then my parents arranged a teacher for me and I studied classical piano until I broke my fingers. And those studies also included 7 years of music theory, which has developed my ability to handle music and in that way also affects the way I produce.
Gopher: Now, I remember when you posted pictures of your fingers shortly after the accident, but for everyone else, just exactly how did that happen? Also, do you think that the accident made you look more to producing, or were you already an active composer by that time?
minomus: Well, it happened in the summer of 2002; it was just an accident when I was working at home. The fun thing is that it was mid-summer day (big thing in Finland, everyone's drunk) and I hadn't drunk anything! Anyways, surgery was done well and it doesn't affect me too much when playing. The only problem is that I can't play really wide chords (which occurs a lot in classical music) because my little finger is a bit shorter. I quit studying classical piano also because I had done all tests you can do before going to study it seriously to get professional. I had been producing many years before the accident, so it didn't have any effect on that side. I still kept playing in bands and classical for my own enjoyment. Actually I had my first gig after 2 weeks from accident and I had only 3 fingers available in my right hand!
Gopher: How did you get into composing in the first place, and what were your early influences that propelled you into the world of producing? Oh, and what tools did you use back then?
minomus: That's a difficult question. I don't really remember when I started composing. I think I had made my own tunes already before I learned to play or had any tools to write them down. When I learned to write musical notation, I wrote down a couple of songs on paper. I found Computer Music in 1995 if I remember right. It was some CD with computer magazine which included Scream Tracker 3 and couple of songs, too (I think they were Necros - Ascent of Cloud Eagle and Purple Motion - Unreal ][, not sure though). I was really hooked and started to learn tracking. But it took quite many years before I found internet communities like The Modarchive and started to upload my music. After ST3 came couple of other trackers and finally these programs I'm using nowadays.
About influences... I'd say that the biggest influences came from great tracker musicians and Jean-Michel Jarre which was really big thing to me when I was young; And outside of computer music world, I was really in to folk music, specially Irish folk music.
Gopher: You said earlier that you've moved onto writing trance; what made you go into this style, and what influences your music in this genre?
minomus: I've always listened a bit to trance, but I don't know how it became so strong part of my production. I just slowly moved on to trance direction, and finally got really hooked with Dj Tiesto's Energy 2000 set. I had over a year break in producing trance and started again in December 2005. Influences in trance come from many radioshows on di.fm, sensegenerates.fm and etn.fm, from friends' tracks and from some famous artists I've mentioned already; Airbase, Peaktwins, Above&Beyond, Mystery Islands, Maor Levi, etc.
Gopher: Just quickly on the subject of tools, what do you use now?
minomus: Reason mostly. A bit rewired with Logic when I want to use VST instruments. And sometimes tracking for nostalgia and fun!
Gopher: Ahhhh, good old tracking! Do you think that switching from tracking to sequencing changed your approach to writing a new track?
minomus: Of course it affected the routines of making tracks, but Reason was somehow really easy to me straight from the beginning. It also made the act of producing a longer project; I was quite fast with trackers. Probably the biggest change was increasing concentration on sound quality and tweaking with filters and other effects.
Maybe in the beginning of using sequencer based program, I lost a bit of musical quality for a while because of concentrating too much in the new level of sound quality.
With trackers it was a lot easier to learn from other tracker's great tracks. It was easy to check how some awesome thing was done, and learn from it. Discussing with other producers became more important with using new programs. I had to get advice from other places rather than studying other tracks.
Gopher: Do you have any particular artist you aim to equal, both in terms of originality, sound and quality? What are your other musical influences?
minomus: Actually, no. Even though I'm nowadays making mostly trance, I still listen so wide variety of music styles. Of course I've some favourite artists, like Above&Beyond, Aava, Airbase, etc, but I think it's more about taking ideas from different parts of music from different places. Sound ideas from some tracks, musical ideas from others and so on.
Gopher: Good stuff. Moving on, how did you find out about CTG?
minomus: I'm quite a newbie; I joined in November 2005. I've been hanging around on #modarchive (in IRC) and quite many of those people are also in CTG. So I checked the site, liked it and joined. It has been nice to see that there're so many old tracker people, too.
Gopher: Yes, it's always good to get into another music community, even if you already know half of the people from before! Are there any musicians on CTG who highly regard, and what are your impressions on CTG as a whole?
minomus: Well... AmBeam has really nice chill music, so does oldbrian. I've been listening to mostly chillout stuff from CTG thus far, so I can't name too many people who have specially impressed me.
But about CTG; I like the atmosphere here. Of course we have some naggers on forums, aren't there some on every music community? But still I think CTG has a more friendly feeling than many more music communities I've been in. I've also had a nice co-operation with Randor, and there are pretty nice chances to find co-operation with friends from CTG. I could say that CTG is number one music community to me at the moment, even though I'm not too active on forums.
Gopher: Well, before I bring this interview to a close, do you have any words of wisdom you want to impart before we finish?
minomus: Can I answer "no" to this? I'm more wiseass than a wise man... Oh! I can use this section for spam! Listen to some tracks by me ! They're made for your enjoyment; That's why I still keep producing - for those moments when I see/hear someone enjoying the music I've done.
Gopher: Well, thanks for being a great interviewee, and good luck for the future!
minomus: Thanks! It's always nice to have a little conversation/chat around these things!
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