And even though I wasn’t the songwriter for Hibakusha, I never stopped writing songs. That meant that by the time Hibakusha stopped, I had quite a few ideas lying around. That’s when the idea to release music as a solo project started to crystallise.
The solo project
So I started producing what would become Metempsychosis and by the time I recorded the final guitars and bass, the question arose on who was going to mix it. By that time I had never mixed music seriously so I did not feel comfortable doing this. That’s when I found Mendel Bij De Leij, who did an amazing job! But something else happened:
The spark
In my search for a mixing engineer I also found hundreds of videos on how to mix music and that sparked something in me. I started mixing more and more and I found a new obsession.
During the time following Metempsychosis I wrote more music and mixed more music. I also started mixing courses (Shout out to URM Academy!) and my skills and confidence grew over time.
The burn out
In 2024 something else happened: I unfortunately got a burn out. In the 10 years before this I worked as an Architectural Engineer at various Architecture firms and in hindsight it has never felt right from the start. Since it is not my nature to quit before I’m sure it doesn’t work I ended up getting burned out.
That raised the question: Do I go back to Architecture? The short answer is, obviously, no. I only saw myself going back just to get burned out again. I took this as a sign to pursue my dream and spend the absolute majority of my time creating music.
The present
I realize that this story is getting a bit long so let me wrap it up!
The burn out, the wish to make music professionally and the growing skills in mixing music made it possible for me to take the leap and start my own company as a producer and mixing engineer. So here we are!
Thank you
Thanks for taking the time to read this first blog post! If you have any questions regarding this post please send an e-mail to jochem@poltergeistproductions.nl and if you are a band or musician in need of a mix don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Next time we’ll talk about my e-book.
See you in the next post!
– Jochem
