History of Maustaste -
how I came across computer music production

In 1986 I received my first computer. A Phillips MSX1, a rather simple device, but was pretty much advanced for the era of early digital media uprising.

When my interest shifted from Legos to coding. I came across the command “play”. Which I used to trigger up to 4 (cell like) sounds at once when I created my first music program which turnied the keyboard into a pianokey triggerpad.

The very same command I also found in Amiga Basic a couple of years later, but with a wider amount of variables.

Then came Sonix, an FM Synth with a small sequencer on top of it.
It was my first choice for the forthcoming minimalistic popmusic experiments.

The next in line was MED, a tracker software, modeled around numerical datasheets filled with note pitches, sample infos and fx. Dealing with digitized audio material in the form of samples clearly turned out to be something I liked a lot.

The next thing I was going to save money for was a hardware sampler. I began sampling anything within proximity such as, TV, chats and CDs and moving those files to the Amiga sequencer , creating my first beats and melodies from 8 bit samples on 4 audio channels.

With my the introduction to my first 16 bit keyboard and a drum computer, I began using a new Software (Octamed) to combine sample sequencing and controlling midi-connected hardware devices on an improved model of the Commodore Amiga(1200).

In 2002 I had reached a level at which I would work with Logic 4.0, a few Synths and smaller audioprograms I came across over the last 2 years.

Big advances in hardware development and virtual audio software coding led to my encounter with a Swedish made software that came to be known as Reason.

It basically is a complete studio mounted in a virtual rack and a matching sequencer.

To this day ,this software is one of my major development surfaces; a charming and efficient piece of software with a high potential for addiction and my outlet for creating sounds and songs. Nearing my 20 year anniversary in computer based audio production, I am glad to have been introduced to computers at the age of about 13.