How It Was Made: Mindchatter

NY-based producer and vocalist Mindchatter recently put his spin on the LCD Soundsystem’s classic cut, ‘I Can Change’, fresh off the 10-year anniversary of the original version’s release.

Mindchatter is the latest signee to Mind of a Genius, the team behind Gallant, THEY., ZHU and more. After a breakout year touring with Polo & Pan and remixing for Channel Tres & AMTRAC, he recently dropped his anticipated single “Night Goggles”.

The cover pays homage to arguably one of the most iconic American electronic-rock bands of the millennium and Mindchatter stays true to the original while adding his own dreamy vocals and playful synths that so commonly distinguish an LCD Soundsystem tune. We are big fans of the original, so it was only right to see how he was able to recreate the magic in our latest edition of How It Was Made.

Words by Mindchatter

The most-valuable-instrument in this song (and probably all my songs) is a sampler. I mainly use the sampler built into Alchemy which is a plugin native to Logic. Alchemy allows me to turn organic recordings into instruments that can be manipulated in a million different ways. The percussion line that starts the song off is a tom drum mixed with a water splash thrown into a sampler.

Once converted to midi I can play in a rhythmic pattern on my Sample Pad using drumsticks. I grew up playing the drums so I always prefer smacking something over programming notes onto the grid. From there I throw on a delay and automate the wetness throughout the track to give it some movement.

My mic gets a lot of use in this song as well. Not just for my lead vocals but a lot of instrumental stuff like snapping, desk slaps, and random vocal scatting. The main “lead” that comes in at the instrumental sections is actually my voice with a ton of audio effects on it. I pitched it up an octave and played with the formant in iZotope’s Nectar.