Additionally, he took a piano lessons from Detlef Kraus and studied composition under the Hungarian avant-garde composer György Ligeti.

[4][5] By 1966 Schmidt got a position as Kapellmeister at the Theater Aachen, hired as docent for musical theatre and chanson, and worked at the Schauspielschule Bochum (drama school) teaching vocal technique.

[6] In January 1966, Schmidt made his first-time travel to the United States, flying to New York City to compete in the "Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition".

[8] In 1967, Irmin performed several Fluxus-style diagrammatic scores, and published them as Album für Mogli, pet name for his spouse Hildegard.

Other titles included" "Oiml(g): Nightmares", "Gagaku", "Für Jackson MacLow", "Erinnerung", "Dieter's Lullaby", "Nada", "Prinzipien", and other.

[9] On a number of occasions, Irmin was asked to give talks or perform avant-garde music at gallery openings organized by Albert Schulze-Vellinghausen [de].

[10] In the autumn of 1967, Irmin wrote a letter to his friend composer, Holger Czukay, inviting him to Cologne and suggesting they should form a band.

[11] In 1968, in the midst of the West German student movement, Schmidt co-formed the Inner Space band (later known as Can) with Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, and David C. Johnson.

Vohwinkel recently leased a historic castle, Schloss Nörvenich, on the outskirts of Cologne and planned to repurpose it as an artistic commune.

[16] In 2018, Schmidt and British writer and editor Rob Young published a book on Can entitled All Gates Open: The Story of Can.