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I Tried To Make Music The Exact Same Way I Did 20 Years Ago

Benn Jordan | December 13, 2025



Blind Groovesynthing. Stay inside and learn something, CuriosityStream: https://www.jdoqocy.com/click-8843609-12708820

Written by Benn Jordan

Comments

This post currently has 38 comments.

  1. @Brokethelofi

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Man I just started with my first dawless setup (Elektron Model Samples + Behringer crave + Tascam 8 track recorder + Midi keyboard + Guitar and pedalboard + an old cheap synth/keyboard)

    And you are such an inspiration! I also want to get as good as you on the piano/keyboard

  2. @LikeItorNotNews

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    One obvious reason for this video and the fact that you were able to spend multiple days focused on a song in the early 2000s was that we didn’t feel obligated by society and the financial system to record the making of the content to turn into even more content about making the content. It really just dawned on my upon writing this how bringing audiences into our studios as artists, visual or musical, has open sourced the magic this making. This has led to the absolute best and worst outcomes and a giant range of mediocrity and decency in between

  5. @Jath2112

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Man… in the 90s I used to write down ideas during high school classes… (instead of paying attention all day)… in weird looking code I used to tell myself how many button taps I needed to step program various rhythms into my Casio CTK 611… Id just write chords and note names
    .. draw drum parts like drum tab… Gambling on how it would sound…
    Come home from school and carefully program it in….
    I could store 2 tracks on that keyboard. Couldnt afford the batteries needed to protect from unplugging it and losing it forever.
    Sometimes Id get something good
    … life changing even. Then I could only make a track if I picked one of the two to erase forever. … Never did back anything up with a cassette recorder for some stupid reason.
    I can still hear in my head some songs I made that I really loved…that were just permanently gone because the power cord got pulled somehow.
    I fantasized about ever having something like fl studio.
    When I got ahold of fruity loops a few years later…. my god.
    Now Im in my 40s. I still make stuff….
    I have 20+ years worth of files on some hard drives in some safes and on the cloud and such….
    Just babbling… this one made me realize ….we kinda have some history. You looked just like I used to for a minute. … boy did that take me somewhere. …

  10. @DarkShroom

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    wasn't it VST's then i can't even remeber i was using Massive i dunno by the end of the 10s i never really used hardware myself…. wow btw your crazy stuff is best, you got too good

  11. @redmurder1572

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    What a fun trek down memory lane. I must have started around the same time as you, if not just before… funny enough, I still have my ADAT XT from back then… I bought it used with no hours on it from a guy with a studio and I used it so constantly that I just never parted with it. It still works, but it’s also almost not worth getting rid of now.

  13. @blizzard4621-

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Your conclusion at the end where you mentioned the difference between a user who has all the tools in the world but masters none and a user who has one tool and learns it really well reminds me of how I had to learn every bit of iphone GarageBand because it was the best DAW i could use without a laptop. People make fun of me for using it, but even now when I have the resources to use better stuff I invested the time and energy into pushing garageband to its limits. It definitely shapes the kinds of music I can create and influences the creative process the way instruments with difficult user interfaces inspired so many minimal genres like acid and techno. Cool video :3

  16. @SuckWeasel

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    It’s wild how long a workflow lives in muscle memory

    Going on 20 years later and all the LSDJ commands still come out without having to think about it

  18. @dysamoria

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Did you experience pleasant nostalgia from this experiment? Why I'm I asking questions and posting on a 5-year-old video? I listened to your M3 tracks available on Bandcamp and while most of those weren't for me, "Little by Little" and "Rain" were cool. They somewhat reminded me of Photophob.

    The notion to go back to old tools has struck me from time to time because I associate them with where I started; a time when I was creative and experimental, while learning to make music from teens to 20s. Nostalgia is both a comfort… and a trap door to a pit of frustration. I started on a Casio MT-540 as a child, then MOD Edit 2.0 on a PC, then FastTracker2, some Sound Blaster AWE32 MIDI and samples, and finally ended up with Cakewalk Pro Audio and an Alesis QS8 (which I've almost never recorded sound from, so it's just been a heavy controller), way back in my developmental stages. I've never been able to learn to play instruments for performance and only owned any to record short snippets of, so I was always destined to be "studio" bound. I still struggle to accept this limitation, but it seems neurology is stronger than my motivation. I didn't really start feeling like my output had quality sound until I had that QS8, and the stable synch of MIDI & multitrack audio on a PC, but it was still a PITA to work with. Things got a LOT better when I moved from Sonar on Windows to Logic on a Mac (god I hated Windows by the end).

    And then it all stopped. Life killed it. I had a solid decade of hell. I even went without any audio equipment for several years.

    Over the last several years, I felt a nostalgic pull to classic computers (the stuff I had as a kid, and everything I MISSED OUT on), and music software for them. I came up with the utterly foolish goal to make a retro music studio setup. Now that I have almost all of these old computers working, with modern storage, connected to a mixer that bridges to my iMac setup… I've done nothing with it all. A few minutes of many games I demoed and didn't like… a little bit of testing music tools that felt clumsy and badly designed… and TERRIBLE sound. I grew up appreciating computer music chips and gaming music, but it's not exactly the sound I ever wanted anyway. Even with the notion of a different workflow to force myself to focus on music structure instead of sounds, It's just not at all interesting enough to me to put up with the serious pain of it all. I don't even want to use MODERN trackers like Renoise anymore.

    So, what you did here blows my mind because, as you said, you LEARNED THE SHIT out of that one piece of gear. I moved from one thing to the next, seeking a better sound, never sticking with one thing long enough to learn it expertly or develop a workflow. It always felt like I was fighting every tool and looking for something else to try that might be less friction. And then there was my inability to physically develop the ability to play a guitar or whatever.

    To this day, I have no workflow and little passion for doing the work even with modern, fairly comfortable, and very capable tools. I think life circumstances are mostly to blame (plus pharmaceuticals that damaged me well beyond where I got off all of them)… but the NOSTALGIA KEEPS CALLING and I don't know how to turn it off sometimes. In terms of productivity, I have almost 4 hours of music I've created (at least, that's what my iTunes playlist sums to, for the Logic projects I feel are worth listening to in quick-load MP3 format). A good deal of that consists of fairly complete songs, though a lot of songs also need vocals or some competent mixing… But I can't bear to consider something finished enough to "publish" even a "first album". What's the point? I'm not going to make money on this hobby, and I'm too deeply programmed by shitty "it has to make money to be worth it" culture to be able to simply feel joy that I've made music… because mostly nobody seems to be interested in listening to it. Not family, not friends. None of them at least, are my audience, and they're supposed to be the people who care the most. 🤷🏽‍♂

    Part of my productivity problem is certainly that I'm watching YouTube videos and leaving long-ass comments like this… 🤦🏽‍♂

  21. @AnnexIptaru

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Hooking up and recording MIDI equipment in the 80s and 90s was not easy… unless you had an Atari ST computer with Cubase and the Midex+ MIDI router. Then it was pretty much easy. So easy that I use this set-up today.

  22. @PhilTMusic

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Great video Ben, thank you. I have done the same recently for a few songs. I saved my original MIDI studio gear all these years and glad as it was very rewarding.

  23. @MrF_oaf

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Dude, I've never heard of you (from the UK) – for an American, your old stuff is pretty bangin. I say this as someone who saw AFX & Squarepusher dozens of times from '95-05. Respect.

  24. @allank.8218

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Ah and you end it with an evolver… Which I picked up in 2012….. I hated it to start with. But now we've been on many journeys together.
    (And yep, I don't pirate software, but I'm ditching my subscriptions, because I mainly just use the ones I bought outright… Oh and the LSP plugin suite)

  28. @killercarrot1029

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    your comment at 25:40 is litterlally me but with melodies. i go into the piano roll with something in my head and then I paint a few bars without listening and then it sounds nothing like I wanted it to but ends up being kinda good so i keep it

  29. @merrovech

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    Don't pay full price on the old rolands. The discount for a dead battery is huge and replacing the battery is easy enough that I managed to do it as my first ever electronics and soldering projects in the days before youtube tutorials

  33. @djcommie

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    I miss my Ineko, it was an amazing tool. I don't miss it enough to pay Reverb prices, though. Might as well get the rackmount Akira at that point…

  34. @Remcore020

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    What was making music like 20 years ago?
    You make the 1st minute, you add some automation, your soundcard/cpu cannot handle it anymore, you render the project, listen, change/add stuff, re-render, etc.

  38. @tomlyne

    December 13, 2025 at 4:06 am

    I remember trying to produce on a pc in the mid 90s and I would select a reverb in cool edit pro, apply it to a vocal take, and hit render. I'd come back the next morning to wee how it sounded. Wasn't a hugely successful approach. But that's what it was…🎉

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