My first production experience. Part 1: flashback to 1999—2005

ModPlug Tracker, Re-Birth RB-338 and Reason

Formally speaking, I count the beginning of my music career from 2012 when my debut EP was officially released. But in fact, my awkward attempts at making some music started a long time before that — more than 15 years ago from now. And I would like to tell you about this experience.

It’s all begun when mom bought me a keyboard, Yamaha PSR-330 — that was the best thing I could ever dream about. It was 1999, I was twelve. Normal kids are playing football and do some other things which supposed to be fun, spending all day long outside. I wasn’t that type as I preferred to sit home at the computer all day long after school (or instead of school, sometimes).

It was completely different times than nowadays almost with no internet, every piece of information was on the weight of gold. So I started to learn every software I could find on piracy CDs, and the first one was ModPlug Tracker.

Jeez, these days I’d not even open this:

Unfortunately (or luckily) none of my ModPlug Tracker projects saved till present days.

A year later I discovered a program Re-Birth RB-338 which I was very excited about — it reminded me of a spaceship control panel:

It’s very simple, the entire program is made of two sequencers (one for the bassline, one for lead) and two drum machines. Yet still, I’m pretty sure a lot of early Trance music has been made in Re-Birth, for example, one of my all-time favourites track Venus by DreamTech.

Mine wasn’t that cool, though. For the first time ever I’ve got what the Cut Off is, as well as Resonance and Distortion. Here is one of my first tracks made in Re-Birth, I was 13:

Around 2003~2004 I had a “breakthrough” and found another piece of software which I used for about 4 next years — Reason by Propellerheads, same developers as Re-Birth.

I never intended to release any of that stuff, nor even thought about it. Music production was the goal itself, the process for the process, not for the result. Of course those attempts sound terribly bad, but after all, I had so much fun!