I was cleaning out my place and found this old CDR with a collection of tracks I made in 1998. As you might guess, some of the musical ideas from "me minus 14 years" made me cringe, but I found this old ambient tune that was surprisingly listenable.

What surprised me was that it sounds really different from what I do now just by virtue of what I _didn't_ know, what I _wasn't_ exposed to, and by the limits of what I could and couldn't do. To the point that if I tried to create another track along the same lines now, I think I would have a hard time doing it. It's almost like hearing something by another person, someone I barely know.

http://soundcloud.com/revo11/ep3-track-3-really-old

Pretty nice :c )

Most of my old work around that time is the same for me.. different person wrote it.

I love when that happens. After a couple years having my gear in storage, I'm going through my Sonar projects folders & finding stuff I don't remember making. It's fun. It's found art, ready to be used for new art

I like the wavy tape deck quality to the backing strings in your discovered track. How might you say you've changed, musically, since then? It's neat to compare. I've spent time reworking my old stuff to try making it reflect my current interests but it's sometimes impossibly different. As you said, different influences back then.

Thanks!

The main difference is that my appreciation for songwriting (even in instrumental tracks), and that's what defines value for me now. I think I had much more enthralled by the process of construction back then, and I liked the idea of clever abstract approaches to construction. It's funny, even when I consider stuff like aphex twin and autechre, I think what's lasting about them is that they know how to write a good song and and hide it in an interesting creative process. I didn't have the knowledge to understand that then, so I _thought_ I appreciated the creativity of their working process. I suspect I'm not alone in this evolution on KVR...

More superficial things I learned:
- people are busy, don't expect them to sit through your 8 minute ambient jams
- acoustic instruments/recordings can be exploited for their inherent timbral complexity
- out of the universe of sounds, the human voice probably has the shortest path to an emotional connection
- discovered old music (other than blues) - namely old bluegrass and gospel stuff. The brutal directness of that material probably changed my sense of value. Also learned to stop being a music snob and appreciate pop/chart music.

For a contrast, here's a song I recorded recently:

http://soundcloud.com/revo11/side-a

The sound quality/production/mixing is (somewhat) intentionally bad, since I was limiting myself to the constraints of working entirely on the OP-1. For an interpolation of the intervening steps, feel free to travel through the various dates of my other tracks (soundcloud page in my sig)

I just did! and it was worth it. Great sounds

Revo11: Thanks for sharing your observations. They're interesting. I think I've found a few very similar lessons myself over the years, especially regarding realization that the music I like most isn't just the sounds. While the sounds are a prime attraction, it's the musical structure & writing skill that really does it for me overall. I also share the relatively recent discovery that acoustic instruments are really wonderful. I grew up on synths and would find it extra neat when an acoustic instrument would be mixed with a synth-heavy song. I realized it's that acoustic instruments have such wonderful sounds and that it wasn't "traditional" instruments that had bored me but the "traditional" use of them which is my problem wih them.

This newer track you posted here is nice. Thanks for sharing it. I don't know that I'd say the sound quality is bad. It's has character and that's very important. It sounds good to my ears and I only listened to it on a tiny mono iPhone speaker (sorry about that!).

Acoustic instruments - the ultimate physical modeling synth =)

It's interesting playing acoustic instruments having done electronic music... In some ways you'll be much more sensitive to the timbral / resonance characteristics of the instrument than most people otherwise would be. Goldmund's piano work is a good example of this.

Since the track was recorded on an op-1, it's probably tinny-mono-speaker-friendly (although I'd still recommend headphones if available).

I know, sorry; it's awful of me to listen on iPhone speaker I hate when people listen to my stuff like that. I'll get with the headphones when I get back home.

Agreed with physical modeling bit. I just saw the video of Diego Stocco's Bassoforte:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhp6P9Ygsoc
Awesome. Wish that's how Tassman worked

Diego is great! Glad he's having success in the film world.