About 15 years ago I made a full-length demo CD of instrumental music using a Roland XP-10 keyboard and SoundForge software on what is now an ancient Windows computer. I had practically zero experience playing or recording at the time, it was just something I really wanted to do. The result was not the easiest thing to listen to.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I no longer have the original audio files/tracks for those demos. All I have is a CD copy I burned off that I’ve been able to rip back into AIFF files.

My original idea a year or so ago was to remake those tracks, but since I got rid of the XP-10 a long time ago and finding the sounds via a VST looks like it could be a pretty costly search, that idea fell by the wayside. The new idea is instead of making sound-for-sound remakes, I’m going to lift my old ideas and recreate them how I would do them today while staying somewhat close to the originals.

Today I started working on recreating one of the weirder synth sounds with a bit of a darker tone (which admittedly I probably would have used in the original if it existed at the time). I took a sample of the original sound as best I could and used it as an exciter for a “Classic Synth” preset in Objekt. A few tweaks and here’s what I’ve got for an improved version!