I️ was an “IDM” producer from the early 2000s and used to chat with Ben on AOL IM, back when he was known as simply flashbulb. After losing touch I️ just recently found this channel. What a trip. Congrats on the success man.
@Walter B Hah, how exactly is this hard to believe? Relatively small community back then, all connected online for the most part, and just about everyone used AIM in the early 2000s. Very very few of the people in this scene have ever been inaccessible millionaire types.
Erothyme exactly right. I️ mean this in the nicest way possible. But those of us who were making that style at that time were kinda all computer and music nerds. We had a big crew of dorks that were doing social media before it was popular. My alias at that time was “chad cells.” Some songs are on UA-cam with release dates on em. lol
The JX-8p has a "feature" where if you jiggle the memory card just right before loading, you get a bunch of super-randomized versions of the patches stored on it.
Dude you have absolutely NO idea how shook i was to find out this cozy music channel ive been watching is the fucking LAWN WAKE guy. You're an absolute beast i've bumped your old Flashbulb albums so many times in my life
Fun Fact: for one of my first forays into music writing, I interviewed Benn when I was in High School for a now defunct website called exploding plastic. Benn was nice enough to answer all my questions and give me a link to an advance copy of Kirlian Selections. 15 years later I'm still making music and have amassed a fair bit of gear as well. Glad to see you're still plugging away and getting your shine Benn. You deserve it.
@@WARDISWARD i am aware, recently talked about trackers, it was our youth ... its like full circle, speaking to people who are doing this for 30 years and comming back to Amiga and tracker days. In some way tools shaped music to be, trackers are great for IDM and glitch music. Although I know Aphex was using manual midi entry in Cubase.
@@earlsfield Sure he used cubase , everyone did But he used a lot of player pro tracker on mac for drukqs , and come to daddy Not saying he only used trackers , he did use a lot of synths to record audio and further mangle it in trackers etc.. Not everything is sequenced in real time over midi , all the the time The tracker effects are so easy to hear when you have an ear for it , the re-trigger commands , the slide and glide effects , the 09 commands sample offset commands for cutting up the amen break etc... Tracker for live !!! Aphex clip here , posted by the man himself vimeo.com/223378825
It’s funny how after all the years you put his hands / fingers exactly the way they have previously worn off the paint below the jogwheel and transport controls.
I bought my DSI Evolver when i was in highschool, 2002 or something, this was before paypal and i had to call DSI to place the order and I ended up talking to Dave Smith for 45 minutes about electronic music
Dave Smith still shows up at small music expos here and there, especially around the SF Bay Area, if you keep an eye open. Roger Linn, too. speaking of, if you still like the Evolver sound, the DSI Tempest is a nice analog drum synth.
I ordered synth sides from The Man himself. It was fun. I later slapped myself on the head - Um.. .you could have asked him WTF was all that with Prophet VS!
WAAAIITTT YOURE THE FLASHBULB??? OMFG. I used to listen to your music years ago when I was first getting into IDM/electronic music. Undiscovered colors!! Tomorrow untrodden! Miles and miles!! Kirlian Shores!! I actually used variations of Kirlian [insert word] as aliases online. trip down memory lane! you got me thru a lot of middle school and early hs! I make music now too haha. Chicago represent!!
I'm an 18 year old swedish producer who found you through spotify 2 years ago, found you through youtube a year ago. Red Extensions of Me and Kirlian Selections have been really influential to me, and I'm getting goosebumps listening to these sounds you're able to create with gear seemingly from the stone age. This is amazing.
*Me making music in 2002:* hooking a MIDI Keyboard /guitar/mic up to a computer with a sequencer and plugins. *Me making music in 2020:* hooking a MIDI Keyboard /guitar/mic up to a computer with a sequencer and plugins and actually knowing what I'm doing.
i've recently found cds that i made 20 years ago and despite having picked up a degree in sound engineering and music production in the intervening years i cannot replicate the tracks. the limitations of the gear i used then seemed to produce more creativity. great video
david cunningham it was exciting back then. You really worked with hardware more and it seemed organic. Today it’s too computer oriented and computers are not sexy lol
david cunningham I still have all the gear I used in 2000. The only thing I don’t have readily to hand is the soundblaster live card which is languishing in a box somewhere haha but I have a software soundfonts synth so I can load all the samples into that.
Ages ago on the metatone forums you posted a list of everything used to make M3 and I saved it for some reason. Seems relevant "Software: Cool Edit Pro, Coagula, Sound Forge, Fruity Loops, Acid, Buzz Tracker, Goldwave, Mobious, Wave Surgeon, Logic Pro, Vegas, pretty much everything from TC Native, all extensively modded and clogged with VST/DX plugins, some homemade. Many more to this list, but you get the point. Hardware: Roland (JX-305 Workstation, MS-1 Sampler, SP-202 Sampler) Korg (X3 workstation, AX1000G effects processor/acoustic modeler) Various mixers, homemade fx boxes, etc, etc. My main computer is a D800MHZ Athlon w/ 256 mb RAM and about 140gb in hard drive space, which is where I do 80% of my work."
I've wondered for almost 20 years how you made all of the early stuff so, as far as how 'worth it' it was, this was at least a huge nostalgia trip for me and put a smile on my face. Pretty inspirational and makes me feel lazy for how little effort I'm willing to put in to write tracks sometimes. Your early work is one of the major things that got me into producing in the first place when I was a teenager in the early-mid '00s so thank you for that.
I loved this. To contrast, I would love to see how you would approach creating your old sound on modern gear, mainly so we can see where your workflow has improved.
I want this sound to come back. This is definitely the sound of the late nineties/early 2000s drillnbass/braindance/idm, which have faded away in popularity now.
@@noahleach7690 THIS! I was waiting for someone to put my musical existentialism into perspective on this three year old UA-cam comment! Thank you so much! Life-changing! Woah! But on the flip-side, could it be that I wasn't talking about what music is popular, but more about the textures, mood and techniques used in this specific video? I am talking about the sound here you know. And you might think that this is something that is found on every corner, but that just doesn't go for everyone. Or maybe I was quite drunk that specific night three years ago, getting a bit over-excited. Just enough for me to write what I thought were some positive thoughts, into a comment, without having to think about what anyone actually had to say about that.
Normal youtubers: *pauses for a moment as they collect their thoughts* Benn: Sorry about that, I thought I saw a semipalmated plover outside my window but it turned out to just be a piping plover...
Just figuring that out myself!! Ended up acquiring a Flashbulb cd at a rave ages ago and instantly put it into heavy rotation in my car at the time. Don't exactly remember HOW I acquired it lol
This was definitely worth it. There is some emotional center in my brain that's been hit by watching you immediately fall back into the flow of a cherished set of tools you haven't touched in years. Like your comments at the end suggest, it's a good reminder that "a good craftsperson knows their tools" and that the level of drive you have to make music is far more important than the amount of gear you have.
Bruh... you HAVE to do a video breaking down how you were doing that step edit recording on the drums- I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that and I’m intrigued.
Just turned 30, this brings me back to being 14-15 discovering Benn and his music and jamming out non-stop to his music after school. Nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks
Hey man! I don’t know if you recall this- but we met in Cleveland at “the capsule” when you played with Cylob. We had a beer and chatted briefly about the Alesis ineko. I still love it so much and wish more companies made devices with that simplicity. I got the big sky, to take over the reverb duties I used it for, but I’ll never stop using the ineko! Glad to see your videos on here, keep up the good work!
This would have blown my mind back in 2004 when I started making music and honestly even after a decade of being a full time professional producer it’s still pretty crazy!
Thank you for taking the time to show us your old workflow. I used to try to model some of my music after your Flashbulb albums and this was truly a treat for my younger self to not only see the process, but hear your reflections and advice at the end. It was well informed and much appreciated. I hope many producers and musicians get a chance to hear this message. Thank you, Benn.
I love the quote: "The music is not in the violin". That being said, diving into the instrument and spending time with it, will uncover what it can do. The amazing choices we have today is a distraction.
I can't believe what you managed to do with so little at your disposal! Really made me appreciate the gear I have at my disposal nowadays as I never suffered as you did!
5:08 It sounds like Streets of Rage 3 music. No really, listen to some stuff from the soundtrack like this: ua-cam.com/video/xM_HHyKq2Jw/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/KZ7MzwAXusQ/v-deo.html You could legitimately crush a dance club with this.
Oh Boy.. the JX-305 was my first synth from 2001 - 2005. Made a looot of tracks with only using that synth, but in hindsight it's probably one of the shittiest sounding synth out there, haha. Kinda miss it now though, for some weird reason. Maybe because at least I was more productive with all its limitations...
that mini-set you played sounds like something off red extensions! i’ve been watching a lot of gear videos lately and it can be too easy to fall into the trap of “oh i could be a better musician if only i had this one thing.” seeing you do something cool with a few pieces of 20 year old gear and talking about how you should dive deep into what you have is very inspiring as someone of limited means during this crisis. thanks so much for making this video!
I had no idea you were the Flashbulb. I listened to your stuff all the time! Part of the inspiration for making my music was the more underground IDM and breakcore producers from the late 90s and early 2000s, the Flashbulb included. I got my first copy of Fruityloops in 03, moved onto ableton and hardware in 07 and I'm still at it. Thanks for inspiring me back then and also with your current videos! You're a legend!
just randomly clicked into one of your videos, then I saw 'the flashbulb' on screen and my heart exploded. Chaining through all your videos now! Love this content, and loved your music from the second I first heard it almost fifteen years ago! Cheers!
This was fun to see. It reminded me of a lot of the struggles I had back in high school recording from with ADATs and SCSI drives midi that didn’t talk, VSTs that just were sooo sluggish due to buffer rates... but as to your Pros for this set up I’ve actually hybridized my set up with an 8 track cassette recorder an MPC for sampling, beats and sequencing and a MicroKorg and Realistic MG1. No screens, no wifi, no plug ins, no endless VST options. It’s great to have options but too many is just as bad as none of you can’t choose one. The limitations also force me to make choices and keep going. Mixing lacks automation so sound editing and pre mixing multiple instruments per track before printing with fingers crossed because you can’t undo... but I think where complexity might lack by today’s production standards they make up for with passion. It’s like you can hear the effort in the record because it hasn’t been sanitized to sound effortless.
exactly my methods, except i do use a DAW to record the whole thing. I just use it as a multitrack tape, I dont get into its nonsense . its only purpose is to record my mostly live jams
Wonderful to watch, hope you are doing well ^^ When I think back how I started 4-5 years ago one year before graduating highschool (started with a VX49 + Ableton live lite) and pull out old tracks, I remember how I pulled allnighters to finish them because I was so motivated and had huge amounts of time to spare during holidays with bad weather. Fast forward a few years and now Im spreading work on projects over days and even weeks, taking time for sound design sessions and overall spending less time on music, since I actually have other stuff to do. I think computers and software are awesome and while some musical craftmenship fades (I notice that I play the piano less than I used to as a kid and feel lost on physical synths) I can do more overall: I make & play music, create artwork, manage photos, cut videos and write shitty reports with a small box, I think thats as awesome as it gets if you are young and want to just create SOMETHING without a lot of money... btw the only thing I pirated is my OS, because apple wont make sanely priced hardware with decent support, but I think you are spot on with that guess, even after all that tweaking and patching to make it work its still piracy :(
This was fantastic, especially hearing Elevator Fibbonachi and the new track you were able to put together. I loved `Resent and The April Sunshine Shed` and `Red Extensions of Me` back in the day and this brought back great memories. Thank you for all your music over the years.
I just wanted to say that I loved seeing you work out those beats and melodies the way you used to. It looks so tedious, but there's a bit of magic in imagining those old flashbulb songs that meant so much to me being made in this way!
23:03 - This part where you can hear the familiar vibrato from Stinger and Eleven Ways to End the Pain gave me chills. Fantastic video and an incredible look into the amount of work it took to make one of your tracks back then!
Really enjoyed this video Benn, thanks for sharing. It brings me to such a weird point of closure, now, finally, like 18 years after we first met (wow fuck I'm getting kinda old) and you were just releasing These Open Fields and promoting it on WATMM, to see something approximating the setup you had at the time. Not only that, but sharing anecdotal muscle memory of how you worked with it. The end result is such a weird hybrid of your sound idiomatically. Something that falls closer to something off of Love As A Dark Hallway, maybe. There are some subtleties to the velocity programming of the drum sequences that is instantly more recent sounding than something from M3, and yet there are still these clunky sequences that are really really kick and snare heavy that just seem to be self evidently the product of the gear. What a blast man!
I have a weird story about how I acquired my Korg MS2Kr... so my cousin handed one to me one day, telling me that he found it in his ex-girlfriend's apartment building trash, in Georgetown, DC. I could immediately tell some of the buttons were stuck, and had tentatively planned to disassemble it and clean it out. Well I didn't get around to doing so until the quarantine, but when I set out to do it I realized that somebody had definitely spilled some kind of cola or dark soda on it. There was residue all over the interior, on the chassis as well as the control board. I set to work very carefully microcleaning it using distilled water, Q-tips, and cheap toothpicks. It took about a week but I finally got the entire thing cleaned out & in working order. So yeah, I got the damn thing for free, but put in a lot of effort to get it back into fully working condition... but I did it, and it's fully functional now! I assume some rich asshole had bought it, spilled soda on it, and just dumped it into the trash... but my cousin definitely gave it to the right person, and I'm glad I was able to bring it back to life.
Gave a buddy my ms2000br. I have a Radias already, and it was just sitting unused. Good on you for restoring it. Doesn’t take much to get most things up and going again.
This was awesome, Benn! Can't believe I only found this video now. I absolutely adore Red Extensions of Me and Hardscrabble and it's really cool to get a glimpse at your process.
Oh the nostalgia!! I discovered you right before underground sound..2 i think.. and was suprised when i found out you would be playing there. It is by far one of my favorite memories from that time. This video is everything my 21 year old self could've wished for!
I didn't have a workstation, but in other respects this feels like watching myself 25 years ago, sequencing cheap hardware on an Atari STE and recording to 4-track. I'm nostalgic about the gear (that I no longer have), not the LEAST nostalgic about the workflow. Great video, thanks.
holy shit, I've been listening to your music for years! I remember watching some videos on your personal channel but I only just found this channel. I'm about to binge watch every video.
Been a fan for over a decade now, got goosebumps just hearing the first few seconds of that slightly botched Elevator Fibonacci pattern lol, just an awesome treat for us to see the roots of these albums :) thanks for the incredible talent you've given us over the years! Also delighted to see you also possess the elusive Zoom Sampletrak, would love to hear your thoughts on it sometime :)
Thanks for making this video Benn. I've always been intrigued by your tunes, especially your earlier material as The Flashbulb. That Elevator Fibonacci revisit was a real treat!
Cool edit was the best stereo audio editor ever..... i still use Adobe Audition 1.5 which is pretty much Cool Edit after adobe bought it .... you can still download it from adobe and finding a passcode is simple enough...highly recommended
Dude I just randomly clicked on this and didn’t realize you were the Benn from the Flashbulb. Extremely cool, I love your music. Looking forward to watching all your other videos. Thanks for sharing!
Twenty years ago, I had just graduated from making music with tape experimentation, and trackers, like "ModEdit", to using a computer sequencer and a cheap synthesizer. And I was STILL using the tracker for a kind of... drum machine, sampler. I was running everything through a cheap, Radio Shack two track mixer, to a tape recorder.
the factory setting trance with the super distorted kick drum at 5:21 is kind of a fuckin bop. noise trance forever i guess. whatever is happeing at 5:31 is also godly. if you end up recording the full length demos i kinda need em LMAO [edit] holy fuck "blues" is the future [double edit] oh wow, elevator fibbonachi!! one of my faves of your older stuff for sure!
This made me listening back to your Acidwolf - 303.5 Fm set on soundcloud :) I hope you find the time to release some of the tunes someday. I love the stuff ypu put out under this moniker
I thought this video was amazing! It was really interesting to hear and see your mindset and approach towards creating, also your ability to narrate and entertain completely negated the need for the screen. Loved the video, as always a great watch :)
Yup, I recognize the techniques, although my setup was of course nowhere near this "professional". I used an MC-303 and a Yamaha 4-track, a space echo and a cheap Boss mixer. All "borrowed" from friends (ie, I borrowed them for a weekend and they didn't ask for them back). Sometimes I synced up my 909, which I ran way too hot through a Microverb, which made it sound surprisingly rock.
I remember when my MC 303 was my world...spend so many night on it...was the most expensive thing i ever bought (poor student inside at this time) , friends looked at me and my lil’ wonderbox like a mad one...never ever regreted this...addicted to synth and sampler since 😃
Benn, you make a great point about using a little gear to the fullest vs a lot of gear very little. Growing up I made all my electronic music on a single Yamaha workstation synth. Slowly over time, as budget allowed, I added to my rig piece by piece. What that Yamaha synth taught me was how to work through and around limitations, which still applies today because I'm always missing some key piece of gear or software that would make things easier. The challenge of figuring out how to get the same results without those missing pieces is not only rewarding, but also keeps my brain working hard, and perhaps keeps me in check to never rely too heavily on new toys (and can even save money in the process because if a problem can be solved without a new plugin or hardware, why not?). Thanks for the fun video, btw! I love looking back at old gear and techniques!
Ben’s secret, favorite movie: “The big year” Also those factory presets on the Roland, sound like a corporation trying to give consumers “access” to pseudo-Richard D James and Squarepusher type stuff... guess it’s contextual given the years it was available ... some wild ass presets on there tho haha especially that Motown 🤣🤣🤣
Idk if its your thing but I'd definitely pay like $5 for a small sample pack of sounds from this thing. Don't take the low price as an insult. I'm just really poor lol.
@@tornadoalleystudios2283 they're classic sounds that have been done better on their original machines. The drums are all PCM samples from TR-606/808/909 drum machines and etc.
@@dogebad You need to own one. You are only looking at one aspect of it. You get all those sounds in a very portable rig at a great price. The tones have a lot of their own character which is awesome. The workflow and UI for the era made improvisational electronic music on stage all that much easier. The sampler is rock solid and theres a lot of flexibility for real time tone controls, lfo etc.
Thank you thank you! I didn't realize you were the flashbulb. You were one of my very early inspirations in 06 / 07 when I was first getting into this stuff. I remember spending days awake chopping breaks trying to get that drill'n'bass sound, probably making things way more complicated then I needed to. Back then there was no one to really ask how it (or one of the ways it) was done, and I always wondered.
It was really interesting to get to see the montage of your drum sequencing, would you ever consider doing a video more in-depth about your process of putting together, say, an 8 bar percussion sequence?
@@cybWasHere It's funny, I met a girl about two years ago who used to date him, actually. Fuckin small world, given that my high school love story heavily involved bonding over Benn's music.
I found your channel not too long ago and had no idea you were Flashbulb. I found your music like 11 years ago and loved it. Crazy I'd stumble back across you like this.
I'm glad UA-cam randomly recommended me this. I had a couple of Flashbulb albums in my media library years ago but they (and probably plenty of other things) went AWOL at some point. Always enjoyed your music!
![Dubstep Is REALLY HARD To Make [feat. Mr. Bill]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vMRUUnQz5P4/mqdefault.jpg)
I️ was an “IDM” producer from the early 2000s and used to chat with Ben on AOL IM, back when he was known as simply flashbulb. After losing touch I️ just recently found this channel. What a trip. Congrats on the success man.
@Walter B Hah, how exactly is this hard to believe? Relatively small community back then, all connected online for the most part, and just about everyone used AIM in the early 2000s. Very very few of the people in this scene have ever been inaccessible millionaire types.
Erothyme exactly right. I️ mean this in the nicest way possible. But those of us who were making that style at that time were kinda all computer and music nerds. We had a big crew of dorks that were doing social media before it was popular. My alias at that time was “chad cells.” Some songs are on UA-cam with release dates on em. lol
N0F4 KE absolutely. My music or my collection? I️ can do either
@@radatabass anything man, so curious about it. Love to hear stuff from you now and back then...
Chad Sells IRC was another way we connected.
The JX-8p has a "feature" where if you jiggle the memory card just right before loading, you get a bunch of super-randomized versions of the patches stored on it.
What do you think of this Boutique remake?
Dude you have absolutely NO idea how shook i was to find out this cozy music channel ive been watching is the fucking LAWN WAKE guy. You're an absolute beast i've bumped your old Flashbulb albums so many times in my life
Fun Fact: for one of my first forays into music writing, I interviewed Benn when I was in High School for a now defunct website called exploding plastic. Benn was nice enough to answer all my questions and give me a link to an advance copy of Kirlian Selections. 15 years later I'm still making music and have amassed a fair bit of gear as well. Glad to see you're still plugging away and getting your shine Benn. You deserve it.
Is the band xploding plastix related to the site then? They're definitely in the same genre/world as this stuff
Being into aphex twin and having no idea what the process could even be like I am glad to have this window into how you did your craft in that time.
Aphex Twin had an Atari ST for sequencing which had programs far closer to a modern daw. Aphex also had more gear at his disposal.
@@SpencerLemay I was running Cubase on ST. audio part aside, midi sequencing was more less the same as now. Killer software for that time.
a lot of idm artists used trackers , no kidding
They still do
@@WARDISWARD i am aware, recently talked about trackers, it was our youth ... its like full circle, speaking to people who are doing this for 30 years and comming back to Amiga and tracker days. In some way tools shaped music to be, trackers are great for IDM and glitch music. Although I know Aphex was using manual midi entry in Cubase.
@@earlsfield
Sure he used cubase , everyone did
But he used a lot of player pro tracker on mac for drukqs , and come to daddy
Not saying he only used trackers , he did use a lot of synths to record audio and further mangle it in trackers etc..
Not everything is sequenced in real time over midi , all the the time
The tracker effects are so easy to hear when you have an ear for it , the re-trigger commands , the slide and glide effects , the 09 commands sample offset commands for cutting up the amen break etc...
Tracker for live !!!
Aphex clip here , posted by the man himself
vimeo.com/223378825
It’s funny how after all the years you put his hands / fingers exactly the way they have previously worn off the paint below the jogwheel and transport controls.
"one day they just forgot i rented it"
huge massive big ups to OP's mate at the rental store, legend.
Stealing is so cool.
@@LateralTwitlerLT yeah man
@@LateralTwitlerLT unironically
I need more of these corrupted factory presets
I agree 100% I need that blues one
They are great
I bought my DSI Evolver when i was in highschool, 2002 or something, this was before paypal and i had to call DSI to place the order and I ended up talking to Dave Smith for 45 minutes about electronic music
Dave Smith still shows up at small music expos here and there, especially around the SF Bay Area, if you keep an eye open. Roger Linn, too. speaking of, if you still like the Evolver sound, the DSI Tempest is a nice analog drum synth.
I ordered synth sides from The Man himself. It was fun. I later slapped myself on the head - Um.. .you could have asked him WTF was all that with Prophet VS!
@@xofcenter5576 the tempest is actually a dream peice of gear for me. I have had my eyes on it forever, but the price keeps it just out of my reach.
I am so jealous, that's so cool!
WAAAIITTT YOURE THE FLASHBULB??? OMFG. I used to listen to your music years ago when I was first getting into IDM/electronic music. Undiscovered colors!! Tomorrow untrodden! Miles and miles!! Kirlian Shores!! I actually used variations of Kirlian [insert word] as aliases online. trip down memory lane! you got me thru a lot of middle school and early hs! I make music now too haha. Chicago represent!!
that 2000s period was the golden age of IDM according to me, i love the sound of that era!
I'm an 18 year old swedish producer who found you through spotify 2 years ago, found you through youtube a year ago.
Red Extensions of Me and Kirlian Selections have been really influential to me, and I'm getting goosebumps listening
to these sounds you're able to create with gear seemingly from the stone age. This is amazing.
Guess what? 1998 wasn't that long ago.
Actually it kind of was a while ago.
Simon kolla in Yamaha CS1x, jag har samma kärlek till den som mannen i denna videon!
Hej Simon!
"Stone age"? Dude, you should have witnessed our pain working with a Specdrum drum machine and cassette tapes in 1985.
*Me making music in 2002:* hooking a MIDI Keyboard /guitar/mic up to a computer with a sequencer and plugins.
*Me making music in 2020:* hooking a MIDI Keyboard /guitar/mic up to a computer with a sequencer and plugins and actually knowing what I'm doing.
my goal as a producer lol.
i hope i someday learn how to edit shit cos i think i would have some shit ready if i had an editor help or bothered to learn it
I'm doing everything on my phone and tablet now. JX-305 to MPC2000XL and MP7, now completely mobile....technology
i've recently found cds that i made 20 years ago and despite having picked up a degree in sound engineering and music production in the intervening years i cannot replicate the tracks. the limitations of the gear i used then seemed to produce more creativity. great video
david cunningham it was exciting back then. You really worked with hardware more and it seemed organic. Today it’s too computer oriented and computers are not sexy lol
david cunningham I still have all the gear I used in 2000. The only thing I don’t have readily to hand is the soundblaster live card which is languishing in a box somewhere haha but I have a software soundfonts synth so I can load all the samples into that.
@@kehindea computers aren't sexy anymore... I never thought of it quite like that, but you are so right.
@@JakeKlineMusic Is this the same as saying "sexy means you can't control it"?
Ages ago on the metatone forums you posted a list of everything used to make M3 and I saved it for some reason. Seems relevant
"Software: Cool Edit Pro, Coagula, Sound Forge, Fruity Loops, Acid, Buzz Tracker, Goldwave, Mobious, Wave Surgeon, Logic Pro, Vegas, pretty much everything from TC Native, all extensively modded and clogged with VST/DX plugins, some homemade. Many more to this list, but you get the point.
Hardware: Roland (JX-305 Workstation, MS-1 Sampler, SP-202 Sampler)
Korg (X3 workstation, AX1000G effects processor/acoustic modeler)
Various mixers, homemade fx boxes, etc, etc.
My main computer is a D800MHZ Athlon w/ 256 mb RAM and about 140gb in hard drive space, which is where I do 80% of my work."
😳
I still love this dude even though he told me my record collection is going to give me cancerb
Vinyl or just bad taste?
@@Zer0Spinn Oof
@@Zer0Spinn Zer0 chill, lmao
Yeah that vinyl cancer video made me stop listening to records for a week or so
Do you have a link for the video ?
Whatever that variable resistor is inside of that "Value" wheel is a AAA grade component.
it is probably anoptical or magnetical encoder, which doesnt wear off
😂🤣 I bet the company that made it went bankrupt long ago...
I've wondered for almost 20 years how you made all of the early stuff so, as far as how 'worth it' it was, this was at least a huge nostalgia trip for me and put a smile on my face. Pretty inspirational and makes me feel lazy for how little effort I'm willing to put in to write tracks sometimes. Your early work is one of the major things that got me into producing in the first place when I was a teenager in the early-mid '00s so thank you for that.
I loved this. To contrast, I would love to see how you would approach creating your old sound on modern gear, mainly so we can see where your workflow has improved.
Seconding this!
I want this sound to come back. This is definitely the sound of the late nineties/early 2000s drillnbass/braindance/idm, which have faded away in popularity now.
It still exists, why does it have to be popular for you to be happy
@@noahleach7690 THIS! I was waiting for someone to put my musical existentialism into perspective on this three year old UA-cam comment! Thank you so much! Life-changing! Woah!
But on the flip-side, could it be that I wasn't talking about what music is popular, but more about the textures, mood and techniques used in this specific video? I am talking about the sound here you know. And you might think that this is something that is found on every corner, but that just doesn't go for everyone.
Or maybe I was quite drunk that specific night three years ago, getting a bit over-excited. Just enough for me to write what I thought were some positive thoughts, into a comment, without having to think about what anyone actually had to say about that.
calm down :)@@SteveSatori
Normal youtubers: *pauses for a moment as they collect their thoughts*
Benn: Sorry about that, I thought I saw a semipalmated plover outside my window but it turned out to just be a piping plover...
I obviously checked my broadband
That was enough for me to hit subscribe :D
OMG you're the Flashbulb! Trully amazing albums done by this name!
WHAT? NO! Really? Wow!
Welcome to the club,lol
Just figuring that out myself!! Ended up acquiring a Flashbulb cd at a rave ages ago and instantly put it into heavy rotation in my car at the time. Don't exactly remember HOW I acquired it lol
lawn wake iv and ix are honestly some of my fav songs ever made, love him
I had a similar “holy shit” moment. My favorite ever electronic music teacher had us analyze some of his tracks.
This was definitely worth it. There is some emotional center in my brain that's been hit by watching you immediately fall back into the flow of a cherished set of tools you haven't touched in years. Like your comments at the end suggest, it's a good reminder that "a good craftsperson knows their tools" and that the level of drive you have to make music is far more important than the amount of gear you have.
Bruh... you HAVE to do a video breaking down how you were doing that step edit recording on the drums- I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that and I’m intrigued.
Just turned 30, this brings me back to being 14-15 discovering Benn and his music and jamming out non-stop to his music after school. Nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks
Ha, so that is how the elusive dawless really looks like.
Finally seeing you performing 20 years after feels like pure magic :) Thank you so much for sharing this
Hey man! I don’t know if you recall this- but we met in Cleveland at “the capsule” when you played with Cylob. We had a beer and chatted briefly about the Alesis ineko. I still love it so much and wish more companies made devices with that simplicity. I got the big sky, to take over the reverb duties I used it for, but I’ll never stop using the ineko! Glad to see your videos on here, keep up the good work!
It was a weird time in Roland's history. They seemed to be trailing behind the underground dance music scene and turning the sounds into cheese.
This would have blown my mind back in 2004 when I started making music and honestly even after a decade of being a full time professional producer it’s still pretty crazy!
Thank you for taking the time to show us your old workflow. I used to try to model some of my music after your Flashbulb albums and this was truly a treat for my younger self to not only see the process, but hear your reflections and advice at the end. It was well informed and much appreciated. I hope many producers and musicians get a chance to hear this message. Thank you, Benn.
I love the quote: "The music is not in the violin". That being said, diving into the instrument and spending time with it, will uncover what it can do. The amazing choices we have today is a distraction.
I can't believe what you managed to do with so little at your disposal! Really made me appreciate the gear I have at my disposal nowadays as I never suffered as you did!
Benn, this is like a dream come true. M3 is my favorite record of yours..so much nostalgia with late 90s/early 2000s IDM for me.
That JX-305 Has become a self-aware shitposting synth
5:08 It sounds like Streets of Rage 3 music. No really, listen to some stuff from the soundtrack like this:
ua-cam.com/video/xM_HHyKq2Jw/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/KZ7MzwAXusQ/v-deo.html
You could legitimately crush a dance club with this.
Have you ever owned one? I still use mine. Very nice synth and a very flexible sequencer for the time.
Oh Boy.. the JX-305 was my first synth from 2001 - 2005. Made a looot of tracks with only using that synth, but in hindsight it's probably one of the shittiest sounding synth out there, haha. Kinda miss it now though, for some weird reason. Maybe because at least I was more productive with all its limitations...
The guy couldn't have possibly looked any better! Thanks man, really in love with your brains and the topics you cover and the way you do it.
fantastic ben. love seeing your old school processes.
i loved the song you made.... you're so awesome and inspiring, benn.
that mini-set you played sounds like something off red extensions! i’ve been watching a lot of gear videos lately and it can be too easy to fall into the trap of “oh i could be a better musician if only i had this one thing.” seeing you do something cool with a few pieces of 20 year old gear and talking about how you should dive deep into what you have is very inspiring as someone of limited means during this crisis. thanks so much for making this video!
I had no idea you were the Flashbulb. I listened to your stuff all the time! Part of the inspiration for making my music was the more underground IDM and breakcore producers from the late 90s and early 2000s, the Flashbulb included. I got my first copy of Fruityloops in 03, moved onto ableton and hardware in 07 and I'm still at it. Thanks for inspiring me back then and also with your current videos! You're a legend!
"this is blues..." (computer attempts to reimagine The Nightfly by Donald Fagen on bontempi organ presets...)
9:20 WOW, what a blast from the past! I got chills hearing this coming straight from the JX-305.
FOR REAL that part made my head spin. Remember finding that CD randomly at a used book store a long time ago and losing my mind.
Song name??
@@xA14xNova The Flashbulb - Elevator Fibbonachi
This is the answer of all my question since I heard your album first time when I was very young and starting into the electronic music. Hats off..
just randomly clicked into one of your videos, then I saw 'the flashbulb' on screen and my heart exploded. Chaining through all your videos now! Love this content, and loved your music from the second I first heard it almost fifteen years ago! Cheers!
This was fun to see. It reminded me of a lot of the struggles I had back in high school recording from with ADATs and SCSI drives midi that didn’t talk, VSTs that just were sooo sluggish due to buffer rates... but as to your Pros for this set up I’ve actually hybridized my set up with an 8 track cassette recorder an MPC for sampling, beats and sequencing and a MicroKorg and Realistic MG1. No screens, no wifi, no plug ins, no endless VST options. It’s great to have options but too many is just as bad as none of you can’t choose one. The limitations also force me to make choices and keep going. Mixing lacks automation so sound editing and pre mixing multiple instruments per track before printing with fingers crossed because you can’t undo... but I think where complexity might lack by today’s production standards they make up for with passion. It’s like you can hear the effort in the record because it hasn’t been sanitized to sound effortless.
exactly my methods, except i do use a DAW to record the whole thing. I just use it as a multitrack tape, I dont get into its nonsense . its only purpose is to record my mostly live jams
Wonderful to watch, hope you are doing well ^^
When I think back how I started 4-5 years ago one year before graduating highschool (started with a VX49 + Ableton live lite) and pull out old tracks, I remember how I pulled allnighters to finish them because I was so motivated and had huge amounts of time to spare during holidays with bad weather. Fast forward a few years and now Im spreading work on projects over days and even weeks, taking time for sound design sessions and overall spending less time on music, since I actually have other stuff to do.
I think computers and software are awesome and while some musical craftmenship fades (I notice that I play the piano less than I used to as a kid and feel lost on physical synths) I can do more overall: I make & play music, create artwork, manage photos, cut videos and write shitty reports with a small box, I think thats as awesome as it gets if you are young and want to just create SOMETHING without a lot of money...
btw the only thing I pirated is my OS, because apple wont make sanely priced hardware with decent support, but I think you are spot on with that guess, even after all that tweaking and patching to make it work its still piracy :(
This was fantastic, especially hearing Elevator Fibbonachi and the new track you were able to put together. I loved `Resent and The April Sunshine Shed` and `Red Extensions of Me` back in the day and this brought back great memories. Thank you for all your music over the years.
I just wanted to say that I loved seeing you work out those beats and melodies the way you used to. It looks so tedious, but there's a bit of magic in imagining those old flashbulb songs that meant so much to me being made in this way!
23:03 - This part where you can hear the familiar vibrato from Stinger and Eleven Ways to End the Pain gave me chills. Fantastic video and an incredible look into the amount of work it took to make one of your tracks back then!
Really enjoyed this video Benn, thanks for sharing. It brings me to such a weird point of closure, now, finally, like 18 years after we first met (wow fuck I'm getting kinda old) and you were just releasing These Open Fields and promoting it on WATMM, to see something approximating the setup you had at the time. Not only that, but sharing anecdotal muscle memory of how you worked with it.
The end result is such a weird hybrid of your sound idiomatically. Something that falls closer to something off of Love As A Dark Hallway, maybe. There are some subtleties to the velocity programming of the drum sequences that is instantly more recent sounding than something from M3, and yet there are still these clunky sequences that are really really kick and snare heavy that just seem to be self evidently the product of the gear.
What a blast man!
Love the MP3.com sticker! I loved that site. I've been creating music since the late 90's myself.
i love this video, watching you muscle memory a breakbeat was awesome. makes me rethink all of my modern comforts.
9:20 Yup... This is exactly what the mod/tracker scene sounded like in the mid 90's.
I have a weird story about how I acquired my Korg MS2Kr... so my cousin handed one to me one day, telling me that he found it in his ex-girlfriend's apartment building trash, in Georgetown, DC. I could immediately tell some of the buttons were stuck, and had tentatively planned to disassemble it and clean it out.
Well I didn't get around to doing so until the quarantine, but when I set out to do it I realized that somebody had definitely spilled some kind of cola or dark soda on it. There was residue all over the interior, on the chassis as well as the control board. I set to work very carefully microcleaning it using distilled water, Q-tips, and cheap toothpicks. It took about a week but I finally got the entire thing cleaned out & in working order.
So yeah, I got the damn thing for free, but put in a lot of effort to get it back into fully working condition... but I did it, and it's fully functional now!
I assume some rich asshole had bought it, spilled soda on it, and just dumped it into the trash... but my cousin definitely gave it to the right person, and I'm glad I was able to bring it back to life.
Gave a buddy my ms2000br. I have a Radias already, and it was just sitting unused. Good on you for restoring it. Doesn’t take much to get most things up and going again.
Awesome! The MS2000 is a fantastic synth.
Get out and crush, you legend
☞￣ᴥ￣☞
This was awesome, Benn! Can't believe I only found this video now. I absolutely adore Red Extensions of Me and Hardscrabble and it's really cool to get a glimpse at your process.
Oh the nostalgia!! I discovered you right before underground sound..2 i think.. and was suprised when i found out you would be playing there. It is by far one of my favorite memories from that time. This video is everything my 21 year old self could've wished for!
I didn't have a workstation, but in other respects this feels like watching myself 25 years ago, sequencing cheap hardware on an Atari STE and recording to 4-track. I'm nostalgic about the gear (that I no longer have), not the LEAST nostalgic about the workflow. Great video, thanks.
Damn dude! you're stuff from 2000 sounds epic, like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin! :)
there was indeed a bit of Mr Square-bloke
It was an entire genre called idm. Flashbulb(Benn) was a big part of it
holy shit, I've been listening to your music for years! I remember watching some videos on your personal channel but I only just found this channel. I'm about to binge watch every video.
I've always wondered how this kinda thing would've been done back then.
Thanks for sharing, man!
Almost every person who has commented here has, at least very least, a few videos of their jams on their channel. That’s awesome.
xaqary yea, the community is awesome :)
I do
Yes... :)))
Been a fan for over a decade now, got goosebumps just hearing the first few seconds of that slightly botched Elevator Fibonacci pattern lol, just an awesome treat for us to see the roots of these albums :) thanks for the incredible talent you've given us over the years! Also delighted to see you also possess the elusive Zoom Sampletrak, would love to hear your thoughts on it sometime :)
Thanks for making this video Benn. I've always been intrigued by your tunes, especially your earlier material as The Flashbulb.
That Elevator Fibonacci revisit was a real treat!
Still listening to his soundtracks with a huuuge pseasure. "If trees could speak, Kibbles and wizard" are gorgeous.
Oh lord that Cool Edit window just sent me spiraling back into ICQ and Photoshop 4...
Cool edit was the best stereo audio editor ever..... i still use Adobe Audition 1.5 which is pretty much Cool Edit after adobe bought it .... you can still download it from adobe and finding a passcode is simple enough...highly recommended
LOLLL
ICQ 🌻
Listening to those old beats, you really rinsed that thing, man.
Black Lawn Finale is still one of my top favorite songs. Really cool watching you use this Roland
Dude I just randomly clicked on this and didn’t realize you were the Benn from the Flashbulb. Extremely cool, I love your music. Looking forward to watching all your other videos. Thanks for sharing!
i feel hugged watching this channel
lol love the tunes, they do sound like they belong in a 90's point n click adventure PC game, a really good one.
This was incredible. It's neat to see how we work with our limitations over the years. Thanks for sharing this. Very inspiring.
So cool to see yet another one of the awkward ways that early drill n bass idm was made. Mad respect to your patience, then and now!
Twenty years ago, I had just graduated from making music with tape experimentation, and trackers, like "ModEdit", to using a computer sequencer and a cheap synthesizer. And I was STILL using the tracker for a kind of... drum machine, sampler. I was running everything through a cheap, Radio Shack two track mixer, to a tape recorder.
the factory setting trance with the super distorted kick drum at 5:21 is kind of a fuckin bop. noise trance forever i guess. whatever is happeing at 5:31 is also godly. if you end up recording the full length demos i kinda need em LMAO
[edit] holy fuck "blues" is the future
[double edit] oh wow, elevator fibbonachi!! one of my faves of your older stuff for sure!
Just commented something very similar. The blues track was awesome.
100% worth it. Thank you for taking the time to plug your gear from years ago up and showing and sharing :)
This is great, I never really understood how this was produced back in the day. I have a lot more appreciation now.
This made me listening back to your Acidwolf - 303.5 Fm set on soundcloud :) I hope you find the time to release some of the tunes someday. I love the stuff ypu put out under this moniker
Many of the sounds from that Roland remind me of the sounds on the Aphex Twin album 'Come to Daddy'.
and Squarepusher.
THANK YOU for the effort it took to make this video. We benefit greatly from seeing the process.
Love your channel! This brings me back to my days when I made everything on a Korg Triton "Classic" sequencer.
Man, I remember being so psyched after pulling all nighters and having a track at 7am. I had the K5000w as my workstation.
AND... YEAAAAAAAHHH!!! The Korg MS-2000!!!! (wiping away a tear)
I thought this video was amazing! It was really interesting to hear and see your mindset and approach towards creating, also your ability to narrate and entertain completely negated the need for the screen. Loved the video, as always a great watch :)
This was fantastic. Subbed. Loved the topic and tone at the end!
reminded me of 2000's squarepusher and afx beats. those were good times
and telefon tel aviv remixes!
Yo! that faulted blues genre sounded dope!
That was awesome... so humbling to see what you had to go through to make a track back then compared with now... so much respect
The single, most entertaining and educational video I have watched this entire year!!! :)
Yup, I recognize the techniques, although my setup was of course nowhere near this "professional". I used an MC-303 and a Yamaha 4-track, a space echo and a cheap Boss mixer. All "borrowed" from friends (ie, I borrowed them for a weekend and they didn't ask for them back). Sometimes I synced up my 909, which I ran way too hot through a Microverb, which made it sound surprisingly rock.
the mc303 really isn't that bad.
I remember when my MC 303 was my world...spend so many night on it...was the most expensive thing i ever bought (poor student inside at this time) , friends looked at me and my lil’ wonderbox like a mad one...never ever regreted this...addicted to synth and sampler since 😃
jeremjerem picked my first Mc303 up late last year. I didn’t even know they existed in the 90s but I’d have given my left nut for one if I did 😄
You just took me back 22 years. This is quality archive material. Thank you. Never forget.
Benn, you make a great point about using a little gear to the fullest vs a lot of gear very little. Growing up I made all my electronic music on a single Yamaha workstation synth. Slowly over time, as budget allowed, I added to my rig piece by piece. What that Yamaha synth taught me was how to work through and around limitations, which still applies today because I'm always missing some key piece of gear or software that would make things easier. The challenge of figuring out how to get the same results without those missing pieces is not only rewarding, but also keeps my brain working hard, and perhaps keeps me in check to never rely too heavily on new toys (and can even save money in the process because if a problem can be solved without a new plugin or hardware, why not?). Thanks for the fun video, btw! I love looking back at old gear and techniques!
Ben’s secret, favorite movie: “The big year”
Also those factory presets on the Roland, sound like a corporation trying to give consumers “access” to pseudo-Richard D James and Squarepusher type stuff... guess it’s contextual given the years it was available ... some wild ass presets on there tho haha especially that Motown 🤣🤣🤣
Idk if its your thing but I'd definitely pay like $5 for a small sample pack of sounds from this thing. Don't take the low price as an insult. I'm just really poor lol.
Jungle warfare
You don't want them. It's all PCM garbage.
That said, each the Interwebnets for samples of the MC-303/505/909 and you will have the same sounds.
@@JayKaufman Disagree. Its a classic.
@@tornadoalleystudios2283 they're classic sounds that have been done better on their original machines. The drums are all PCM samples from TR-606/808/909 drum machines and etc.
@@dogebad You need to own one. You are only looking at one aspect of it. You get all those sounds in a very portable rig at a great price. The tones have a lot of their own character which is awesome. The workflow and UI for the era made improvisational electronic music on stage all that much easier. The sampler is rock solid and theres a lot of flexibility for real time tone controls, lfo etc.
Thank you thank you! I didn't realize you were the flashbulb. You were one of my very early inspirations in 06 / 07 when I was first getting into this stuff. I remember spending days awake chopping breaks trying to get that drill'n'bass sound, probably making things way more complicated then I needed to. Back then there was no one to really ask how it (or one of the ways it) was done, and I always wondered.
I really appreciated this video, thank you for making it.
It was really interesting to get to see the montage of your drum sequencing, would you ever consider doing a video more in-depth about your process of putting together, say, an 8 bar percussion sequence?
Oh how I miss this era of the Flashbulb... it shaped so much of my adolescence
It's still shaping much of my grown up life, heh.
@@cybWasHere It's funny, I met a girl about two years ago who used to date him, actually. Fuckin small world, given that my high school love story heavily involved bonding over Benn's music.
I found your channel not too long ago and had no idea you were Flashbulb. I found your music like 11 years ago and loved it. Crazy I'd stumble back across you like this.
I'm glad UA-cam randomly recommended me this. I had a couple of Flashbulb albums in my media library years ago but they (and probably plenty of other things) went AWOL at some point. Always enjoyed your music!