I remember when it was 1997 (or was it 1998? I don’t really remember) and Steinberg introduced their new technology called Virtual Studio Technology, but today most commonly known as the abbreviation VST. Okay, it might have been earlier than 1997 too, but I do remember specifically when I tweaked Neon for the first time in 1997, or 1998. It was the beginning of something new. It didn’t sound that good compared to the hardware I had back in those days, but it was a new concept - that’s for sure.

Later came TC|Works Mercury-1 which (back in those days) sounded fabulous compared to what was out there. It could play four sounds simultaneously, if you had computer enough, and it reminded of a Roland SH-101 but, dare I say it, more powerful.

Back in those days you would load up a sound on your hardware synthesizer, record the MIDI to your host and then you change the MIDI track output to the soft-synth instead. Since it would use almost every cycle available in your massive Pentium 2 CPU running at 450 MHz you quickly bounced the track and used it as pure audio.

I must have missed the turn-around point when you started doing it backwards.

Today, you load up a sound in any VST instrument, use a MIDI keyboard to record the MIDI data on to a track and then… Then you start fiddling with your hardware synthesizers. You change the MIDI track output to your massive MIDI interface and dial up a great sound on the hardware unit connected to it via the data protocol from the 1970’s. Then, you record its audio onto a new track and mutes the MIDI.

I wonder what’s next.

Cubase is ready stretching some audio files for me since I’m cranking up a dull track from sleepy 128 bpm to more dance-y 139.