Server Room Leak and Short Circuit

Yesterday I was playing my SY-99 in my studio when suddenly the lights went out. The studio kept on running because it is behind an UPS. I went to my server room because the power distribution for the studio is there and I smelled something burning right away. Closer inspection of the power cabinet showed that there was water running in it from above. So I switched of the power immediately and called the electrician. When opening the power cabinet we found a layer of water in it and we found the two automatic fuses in the picture on the left to be short circuiting because of the water.

We had some water downstairs before coming from the hole were the air conditioning pipes went through, so we suspected something to be wrong there. This morning the constructor came by to tear by a part of the wall. And this is what we found. The 110 mm hole that was drilled in the concreted didn't only go through the concrete but also cut through the rough of the basement. You can see the pipes running here and the black stuff you see was supposed to be the water proof layer of the roof of the basement. Clearly not water proof any more. So problem found for sure.

This afternoon the water proof roof construction was repaired again and we poored some water over it. So far no water came down so I presume this is fixed now. Tomorrow the constructor would come back to repair the wall. All in all a very stressful weekend and I hope we don't encounter problems like this anymore down there. I was happy though that everybody came by so quickly and that we located the problem so quickly. Afterwards they told me that sometimes it takes weeks or even months to find leaks like this. Now I'm going to take a little rest to get over this ;)

First OceanoGraphy Artwork Impression

Hi the last weeks I have been looking for a nice picture for the cover of my upcoming album OceanoGraphy. Eventually my friend Hans came up with this picture and I asked my designer Bart Auceps to negotiate the rights of this picture with the photographer. And we came to a deal. He then made this cover from it. It is not the final version yet, but I like it a lot. I think it represents the theme of the album perfectly. And it is both abstract, artistic and still to the point. I'm still talking to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) about the correct use of their logo. As I told you before they are officially endorsing this project and part of my revenue from this CD will be directly donated to the WWF.

Here is the preliminary back of the CD. Also still not final. There are even some mistakes still on it, but it will give you a nice idea. You can also see the track names on there already. They are still not all final either though. But most of them won't change I guess. We are still working on the rest of the artwork but I thought it was nice to share it with you in this stage. And I'll also use these preliminary images on my website. The planned release of this album is only a few months ahead and I have still a lot of work to do. So I hope I'll make the deadline. If I want to release on the 17th of October as planned I'll have to finish my work by the end of September. Well as promised I'll update you on the progress. Well I hope you like the artwork so far :)

100,000 MySpace Friends!

I just approved my 100,000 th MySpace friend request! Isn't that amazing? Some other figures: 1,486 people are actively subscribed to my blog, 365,461 times my profile was viewed, in total 268,084 song plays in my MySpace player and 8,918 people left a positive comment on my music. I'm also on some other networking sites but MySpace is somehow the best running for me. Also most CD's I sell are going to people who got in touch with my music on MySpace. It is my number one marketing tool. I do spent a lot of time answering mail also on there, but it is actually quite nice to get feedback this way. Well now I just hope all MySpace friends order a CD somewhere in the future ;) Well if you haven't found my page yet go to http://www.myspace.com/synthnl and add me as a friend there. Looking forward to see you.

Beisbroek Planetarium Project by Synth.nl

I was asked to produce some new music for a Planetarium Show that is going to be featured in the Beisbroek Observatory in Brugge (B) the coming 6 months. The show had is premiere on the 3th of July 2009. The total show lasts 45 minutes but they needed music for the first 13:30 minutes of the show. So I made this music especially for this project. The music had to be in the background and therefore I couldn't use much beats or leads. I tried to create more atmospherically and spacey music for this project that would fit nicely under the voice over and also with the video. Unfortunately I didn't get the video so I had to work with the voice over track only. Actually this is my first documentary and I liked doing it. I hope to do more projects like this in the future.

I will release the music I made somewhere in the future by the way. I made four tracks in total called Eclipse, Meteor, Hubble and Nebula. They are mixed together to form the soundtrack for this show. The video is projected on a special dome by the projector you see in the picture on the right. It is able to create a nice image of how the sky looks like at a certain place on Earth at a certain time. Together with some video they produce a very nice image over your head that is 360 degrees around you. Just like you would be outside. I haven't seen the show myself, but I'm looking forward to it. And of course you can go and see the show yourself as well if you like. Here is more information on the Beisbroek Observatory:

http://www.beisbroek.be/

You should ask them when this show is playing though. I don't know that myself at the moment.

I did place a copy of the audio track on my own website so you can listen to it. And even though the voice over is in Dutch I'm sure you will get the picture if you don't understand Dutch. I used a picture of the 'Whale Galaxy' with kind permission of NASA to stay in the theme of my current OceanoGraphy Project by the way. You can find it here:

http://www.synth.nl/project_detail.php?id=12

Please do enjoy it and let me know what you think of it :)

More OceanoGraphy SFX and Percussion Sounds

Last week I made a lot more sound effects and also some percussion sounds for my upcoming OceanoGraphy album. This time I used both an oscillator and filter of the Anywhere Instruments Semtex as a sound source. I made a nice patch using the LFO's of the Semtex itself and the LFO'sof the Red Square and Cwejman S1 to modulate the Oscillator, FM, LFO speeds etc. In the end the machine was generating weird sounds on its own. I left it running for an hour while recorded the output and later I cut out the parts that I liked. Very funny way to do this. Usually I think of the sound upfront, but then I end up with pretty much the same results always. Which is nice to have recognizable sounds, but the weird stuff adds to the atmosphere a lot.

Yesterday I spent the whole day cutting them all lose, saving them., categorizing and finally giving them a name. That last part is actually also the hardest part, thinking of a name for a sound effect so that I can find it back later. It was a long job as well. I started at 10 :00 and was done by 18:00, but I actually ended up with 93 percussion sounds and 384 sound effects. So the result was worth it. I have enough now for a couple of future productions I guess. In the picture you see a part of the listing for the sound effects and the names I gave them. But there is lots more. When I'm finalizing my tracks later on I will search for appropriate ones and add some effects on them like delay and reverb or maybe even some filters to make them sound really spacy :)

Power Upgrade

Recently I wanted to switch everything on at the same time in my studio and found out that it didn't fit into the 16 Ampere group we made for the studio. It was just a bit over 16 Amp I guess. Switching of a few machines made it fit again. So yesterday my electrician upgraded the group for my studio to 25 Ampere. Now it fits just fine. I will also have to upgrade my UPS now though. I get lots of questions about the power usage in my studio by the way. Some people think I have a nuclear power plant next to my studio. Normally I never have everything switched on at the same time. Only what I use. Normally I use about 8 Ampere when I work in my studio. That is equivalent to 1840 Watt. That is a lot less than your washing machine I guess ;) So it really isn't that bad. When everything is on. I pull just a bit over 16 Ampere that is 3680 Watt. So actually our washing machine and dryer together use a lot more power than my whole studio for your idea ;)

Day of OceanoGrapy SFX production

After doing two small in between projects I'm working on my OceanoGraphy album again. I have to be finished by end of September so only 3 months left. Looks like a long time, but I still have lots of work to do. I'll try to update you on the status from time to time on this blog. I use a lot of synthesized sound effects in my music and today I spent a whole day making bleeps, sweeps etc. I always make a lot and then later select the ones that fit in the track I'm working on. I also use different synths to get a good diversity of sound character. Today I used the Moog Minimoog, Roland SH-09 and Roland SH-5. I thought it would be fun to let you hear something of the sounds. So I made a very noisy mix of a couple of tracks of sound effects trough another. I already threw the really bad ones away by the way so this is not all. But it will still give you an idea how much you can do in one day. And more days like this will follow for sure the next months. I never throw them away by the way. If I don't use them on this album, maybe on the next. You never know right :) Well here you can hear the result of today: http://www.synth.nl/samples/OceanoGraphySFX.mp3

Sunday Synth Interview Online

Bruce Gall from the popular UK radio show Sunday Synth did a very nice one hour special on my music last Sunday including an interview. It was broadcasted on AR FM radio and also through their web stream. I made a recording from that do that in case you missed it you can listen to it anyway. (sorry for the sound quality) For you convenience I cut some of the commercials out, so it is a bit shorter now. I hope you will enjoy it. You can find a copy here:

http://www.synth.nl/interviews.php

Apollo Studio Pictures on my Website

I just uploaded some pictures that my friend Chris made last week in my Apollo Studio. He made quite a few of them and last night I sorted out the ones I liked the best and put them in different categories. He used a special wide angle lens to get the most on the pictures. Some pictures can be a bit distorted on the sides because of that. I also photo-shopped myself out of two pictures. I'm curious if you can find them. I'm not that good at it so you should be able to tell ;) We also made some video's by the way. I hope to upload them soon as well. You can find the pictures on this URL:

http://www.synth.nl/studio.php

I will upload them today as well on some websites that I'm present on like MySpace etc. Well I hope you enjoy the pictures and if you have any question do ask me. I'd be happy to answer them.

Building Apollo Studio (Overview)

I know a lot of you followed the construction of my new Apollo studio, but maybe some of you also missed it. So here is the chance to look at it again. This is an overview post with all articles that I wrote during the work that was done on the construction site. More will follow later on cabling, furniture etc. The articles are in chronological order now for your convenience. I hope you enjoy reading them. It was quite a project all in all. It took about 6 months to build this and I'm very happy that it is finished now. If you have any questions feel free to ask me.

1. Preparation (3D plans and asking permission to the local government)
   
2. 3D Design (3D plan for myself to get an idea of what could fit in)
   
3. Furniture (First ideas how the furniture should look like)
   
4. Drilling (Drilling holes in the backyard for the poles of the foundation)
   
5. Poles (Filling the holes with concrete to form the poles)
   
6. Digging (Digging a big hole for the basement and shortening the pole)
   
7. More digging (Digging even deeper and shortening the poles even more)
   
8. Water (At maximum depth now, just hitting the ground water level)
   
9. Foundation (Construction of the foundation of the basement)
   
10. Steel (Construction of the steel work for the walls)
    
11. Walls (Construction of the walls)
    
12. Roof (Construction of the roof)
    
13. Wiring (Putting electrical wiring in the roof and walls.
    
14. Door (Demolition of the side of our house)
    
15. Ventilation (The basement is ready, and I can breath down there)
    
16. Stairs (Basement finished and the first time we could go down ourselves)
    
17. Isolation (Putting on some isolation and making it waterproof)
    
18. Heating (Putting in the pipes for the floor heating system)
    
19. Demoistering (Getting all the moisture out of the walls)
    
20. Cabling (Installing the cable guiding system)
    
21. Floor (Putting the final layer of the floor)
    
22. Garden (Finished construction and putting our garden back in place)
    

And here are also two video's we shot during construction

1. First Video Tour
2. Second Video Tour