19 December 2012

Happy Holidays and Groove end of Year Sale

First of all I'd like to wish you all happy holidays! Groove Unlimited has a nice gesture for you until the end of the year. They offer a 25% discount on all Groove Unlimited releases on both the CD store as the download store until the 31st of December 2012!
So if there is still some music you wanted to buy from Synth.nl, now would be a good time do do that :) Go to http://www.groove.nl and enjoy :) Unfortunately there were no Synth.nl releases in 2012, sorry for that, but I promise you there will be something new for sure in 2013! Talk you you all soon!

10 December 2012

DIY Rotating Clock Divider

It had been a while but last weekend I fired up the soldering iron again. This time not even for myself but for my friend Hans who is also into modular synthesizers. He asked me if I wanted to solder an euro rack size module for him. In this case it was a rotating clock divider with a break out box with some switches to control it. The whole thing came as a kit with documentation. So I started soldering right away along the documentation. During the process a couple of choices had to be made because you could make the kit behave as another function as well. But Hans wanted the Rotating Clock Divider functionality.

The start of the kit if quite straight forward, but at a certain moment you have to solder components on both sides. That can be a bit tricky sometimes and you do have to do that in the right order. On of the things that had to be soldered on the bottom side were the leds. They are colored leds, but they look clear. At first I didn't understand which led went where, because there are also colors on the front panel, that didn't match. This whole thing didn't make much sense to me, but it turned out that this was OK. They were stuck on a piece of paper in the right order.

Here is a picture of the finished kit with the break out box. There was one little ring missing from the kit to hold a mini jack on the front panel. When my friend Hans came here yesterday to pick it up I told him the bad news. I suggested to E-mail the supplier and let them send another ring. But then Hans pointed on my desk to a mini jack I had lying around and it had exactly the same ring, so I mounted that one for him. I can get those jacks any day at my local electronics store, so no problem. I just didn't assume that they could be exactly the same type.

Then came the exciting moment to test the module. I used my lab power supply to put the required 12 Volts on the module. I'm used to  turn the current limiter to 0 Amps and then gradually turning it up to see if it doesn't have any short circuits. This is a very safe method to test newly soldered DIY projects. It will save you power supply and prevent the module to burn up when you did make an error. Everything held well on 0,08 Amps though so that looked quite OK. Then I used a function generator to put a clock on the module and it started producing clock divisions nicely. So the module seemed to work just fine. Now Hans is probably playing with it at home. I hope he enjoys it :)

11 November 2012

EC2012 Video Interview with Stefan Erbe (In German)

During the Electronic Circus festival in Gutersloh I did a short video interview with Stefan Erbe. The interview is in the German language. I hope you enjoy it.

06 November 2012

E-Live 2012 Report

On the 27th of October I attended the E-live festival in Oirschot in The Netherlands. This Electronic Music event is organized yearly  by my record company Groove Unlimited. The day started with a nice event. The official release of the first release by Jeffrey Haster aka Synthex. His CD is called Pythagoras and I was glad to see that he sold out the 25 copies he had with him that day. Congratulations on the new album Jeffrey. I think it is quite an accomplishment for a 13 year old. I'm sure he will go a long way. You can get this album on the same place as you can find my music http://www.groove.nl/

After that I had to find Glenn Main. He traveled by plane from Norway and asked me if I could bring my Roland GAIA SH-01 again for him. That was no problem of course, I did the same thing for him when he played in Germany last year. Here you see us both in a very nice pictures taken by Aleksandra Przybylska who came all the way from Poland to visit the E-live festival. Thank you very much Aleksadra for the nice pictures you send me! Oh and the Synth.nl T-shirt you see in the picture was made by my wife and kids. Thank you very much for that as well girls :)

Then I got another nice surprise. The day before E-live I got an E-mail from Rob Papen telling me that his upcoming Book + DVDs about sound design were finished. He filmed for the DVDs in my studio last year and we kept in touch since then. So  I asked if he had plans during E-live and he didn't actually, so I invited him to come. I wasn't sure yet if he could make it he said, but eventually he did :) It was nice to talk to Rob again and a lot of people visiting the festival recognized him from his time in Nova and Peru. I hope it inspired Rob as well to make some music of his own again. My wife took this nice picture of us and Rob insisted in holding my Apollo album since he knew it liked it a lot he said. A nice compliment for sure :)

All in all I had a great day. I watched 3 concerts in total Glenn Main, Ruud Heij & Gert Emmens and Space Art. For the rest I had no time unfortunately. Normally on a day like this I'm very occupied by talking with everyone. I enjoyed myself a lot, but these days always fly by. There was also a set back. I planned to have the new Primitives album that I'm making together with Remy Stroomer ready, but we didn't make the deadline. We are still working on it. It is more work than we anticipated and we are both very busy as well with other things. I will keep you updated on the progress, but there is still no definitive release date set. I guess good things need time. All in all I have a great day and I probably forget a lot of stuff in this post, but one thing I don't want to forget and that is to thank Ron Boots and the rest of the E-live crew for yet another great E-live!

25 September 2012

Electronic Circus 2012 Report

Last weekend I visited the Electronic Circus festival in Gütersloh Germany. I already went there a day ahead because of the pre-gig dinner that is organized with the artists. We had a great dinner in a Greek restaurant with very good company and a super atmosphere. In the picture you just see Dominique Perrier arriving. Dominique is one of my old time heroes because he played with Jean Michel Jarre on stage for many years. It was very nice that the Space Art crew also joined in that dinner. Thanks to Bernard Poulard for taking this picture. All in all a great night that I ended with Remy Stroomer and his wife Paulien in some Biergarten in Bielefeld where my hotel was at. It was such a nice day already and the festival didn't even start yet :)

The next morning it was back to the venue to help Monique Boots and Eric van der Heijden to build up the Groove Unlimited (my record label) stall were we would sell CD's during the day. Unfortunately Ron Boots couldn't be there that day because he had to work in the music store. We really missed Ron, it was actually kind of strange not having him around on a festival like that. But I think we represented Groove Unlimited very well and actually sold quite some CD's. Well especially Monique did that. I didn't sell that much myself, but well no new releases unfortunately. I did have my nice talks with people about my music though.

Both Remy and I also brought a 10 minutes compilation demo of the new collaboration album we are working on. We both announced that on our Facebook pages and I had two people turning up that actually wanted to listen to it. I'm glad some people still read what I'm posting and are even interested in the music as well ;) Thanks guys! Luckily they were both very enthusiastic as well about what they heard so at least two people are looking forward now to the release of the Primitives album :) They both stated that they liked it a lot, but that it was not what they had in mind up front thinking of the combination Remy and Michel. So I guess we did make something very different and special :) Thanks to Hans-Herman Hess by the way for the previous two pictures. I hope he doesn't mind me using them.

During the day I did see some small parts of the concerts and it sounded all very good, but I did go in especially to watch the Space Art concert. I know their music for many years, since it is kind of pre-Jarre music in the 70's electronic music style. It was great to see these guys having so much fun on stage. They even did two encores after the audience just didn't want to let them leave. Remy Stroomer took a picture of me with the Space Art crew together. It was a real joy for me to meet Dominique Perrier again.

All in all I really had a great time! Even though I was exhausted on the end of the day. I was so glad that I had a hotel in the area and didn't have to drive back home. I would like to thank the whole Electronic Circus crew and especially Hans-Herman, Frank, Mike and Lutz for a really great day! I hope you will continue this festival next year. I'll reserve a spot in my agenda for it :)






14 September 2012

Synth.nl on Live Prog TV EM Introduction

Here is an introduction to Electronic Music for Prog Rock fans by Live Prog TV by Marcel Haster. It features my Apollo album but also some other very nice music like Erik Norlander, Can Atilla, Picture Palace Music, MorPheusz and Ron Boots. Enjoy :)

09 September 2012

New album with Remy will be called Primitives

At the moment I'm very busy working on a new collaboration album together with Remy Stroomer. We did a lot of sessions together in both our studios and things are getting shape. We have about 68 minutes of music divided over 9 tracks. I personally think this is going to be a very special collaboration. The mixture of Remy's Klause Schulze orientation and my Vangelis influence and also both our love for Jean Michel Jarre's music will make this a very interesting mix I think. We are still working hard and we were still planning for a release later this year, but we do not dare to name a release date yet. But we did decide on an album title. The album will be called 'Primitives'. We will let you wonder about why. I'm also working hard on the artwork. More details will follow as soon as possible.

Both Remy and myself will be present at both the Electronic Circus Festival in Guterloh Germany (http://www.electronic-circus.net/) on the 22th of September as on the E-live Festival in Oirschot in The Netherlands (http://www.e-live.nl) on the 27th of October. We wont make the release for Gutersloh, but Oirschot we are aiming for. I'm just not sure we will make it, still lots of work and we don't want to rush it. We WILL have a sneak preview with us though so you CAN take a listen for sure already. Talk to you soon!

05 September 2012

Keyboard Jeff visits Synth.nl Apollo Studio

Just before I went on holiday I had a visitor over in my studio. In the picture on the left you see 'Keyboard Jeff' aka 'Synthex' because of his love of the Elka you see him with. Jeffrey is 13 years old and a very talented keyboard player with a unfamiliar musical taste for a boy of his age. He doesn't play dance or whatever, but he likes 80's synthesizer music. I met him at the E-live festival in Eindhoven were he approached me and told me he knew all my music and my videos from my website. Later it turned out he had read my whole website and knew everything from the top of his head.

 He was telling me all the synthesizers that I had that he never played before and at a certain moment I just stopped him and asked if he wanted to play on them for real and offered him a visit to my studio. In the mean time I also talked to Ron Boots about Jeffrey and Ron knew him very well too, because he visited his studio too and Ron told me also that Jeffrey was working on his own music and he let me hear some stuff. I was very surprised it sounded very well actually :) Quite remarkable.

So a couple of weeks ago he came over together with his father took pictures and also filmed the whole meeting. It was fun to watch that Jeffrey just couldn't chose which synthesizer to play. He wanted to play them all at the same time and jumped around from joy in the studio. He also found his way to the big modular wall and amazingly enough didn't ask any question. He knew how to patch the modular from the top of his head. I know a lot of adult and experienced musicians that don't even know how to do that, let alone get something musically interesting from a modular. But he did :)

Then he asked me a question I wasn't prepared for. He asked if we could play some music together and even record it. Normally I don't do that at all unless I know someone for a while. I just don't feel comfortable with these kind of things. His father was filming the whole thing and I get very nervous from that. Normally I even stop playing when my wife walks in to the studio. But since I had some experience now  with playing together with Ron Boots and Remy Stroomer and I agreed to give it a try. At first it didn't go too well, but that is normal. You have to get used to each others style, especially chords and tempo.

Later on we did play some very nice things together Jeffrey's father told us. I actually never know what I'm playing until I hear it back ;) Most of the recordings didn't work though unfortunately because Jeffrey kept switching synths faster that I could keep up with assigning channels to the recording software. I did manage to record one jam though that turned out quite nice and there are two nice ones on film. I'm planning to put a video on youtube from this. Please keep in mind that these will be fully unprepared improvisations and there are mistakes in there for sure. But it was a lot of fun. Eventually Jeffrey's father had lot of trouble getting him back home, but I think we all enjoyed this day :)

04 September 2012

Nature in the USA Holiday Post

This is the last post in my series about our holiday. So far I posted a lot of technical things, but we also saw a lot of the nature in the US on our road trips. On the left you can see me filming something very special. We were on our way actually to the beach in Clearwater FL when we came to a stop in a traffic jam. There were a lot of people that pulled their car over to look at something in the water. We decided to do the same and get out of the car. At first it look like there was a whale stranded or something from the distance. So we decided to walk over there and have a look.

When we came closer though we saw that it were manatees. We could not figure out what there we doing do. At a certain moment a marina biologist arrived and he told us that these manatees were mating. A rare sight that even the locals stopped their cars for. I filmed the whole thing for a while and together with the manatees we filmed at Manatee Cove I might have enough material for another Synth.nl promotional video.

We have seen a lot of other things too, but I can't share them all on here, but this one I just had to show you. We visited the Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia. A really spectacular place to visit. The caves it itself are beautiful already, but they really outdid themselves with the lighting of the caves. It is hard to capture it on camera since it is so dark and photographing with flash spoils the mood, but I think this pictures gives a good idea.

And then of course we saw a lot of alligators. You just can not miss them in Florida. We did visit the Gatorland park in Florida, which is very nice, but this picture on the right was actually taken by my wife in the pond right next to our holiday house. I think it is a great picture that shows why you don't want to go for a swim in the open water over there. The alligators are literally everywhere. Well enough about the alligators for now.

We also had a less pleasant up close encounter with the wildlife of Florida right at our house. Unfortunately there we had some cockroaches in the house that even pest control couldn't really get rid of. Every day we encountered a few of them, not very nice to have in your house I can tell you, but I guess that comes with the heat and humidity as well. Last year we didn't see any though. Well enough about that too. All in all we had a very nice holiday to look back on and even though we did a lot, we also had some time to relax like enjoying the beach in Clearwater under a parasol. And now. Back to work ;)

28 August 2012

Working this weekend on album with Remy Stroomer

At the moment I'm working hard on the mixing and production of the album that I'm collaborating on with Remy Stroomer. It is always more work than you think. Remy is coming over this weekend so that we can make some decisions together on the mix and production of some tracks. We are both very busy at the moment and sometimes it takes a while to get tracks back and forth over the internet. Sitting together with time dedicated to the music will help the progress of this project I guess. I'm looking forward to working with Remy again this weekend. I'll let you know how it went after the weekend.

27 August 2012

New Groove Unlimited Blog

Last weekend I visited Ron Boots and his family for a BBQ and we talked a bit about social media. I asked if maybe it was a good idea to start a weblog for Groove Unlimited and he was enthusiastic right away. So that is what we did. The blog will be about Groove Unlimited's releases, artists and also about Ron Boots personal stuff and his own music of course. We are going to ask the other Groove Unlimited artists to join in as well, so you can expect some articles by me as well I guess :) You can find the new blog on this URL: http://groovenl.blogspot.com

23 August 2012

Nascar and more nice car stuff

Some of you know that I'm a big car enthousiast. I like anything that goes fast :) When we were planning our trip to the USA I started looking if there was any racing going on near the places we were going to visit and it turned out there was. We were going to drive right past Indianapolis and there was a Nascar race there with still enough tickets available. So we decided to plan our trip to Detroid around this date. I never saw any American racing before and was very exited to go there.

When we finally got there we found out immediately that we actually didn't know much about Nascar at all. There are two main competitions at the same time. The Nation Wide Cup and the Sprint Cup. Same idea but different engines. Qualifying is about the highest speed. The noise is very very different for European racing. It was great to  be at the Indy Speedway. You can feel the historic atmosphere at this circuit and the Americans do know how to make a show of course. In the picture on the right you can see a lot of press gathering around Danica Patrick, a female driver that later crashed her car. We had great seats and even the wife and kids seem to enjoy them selves after they got some ear protection.

After the visit to Nascar we drove on to our friends in Michigan. They live in a small city called Brighton and it turns out that during the summer they have their own local car show EVERY Sunday. The whole center of the town is filled with special cars. Most of them are custom build with very proud owners showing them of. Most of them don't only have done a lot of work on the exterior and interior of the car but also the engines. A lot of them were totally chromed! Amazing. And most of them also installed engine tuning to get the engine power to amazing numbers. The whole atmosphere was so relaxed there with even live music and a lot of stalls to eat. Amazing they do that EVERY Sunday :)

But they had an even bigger surprise in stock for us. Our friend works in the car industry and know a lot of people. One of them has a very big car collection called the 'Lingenfelter Collection' and we got a private tour there. There are about 150 cars there and they are all very special. Some custom build, but also my two favorite Ferrari super cars were standing next to each other there :) I knew most of the European cars in there especially the Italian ones. But we learned a lot about the early Corvettes, Camaros, Fords etc. The nice thing was also that the guy that did the tour knew every detail about all those cars and it was a joy to listen to a real enthusiast like that. Well that was it for now. I took a lot of pictures of course, but we also filmed a bit, so maybe you'll see some clips on YouTube in the future as well.

17 August 2012

Back to Kennedy Space Center

I promised some more about our holiday, well one of my highlights was another visit to the Kennedy Space Center. We were there last year, but I forgot to film some things so we decided to go back and also do another tour. When we finally arrived I realized though that I forgot my camera! How stupid is that? It was an 1,5 drive so too far to go back for it and we had a tour planned that left right when we got there. Fortunately we had an Iphone 4S with us that has quite a good camera so we used that, but I was quite upset when we arrived. Well that was the only negative thing so let's go on. Here is a picture of me standing in the rocket garden. A really nice place where you can see some real size models of the Gemini and Mercury rockets.

Another reason I wanted to go back is that they had a new tour that was only available for a limited time. We could visit the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) that NASA used to assemble the Saturn V rockets during the Apollo program and also all the Space Shuttles. We had seen the building from far away a couple of times but never up close. It is not difficult to spot it by the way since it is 160 meters high. The whole Saturn V rocket could stand in it straight up on its mobile launch pad with the crawler vehicle beneath it. So we booked this tour and went on our way.

The size of the VAB is amazing. You can't even take a picture of it up close. I tried it, but couldn't get far enough away. The picture you see above was taken from the bus. Around the VAB is also a lot of nice stuff. One of the crawlers was out there and also the mobile launch platform and parts of the tower. But the nicest part of this tour was that we could not only watch on the outside, but we could also go INSIDE! That was very special for me. There was a lot of security, but we understood later why. There were already parts in there from the new Orion rocket NASA is developing. In 5 years this rocket must be ready and will be about the size of the Saturn V. It will take us back to the Moon and it will go to Mars (hopefully).

Inside the VAB was another big surprise. The actual Atlantis Space Shuttle that made the last flight when we were in Florida last year was there! We saw it land and now we could see it up close and inside the VAB :) A sight not many people will ever see again I guess. The Atlantis Space Shuttle will stay at Kennedy Space Center and will be on display in the future in a special building that are creating now, but for the time being it will be here. Also the van that they have used since the Apollo program to transport the astronauts to the launch pad was in there.

After the VAB visit we went on to the famous Launch Pads 39A and 39B where all the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions launched from. The whole Space Shuttle tower was still there from the last mission. We were really close there, but I chose this picture because I liked it with the train tracks in front of it. All in all it was a great tour. Last night when we were home we watched the movie Apollo 13 again with the kids so that they could put it all in perspective. Well I also have enough film material now to make a nice video from our two visits. So keep your eye our on YouTube.

16 August 2012

Back from 4 week Holiday in the USA

We just got back from a 4 week holiday in the USA. We did quite a tour starting and ending in Florida. We stayed in the Florida area for 2 weeks, then we drove all the way up to the Detroit area in Michigan to visit some friends who live there were we stayed for a couple of days and drove back again. We crossed 11 States in total and did a LOT of nice things during this holiday. Too much for one post and  I only want to share the special stuff with you, but even then it won't fit in one post, so more will follow after this.

It all started with the flight from Amsterdam to Orlando. 10 hours of flight, seems boring, but it always gives me some time to listen to some music. Normally I hardly ever have time for that. Arriving in Orlando we picked up a car we rented for the whole stay and drove it to the house we rented for the whole stay. A very nice house I must say with a pool in the garden and also a pool table in the garage :) This would be our permanent base for  the whole holiday even though we knew we were going on a road trip for a couple of days. We didn't know exactly how long though and this way we could leave some stuff behind so that we didn't have to bring all of our luggage on the road trip where we would hop from hotel to hotel.

We did a lot in the Florida area like Sea World (yes again) the kids just love that, but we also visited Disney's Animal Kingdom, Gator Land Kennedy Space Center. We had lots of nice lunches and dinners and yes we gained a few pounds. The US is not a good place to go on a diet I guess ;) At least not for us. On the road trip we also visited some nice places like Dinosaur World, the Shanadoah Caverns, The Indianapolis Speedway, and of course our good friends Jay and Michelle who also took us on some nice trips. I'll go into more details on some of this stuff in the follow up posts :) It was all too much to remember even.

The last picture for this post that I wanted to share with you is the one on the right. This is what happens if you put 4 computer nerds on a road trip and they arrive in a hotel. Yes batteries flat on all the nerd devices. So in immediate power surge and then you can go to sleep until the batteries are charged again. My daughters missed their grand parents a lot, so they skyped with them almost every day. Even from the car. They even had internet in the car through a mobile WiFi hotspot we got with a prepaid 4G mobile card. But the little nerds complaint from time to time of course that it was too slow ;) A well I'm glad that we are back home again, but we had a great holiday. And I'll tell you some more about at least my highlights in some follow up posts.

08 August 2012

Van Osenbruggen Productions Blog

Since I want to differentiate more between my different activities and the fact that I'll start even more in the future (more information will follow), I just started a new Blog for my 3D and Design activities that I do under the name 'Van Osenbruggen Productions'. So if you are interested in these activities do follow me on those other pages. I just started a new Facebook page as well and opened a new Twitter account that I will use for this in the future. You can find everything here:

 I had to be creative here and there with login names and URLs since some were already taken. I hope you will follow my 3D work in the future as well. Thanks! I will keep on posting the Synth.nl videos of course on here as well.

05 August 2012

Hypnogogue Apollo Review

Recently I was pointed out to this review from Hypnagogue of my latest solo album Apollo from 2011. I thought it would be nice to share it with you:

Synth.NL's well-honed mastery of classic analog/Berlin music gets an extra dose of theme on his 2011 release, Apollo. This rocket-fueled joyride whooshes through a dozen sequencer-based scenarios, abetted by soundbites taken from Mission Control recordings. Michel van Osenbruggen neatly captures the feel of our early jaunts into space, from the rush of takeoff to the grace of zero-G to the expectation of splashdown. Many of the tracks here are powered by deep, rich bass lines, a solid and funky bedrock that perfectly supports his higher-end flights. This is at its best in the patient movement of "Docking." The bass tiptoes along like the subtle and deliberate manipulations of the docking craft. At the same time, van Osenbruggen manages to pipe in a feeling of suspense. Apollo truly hits its stride when it's going full-speed. "Apollo 11" catches me with a moment of sudden acceleration that puts me in mind of the 80s New Romantic band Classix Nouveaux--a burst of dance-worthy electro-pop groove that's pure fun. Appropriately, "Reentry" is uptempo and energetic, but also carries a great hopeful feel--the sense of heading toward victory.  The gentler pieces also excel in conveying the theme. "Earthrise" coasts along on a flute-like sequencer. Plucked notes reminiscent of the work of Ray Lynch carry the melody and paint a picture of the big blue marble coming into view in the distance. "Apollo 8" is a perfect floating spacemusic construct with Berlin influences at the edges. Electronic twiddles dance in the space around van Osenbruggen's graceful melody. The overall atmosphere of Apollo, if you'll pardon the pun, is wonderfully amplified by the voice samples. They create a real sense of narrative. van Osenbruggen is telling a story he's very passionate about, and he puts that straight into the music. Apollo is a lot of fun to listen to, particularly at volume. (Drive with this on and you may likely exceed all local speed limits.) Kudos also to van Osenbruggen for his detailed liner notes. He gives a bit of history about the flight or mission aspect that each track is named. Again, it's one more bit of effort that makes the disc stand out.
Available from Groove Unlimited. More information on http://www.synth.nl/Apollo

04 August 2012

Wooden Pinball Animation

And another animation I did in Cinema 4D. This is an old Wooden Pinball machine that kids used to play with made from just some wood and nails. Everything is calculated by the physics engine of Cinema 4D and rendered with the new Physical Render engine including the motion blur.

Stair Balls Animation

I recently did this animation in Cinema 4D. A lot of balls bouncing down some stairs. Everything is calculated by the physics engine of Cinema 4D and rendered with the new Physical Render engine including the motion blur.

15 July 2012

Groove Download Shop Recommendations

Hi by now Ron Boots has added all Groove Products in the new download shop both as MP3 and FLAC. It is nice to see that everything works perfectly and people are ordering their favorite music. Of course you know you can buy my music there, but there is much more nice music in there. I thought it would be nice to share some of my personal favorite Groove titles with you. These are albums that I personally like and you can get them in an instance when you want. In no particular order:
  • Ron Boots - Acoustic Shadows (mp3, flac)
  • Gert Emmens - A Boy's World (mp3, flac)
  • Eric van der Heijden - Da Capo (mp3, flac)
  • Nattefrost - Underneath the Night Sky (mp3, flac)
  • Johan Timman - Trip into the Body (mp3, flac)
We also added two new buttons in the menu on the left that take you instantly to the new FLAC and MP3 products.  Go and have a look on https://shop.groove.nl

09 July 2012

Garden Party 2012 Report

Recently I visited the Garden Party in Hamm Germany that was organized by the crew of Electronic Circus. It is one of the nicest event in the year I think. Very cozy and a very informal atmosphere whith a BBQ, drinks and some Electronic Music. This year I also had another job. Some of the artists (like Glenn Main in the picture on the left) were traveling light and asked me to bring some equipment for them. I brought my Roland GAIA for Glenn and also my Yamaha AN1X for Rene Splinter.

In the picture on the right you see Rene Splinter playing and my AN1X on the bottom. Also Stephan Schällmann used my synths in his performance as TAX5. They all played a very nice concert that I enjoyed a lot. Normally I like to  stay late on these kind of events but around 23:00 I got really tired and decided to drive back. This was maybe a bad idea and I could better have looked for a hotel. I still had a 2 hour drive a head of me and I really struggled to stay awake on the way back. Actually it was a bit dangerous. So next time I really should arrange for a hotel.

But besides that I really enjoyed this years event again to the fullest. The weather was great, people were nice and the food was good. If you never visited this event I'd really recommend you to put it on your calendar for next year. I want to thank the Electronic Circus crew for organizing such a great event. I'd also like to thank Phil Booth for providing these pictures. I seem to always forget to take pictures. OK next event will be the Electronic Circus in Gütersloh Germany on the 22th of September 2012. Also a great event not to be missed. Maybe I'll see you there :)

Docking Fan Video

Here is a very nice video that Rob made. Enjoy it and give him some credits :)

07 July 2012

New Groove Unlimited Download Shop with FLACs !!

I have some great news. It has taken a lot of work, but the new Groove Unlimited Download Shop is open!!! At this moment you can already buy a lot of titles as MP3 and FLAC and Ron Boots is very busy filling up the shop with even more titles. But at this moment all my Synth.nl albums are already in there and you can buy them as 256 kbit/s CBR MP3 or in the Full Quality Lossless FLAC format. FLAC is a compression method that doesn't alter the audio at all so you get the same quality as the CD but cheaper and no shipping costs etc. All the artwork for all my albums is included and I have personally checked all the audio files. You can pay by Ideal (bank transfer), PayPal and major credit cards via PayPal at the moment. Soon also Mastercard, Visa and American Express will be directly available, but we are still waiting for the payment provider to get the contracts in order. We didn't want to wait for this to put the site online though. When your order is complete and payed you will receive an E-mail with the download link directly and you can listen right away! As you might have read before I have build this web shop for Groove Unlimited and I'm very proud that it is finally online. So go have a look and buy some nice stuff :) Groove Unlimited deserves some reward as well for all the hard work I guess in ripping all the CD's and making them available for you in this very easy way ;) So go over now to https://shop.groove.nl and look around!

Adobe Edge and HTML5 Video Project

I did another project with Adobe Edge. This time I made an animation that shows my video projects on the first page of http://www.osenbruggen.nl. When you click an icon a HTML5 YouTube player pops up. You can click next to it to close the video. I hope that is clear enough by the way. I hope you like it. I plan to do the same thing on the rest of the website, but it is a lot of work so that can take some time :) I also changed the menu of the website to make more room for this animation. I guess the website will be a work in progress for a while. I tested the animation on Firefox, Explorer, Safari and Chrome and also on an Ipad and an Android tablet. It seems to work even though on an Ipad the auto start of the video doesn't work. Well please let me know if you encounter any problems. Go to the website to see it: http://www.osenbruggen.nl

02 July 2012

First Adobe Edge Experiment on Synth.nl website

Today I also did my first little animation in Adobe Edge. Edge is a new product that is still in preview stage. It outputs animations using HTML5 technology, so it works without the use of Flash and it is supported by all modern browsers now. In the background it uses also JQuery JavaScript libraries. I'm starting to test with this since more and more people use mobile devices that don't support Flash and even Adobe seems to be abandoning Flash on the long run. You can help me by letting me know if it worked for you. If not please let me know which operating system and browser you are using. You should see the albums on the top of the screen on my main website http://www.synth.nl/ animating on. And you should be able to click them to go to the album pages. There is still a Flash mp3 player on these pages, but I plan to find an alternative for that as well in the future. If you are interested in Adobe Edge you can still download the test version for free from Adobe Labs for now. I also centered all the YouTube objects by the way to make the website better looking on Ipads.

New Osenbruggen Productions Webdesign

The last few days I did a lot of work updating my Osenbruggen Productions website. I redid the header with a background image that I made in Vue 10. So it is not a photograph, but a computer rendered image. The rest was done in Cinema 4D. I also did a lot of work on the menus so now it is easier to click through all the images and animations on the website. I'm still looking for some nice jobs for 3D animations work by the way ;) I hope you like the new design. You can find the website on http://www.osenbruggen.nl