New Studio PC

I told you I'm currently rebuilding my studio. The first thing that really needed an update was my studio PC. I ran on a quad core2duo with 4 Gbyte of RAM and Windows Vista 32 bits for a long time, but it started to crash on me. I wanted to upgrade to Windows 8.1 anyway and get more inputs in the machine. I had two RME PCI MADI cards in there and a UAD2 quad card. So time for an upgrade :)

Here is a picture of some of the parts that went in there. I decided to use the same ASRock X79 extreme6 motherboard that I use in my render servers for the render farm and also the same Hexacore I7 processor. I put in 32 Gbyte of RAM and a OCZ Vertex 4 SSD to boot the OS from and run my applications. I got a new UAD-2 Octo card and the quad will move to my mastering PC that still had an UAD-1. This one is no longer supported and doesn't run moders plugins anymore. And finally a RME PCIe MADI fx card with 3 MADI inputs and outputs giving me 192 channels of digital audio in and out!

Here is the finished result. After this I started installing. Unfortunately it didn't work out as easy as I had hoped. The Windows 8.1 installation went like a breeze. Also the RME card drivers installed easily, but when I wanted to install the UAD-2 card every time Windows crashed with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Not nice. First I replaced the power supply since the old one was only 430 Watt. The new one is 700 Watt, but this did help unfortunately. Then I moved the UAD-2 to another PCIe slot and that did the trick. Then it installed and also worked! After this I had trouble again with the RME card. I used the WDM and had digital artifacts on my audio signal. I switched to ASIO and then everything was fine. I don't really understand why, but to be honest I don't care :) ASIO works fine and I was using that on my old PC too. Now I have to install all my software and see if I can open my old projects that I'm still working on. But the first step is made in the studio upgrade.

Jeffrey visits Apollo Studio Again

Yesterday I was visited by Jeffrey again (AKA Synthex). He bought a Doepfer Dark Energy that didn't track very well, so firstly we calibrated and tuned it. Then Jeffrey finally got to play on the Elke Synthex that worked prefectly yesterday. Unfortunately that is not always the case. After that he recorded some music for a new album on several synths like the Jupiter 8, Minimoog and EMS VCS3. We had a great time as usual and for me it was actually good to have a break from my work finally. When they left I did a little extra work on one track that is taking shape quite well already. Then I exported all the tracks to WAV to Jeffrey can work on it in his own studio. It was nice to be in the studio again and I really must make some music of my own again soon :) Jeffreys father also filmed a bit, so I'm sure there will be a video on youtube soon. I will post it on my blog as well if I see it.

iHeartSynths interview

I recently did a very nice interview with iHeartSynth.com about my studio and my music. I also made some new pictures for them to go along with the interview. One thing I also tell in the interview is that I removed the studio part on my Synth.NL website. I will try to keep you updated from time to time on this blog, so be sure to subscribe or look once in a while. You can find the interview on this URL: http://www.iheartsynths.com/artist-interviews/synth-nl/. I hope you enjoy it.

New Mutec Word Clock Generator

 I have a lot of digital out board gear that needs to synchronize. For this I use Word Clock. So far I used an Apogee Big Ben to generate and distribute the clock signal, but it has only 6 outputs. This means you have to make a lot of loops and terminate them. Recently I had some trouble with my clocking and it looked like a loose terminator or connector, but go find that :( I could solve it by fiddling around at the cables, but this was only a temporary solution. So I decided this was one of the first things on my list to solve with the studio rebuild.

At first I looked for an extra distributor to replicate the Big Ben's signal, but eventually I chose to replace it by this Mutec iD + iD dp. I already had some equipment from them and it is really good stuff. This clock generator has 16 Outputs! This meant that I could seriously avoid looping the signal though several chains, but that I could attach more equipment directly to this clock generator. Today I decided to remove all BNC wires from the Big Ben and put this one in. As you can see in the picture it is in the same spot now.

And here is what I was left with after the operation. I replaced all cables by version that were as short as possible and removed as much T-connectors and terminators as possible, since they are usually the source of all clocking connection troubles. Where possible I used the internal 75 ohm termination of the equipment itself. Most digital equipment has a switch to select whether you want termination or not.

And here is the good old Big Ben on it way to someone else. I already sold it. It is a good machine and it has helped me trough several album recordings, but for me 6 outputs is not enough. They really should consider making a version with more outputs.

After I hooked everything up again and checked if all equipment was synched to Word Clock again, I did some testing and was curious if I could hear any difference. It might be my mind playing with me, but I had the idea the sound was a bit brighter than before. But the problem is with these kind of things that you can't really be objective. But the most important thing is everything works again and is clocking like new :) More updates soon. For today it was enough of a job :) You can find more information on Mutec here: http://www.mutec-net.com

Clavia Nord Lead 4 in the Studio

You all know by now I guess I have a thing for Clavia synthesizers. I still remember the first time I saw Jean Michel Jarre play the Nord Lead 1 when he introduced it during his concert in Rotterdam. I just had to have one. It was the first virtual analog synthesizer back then. In the mean time Clavia did quite some improvements and just introduced the 4th model: The Nord Lead 4. This time it has an extra effects section, just like they did on the Nord Wave.

In the effects section there is also a drive button, that gives the sound a subtle overdrive effect. I really like that. It has again become a more mature synthesizer than the Nord Lead 2 I was used too, even though I have the impression that the Nord Lead 2 sound a bit more 'raw'. As you can see in the picture on the right there are actually 4 Clavia's in my studio now. I'm doubting if I will keep the Nord Lead 2 but, the Nord Modular G2X en Nord Wave are actually quite different synthesizers. I had to let one machine go, since the studio is full. So if something goes in something has to go out. This time I sold the M-Audio Venom. It was nice for a while, but not special enough to keep. For now I will be making some presets for the Nord Lead 4. Hopefully that will give me some inspiration to start some new music soon. Keep an eye on this blog. More news is coming soon. I'm actually rebuilding the studio a bit and of course I will keep you posted on the blog on this project.

New Synths in the Studio

After a very long time of buying completely nothing, suddenly I saw a synthesizer that has been on my wish list for the collection from day one. Never before I found one for sale in a condition like this one. It is an EMS 'Putney' VCS3. It is quite a rare synthesizer that was made in 1969. That is also the year that I was born, so that makes it extra special for me. It is a modular synthesizer that became famous famous because of its unique joystick, envelope fire button and the patch matrix. The matrix works with little pins and is actually quite convenient compared to plugging in patch cables to modules.

The machine is really in a great state, everything works and I'm so proud :) There is actually one in the London science museum you know :) That was the last time I saw one. The EMS's are actually perfect for creating sound effects and that is what Jean-Michel Jarre has used it for a lot. He made EMS famous together with Pink Floyd I guess who made there famous 'on the run' sequence on it. Well on the right is a nice pictures of the other machine I love for sound effects the ARP 2600.

And here is another syntesizer that I added to the collection. It is a Sequential Circuits Pro One. It is of the same make as the famous Prophet 5. This one is monophonic though. It is supposed to be great for bass sounds. To be honest I never played on one before, so this is new territory for me as well. A very nice feature is that it also has a sequencer on board. I can't wait to play around with it, but first I have to have a go at the VCS3 :)

Synth.nl Apollo Documentary by Thomas de Rijk

In 2010 I was contacted by Thomas de Rijk who was studying at that time at the Willem de Kooning Film Academy in Rotterdam. He asked if I wanted to cooperate in a documentary for his school project. And of course I agreed. He made this very cool documentary about my burn-out and how I got into producing my own music. I think he did a great job! The documentary is in the Dutch language, but it has English subtitles. I hope you enjoy it. I has some nice NASA HD footage (courtesy NASA) and also some nice shot from my Apollo Studio. It took a while before it ended up online, but here it is:) The music you hear is coming from my Apollo album. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks a lot Thomas!

Bellorob Apollo 9 Fan Video

Bellerob made this very cool video of my 'Apollo9' track from the 'Apollo' album. Enjoy :)

Solar Power for my Apollo Studio

For all of you that always worry about the power that my studio uses. Even though it even isn't so much as many think. (the whole studio is on one 16 Amp fuse). But I have good news for you. The whole studio is solar powered now! I put 13 solar panels on the roof of our garage. They are 250 Watt Peak each so that is a total of 3250 Wp. It isn't even that sunny yet in The Netherlands but they are working hard already. 55 KWh in 3 days time. So from now on my music is totally CO2 free!

Here is the inside unit. It doesn't not only deliver the power to  the house, but also measures it. On the display you can see the power it delivers. I have already seen 2900 Watt during the afternoon when the sun was pointing directly at the panels and the summer still has to start :) I also ordered a network interface for this unit so that I can read it out from my PC. It makes nice graphs from the measurements. The last thing to do now is get the power company to install an intelligent measurement unit as well so I can see how much power we do and how much is coming from the solar panels. And I also have to file some papers to apply for subsidy from the local government here.

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 :)

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 :)

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

Docking Fan Video

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

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!

EarthRise in Astreaux World Top 10

Today I received a Twitter that the song 'EarthRise' from my recent 'Apollo' album made the Top 10 listener votes on the radio station Astreaux World. It is nice to see that people are still playing this release on the radio :) I was just talking last weekend during the Swingungen Garden Party in Hamm Germany that it is amazing how much music is released and how quickly people forget about it again. I want to thank Astreaux World for the airplay and of course the listeners for voting! a 9.5 is a nice score :) Thanks!

3D Demo Reel 2011

This is an overview of the 3D Animation work I did in the last year. I tried to make a little compilation that shows a good average of what I can do. All animations were made in Cinema 4D. The music I put under it is the track 'Apollo 9' from my 2011 Apollo album. More information about Apollo here: http://www.synth.nl/Apollo. More information about my graphics work here: http://www.osenbruggen.nl

Eventide H8000 Back from USA

My H8000 was broken a while ago and I have tried to repair it myself, but didn't really succeed. Eventually I decided to sent it to Eventide in the USA to let them have a look and they found that the socket for the main processor was loose. This seems to be a common problem, so they desoldered the socket from the PCB and soldered the SMD mounted main processor directly on the PCB. Besides that they also repaired the big dial knob on the front panel. Last week I got it back and I started playing around with it. Man what a machine this is. I wouldn't want to miss it again. I bought an Eventide H4000DSP in the mean to fill in the gap. It has a couple of the same presets. Now that the H8000 is back I'm going to sell the H4000DSP again.

Apollo Promo Video to Thank you Voters!

Because I'm so happy that Apollo won the 'Best international CD 2011' price at the German Schallwelle Awards I made this video to thank you all who voted for me! I made this video originally for a lecture my oldest daughter. Enjoy :)

Apollo Best International CD of 2011 at Schallwelle!

I just recovered from a very long and exciting day yesterday at the Schallwelle electronic music award ceremony in Bochum Germany. I knew I was nominated with 4 other artists, but since the competition was very fierce I didn't expect to win at all. Then when the category 'best international CD' came up I suddenly heard my name with my Apollo album as the winner. I was in total shock since I had to go up front to the podium and a microphone was put under my nose. I had a total blackout and no idea what I said. Ah well nobody looked weird at me afterwards so I guess it was OK. I was (and still am) very happy of course to win this award. An honor to be picked by both the audience and jury from a long list of albums. Another nice thing was that my friend Eric van der Heijden won the 'best artist international' category. And Ron Boots our label owner and good friend was sitting right in between us. He had a good day too :) He was so happy that he announced a 10% discount in the Groove Unlimited webshop for our music the coming week.  I want to thank you all for voting, because that got me nominated in the first place and helped with the final result for sure! Thank you, thank you, thank you :) Well this certainly motivates me to go and make some new music to thank you all. You can read more about the price/event and all the other winners on this website: http://schallwelle-preis.de/. When I have more pictures I will post some nice ones as well. More information on the album here: http://www.synth.nl/apollo (in case you don't know it yet).

Apollo made the top 5 at Schallwelle awards!

I'm very proud to say that my Apollo album made the top 5 in the Schallwelle awards for best international album of the year. I will be present during the award ceremony that will take place on the 10th of March this year. There are still tickets for sale if you want to attend too. You can find more information on http://www.schallwelle-preis.de/. On that website you can also find the other nominees. As you can see the competition is fierce. I don't expect to win, but I'm very happy to be in this list again. I'll be happy anyway because when I don't win I don't have to give a speech in front of all those people. That is some kind of price for me as well ;) So good news anyway. Thank you all so much for voting! I really appreciate it. This motivates me to go and make more music again.