Synth.nl at E-Live 2008 on Saturday

Next Saturday (11th of October) I will be present with a stall at the E-live festival in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. E-live is an Electronic Music festival that my label Groove Unlimited organizes yearly. There will be several concerts to see and in the main hall a lot of CD's are sold. Only Electronic music. On my stall I will sell my CD's, some T-shirts and of course my new album 'AtmoSphere' will be there for sale, since it will be released on this day. I'm really looking forward to this event. There are still tickets available, so if you want to pick up your copy of the album in person from me, come to Eindhoven on Saturday. You can find more information on the festival on this URL: http://e-live.groove.nl/. I hope to see you there.

EMU Proteus 2500

I have been looking to buy an EMU Proteus synthesizer for my collection for a long time, but most of them are 1 rack space high and lack controls. Well until I found this one :) This is the most extensive of them all and they are quite rare. It is a Proteus 2500. Yesterday evening I tried it out. The sounds are quite OK, of course it is still a rompler, but especially the filters are very nice. And there are a lot of models to choose from. The internal effects are not so good in my opinion, but you can easily switch them of and use external ones. But the greatest thing is that it has a lots of nice controls on the front to edit the preset sounds into your own. I already made some cool soundscapes and pads. It also has a build in sequencer an arpeggiator, very nice to use. It is a nice machine to use for the basis of a nice jam. It also has SPDIF out. I like that on a synthesizer. No need for AD/DA convertors. I'll try to find a nice spot for it in the new Apollo studio later.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 14)

Finally the rain stopped for a moment, so construction continued. Here you see another shot of how things look like now. You can see that the basements are ready. Again we took pictures from the roof of our neighbors for the nicer angle. At least on the outside it looks finishes now, but on the inside still a lot of work still has to be done, but I still haven't seen that. Today they also stopped pumping the water out and removed the whole draining installation. So lets hope the whole thing is waterproof indeed :)

The constructor also started to put the sand/clay back where it came from. I'm very happy that they started on the side where the garden of our neighbors collapsed so that at least it wont be able to collapse any further now. They are using a very small digging machine now and they actually drive the thing on the roof of our basement. I'm sure it is strong enough, but it is still a strange idea. The whole basement is packed now in isolation material by the way to keep the cold out later.

Another thing that stopped today, besides the rain, is the silence we enjoyed the last days. As you can see in the picture on the left the constructor (or should I say destructor) started to tear down a part of the wall on the side of our house today. Some of you wondered where the door would come. Well here it is :) You can probably imagine that this operation is quite noisy and at the moment I'm at home with a flu. This doesn't really help to stop my headache I'm afraid :( I'll be very happy when they stop working today.

And to make the feast complete this is our front door entrance on the inside. There is a whole there to go under our house. At the moment they are also drilling holes there. They are taking water and electricity etc. from under here and bringing it to the new basement. Ah well let's keep the thought that it is all for a good cause :) Our dog doesn't like it very much either by the way. She is going nuts here from the noise. My wife just rang the kennel if they had a spot and they did. So we decided to give her a couple of days rest there. OK I think that was enough update for a day :) I'm going to put my headphones back on and make some noise of my own.

AtmoSphere music on TDFZ radio

Chris Newman from TDFZ Radio (Tangerine Dream Fanzone Radio) introduced my new album 'AtmoSphere' on his show this Saturday. It is a podcast so don't worry that you missed anything. It will be up for download for some time. I hope you will enjoy the show, lots of nice other music was be played as well. Chris played two of my new tracks. Thanks a lot Chris!

You can find the podcast from on this URL:
http://www.tdfz.mypodcast.com/

Chris also did a very nice one hour special recently on my previous album with also an interview. It is still online as well on this URL.

http://www.mypodcast.com/fsaudio/tdfz_20080808_1611-274488.mp3

So be sure to listen to that one already then :)

AtmoSphere Pre-ordering from Groove Unlimited

It is now possible to pre-order my new album 'AtmoSphere' directly from my record label Groove Unlimited. They have their own webshop for this. You will be among the first people to receive it after the release date (11th of October). They do ship World Wide and accept all kind of payments including PayPal. And of course when you don't have it yet, look at my first album 'AeroDynamics' as well. It will save you shipping if you order them at the same time ;) I'm sure 'AtmoSphere' will be available from other places as well later, like 'AeroDynamics', but that will take some time. You can find it now on this URL: http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?attnum=6001. If you have any questions just let me know. And thanks for your support!

Spectracsonics Omnisphere

I have always been a big fan of all Spectrasonics software. I got a very nice upgrade offer since I already had all their software. So I ordered it right away. Nice to see how their boxshot matches my CD cover by the way :) I tried it out right away. It comes on 9 DVD's and it takes about 45 minutes per DVD to instal. You should plan some time for that. The total installation will set you back 50 Gbytes on your harddisk. My first impression was quite good. I wasn't as blown away as I expected to be after watching the video's. But it is a very good successor to their 'Atmosphere' synth (nice name). Only much more sounds and sound sources and now you have the ability to create your own sounds as well. Either from the samples that some with it or using the included synthesizer engine. I'm sure I will be using this synthesizer in the future. I like especially the ever evolving moody sounds it can create.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 13)

Last week the constructor started working on the roof of the studio. The first thing they did is put on large concrete plates. On top of that a maze from steel was made again that will reinforce the concrete that will be put on later. Also the electrician put in the pipes for the electrical wiring. We made two light spots in the studio and 4 places to get electricity from. Besides that I asked them to put in extra pipes for my surround monitoring setup. These active monitors will be attached to the ceiling so I needed two pipes per speaker one for the audio signal and one for the power. There will be one switch later to turn all the monitors on and off at once. Very convenient.

After this they put on a layer of concrete. You can just see the steel framework left in the corner. They straightened the whole thing by hand. Quite impressive to see. Of course the concrete is fluid for a while so they can still manipulate it. They also left a hole that you can see in the back of the picture. Though this opening (that will be bigger later) the stairs that will lead down will be fitted eventually. I find it still difficult to imagine how it will all look later, but I guess it will be alright :)

At the moment they put the concrete on it was very sunny weather. The constructor was actually afraid that it would dry too quickly. This could lead to potential cracks he said. So he asked us to put water on it after a few hours and again the next morning. Here you see my wife watering the concrete. It was already dry enough to stand on here. Quite nice that we can go outside already again. My wife and the kids also went down in the basement last weekend. It was quite an echo well they said. Which confirms that we will have a lot of work to get the acoustics right later. But we did anticipate on that. We'll see what they are going to do next this week. I hope at least they can close the gap to our neighbor's garden so that this can't be ruined any further. I'll keep you posted.

First AtmoSphere Samples online

I just put new samples online from my new 'AtmoSphere' album. It is always difficult to make a good selection , but I think these tracks will give you a good idea what the album sounds like. Please note that these are just low quality mp3 samples. The quality on the CD will be much better and of course the CD holds 12 tracks and is about 71 minutes long. I hope you will enjoy these tracks and if you like them please buy the album later, since that will make it possible for me to do another release in the future. You can find the music on this URL:

http://www.synth.nl/AtmoSphere

I hope you will enjoy it. I'm looking forward to the release on the 11th of October.

AtmoSphere music on Syndae Saturday

During the Electronic Circus in Bielefeld I met Stefan from the very nice Syndae podcast. He did a nice promotion towards this festival. From now on he will promote the E-live festival in Eindhoven. This festival is organized by Groove Unlimited and there they will also release my new album 'AtmoSphere'. Stefan is the first radio station to play one of my new tracks. He played 'Nimbostratus' which is a special track since my friend Hanz also plays with me on this track. It is actually my first cooperation. The show is online now. You can find it here:

http://www.syndae.de/

And since it is a podcast you don't have to be afraid you missed it. It will be online to listen to at any time. I heard there are also still tickets for the E-live festival. So if you can come to Eindhoven the 11th of October. I will be present there as well with a stall.

Albinoni Cover played on Sounds of Syn

The cover I made from the Classical track 'Adagio in G minor' from the composer Tomaso Albinoni was played on the German Radio show 'Sounds of Syn'. I made this cover for the Schallplatte X release that was recently done by the German Electronic Music club 'Schallwende'. You can find more information on this project here:

http://www.synth.nl/SchallPlatteX

AeroDynamics Review in French

And while I'm very busy preparing for the release of my new album still reviews are written about my first album 'AeroDynamics'. I just received this review that is written in French by Guillaume Dumazer for detoxinfo.fr. He send me also a little translation:

Formula 1 fan, Michel did build the concept of this album about it and composed / played all the music alone. More than an hour of synth music with clear reminiscences of JM Jarre works and some hints of Vangelis movie soundtracks. Perfect music if you want to organize a Gran Turismo championship or during cocktails with such obsessing, dream-like melodies. Very strong first opus !

You can find the original review here:

http://www.detoxinfo.fr/cultures/1475/synth.nl_aerodynamics_cd_-groove_unlimited-_2007

AtmoSphere Artwork Ready

Today Kees Aerts from my label Groove Unlimited finished all the artwork for my album. I think he did a really nice job. All the text is in place now and ready to go to the printer. I also did the last mastering session today with Ron Boots. So this music is finished too. Tomorrow I will go to my friend Hanz to listen to the master for an eventual error. In the case we find anything we still have until Monday to fix it, but I hope not actually. Today I also started to prepare the promotion campaign I will do for the album. So my work is far from done yet. But at least no more dead lines for now. I can do this a bit more easy now. I hope to get some airplay of course with the new tracks and sell some albums ;) Any help would be appreciated with this promotion by the way. So if you have idea's just let me know.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 12)

Things are starting to look like something now. The outside walls are standing. Here you can see another picture my wife took from the roof of our neighbors. It gives again a nice overview of the project. We didn't have any more collapses so far. Fortunately the weather is still nice. Let's hope it stays like this for another 3 weeks. By then you won't see any of this anymore since it will be below the ground :) These walls are 25 cm wide so it is all quite solid. A special technique was used to ensure that everything will be water tight. To lower 12 cm of the whole construction will be in permanent ground water anyway. With bad weather this level will rise a bit even.

In the picture on the right you can see that they also started constructing the inside walls. Unfortunately one of these wall was incorrect on the drawings so it ended up on the wrong spot as well :( Another setback. They will have to tear it down again and build a new one. I saw this only when they were done. We don't know where it went wrong, but we'll figure that out with the architect. Unfortunately we didn't have any drawings left ourselves. We gave them all away to various subcontractors that also will be working on the studio afterward.

Here you see a picture of the studio with walls and all. There is someone standing inside so that should give you a sense of the room. It looks nice from the top. Here they are preparing the roof on top of the whole construction. They are going very fast now with construction it is even hard to keep up with taking pictures :) We still are a bit behind schedule but not much. So all still looks good. We had another minor problem. They forgot some cables that would be in pipes in the wall. But we will put them in later. This is a bit more work but not really a setback.

Today they also finished the first phase of building this roof. They put concrete plates on top with metal wiring attached. The wiring from the walls are bend into this and on top of this there will be another layer of concrete. Hopefully they will put this in tomorrow. The basement will be a very solid concrete construction after this. On top of this roof there will be about 6 cm of sand and then our terrace will go on that. So when we sit outside in the summer when the weather is nice. We will sit on top of the studio :)

Last AtmoSphere album update

OK I thought it would be nice to give you a last update on the progress of my new album. The music is all done now. Tomorrow we will do the final mastering session at Groove Unlimited. And then the album will be done. In the end I did make one track even a little longer. The final CD will be about 72 minutes in length. The last thing left for me to do is to finish the text for the booklet that will come with the CD. I also used the corrections I got from some of you on the text that was already online on my website. Thanks for that. I changed that this morning. If you see anything strange please let me know since I have to finish this by Thursday the latest. I wanted to put some more samples online already, but decided to wait with that until the final material is ready tomorrow. So keep an eye (and ear) on my website the coming days :)

Electronic Circus was very nice

I had a very nice time in Bielefeld at the Electronic Circus festival. It was especially nice to see my Groove colleague Gert Emmens play live, but also the other concerts were enjoyable. It was nice to meet a lot of people I know from the Internet there and also some new people. The organization of the event was superb and also the sound was good. My compliments to them all. I will definately go again next year when I'm able to. It was nice to relax a bit this weekend after all the work I did on my new album. My friend Hanz went along and I think he also enjoyed himself. We stayed in a hotel after the event so we could drive home the next day after sleeping out and a nice breakfast. The picture you see here was taken by Koos from EMportal.info. Thank you Koos for permitting me to use it.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 11)

On Monday we had another setback unfortunately. Another collapse of the side of the hole. This time at our neighbors. A part of their garden collapsed into ours and the fence in between came down. Here you see the constructor cleaning the mess up. They put ropes on the fence to keep it up again. It took them almost all day to repair this again so another day. Our neighbor was not very happy of course but was at first was concerned that this would not go any further. The guys that were going to build the walls came at 7 that day and left again because of this. We slept very bad the following night hoping that we could finally continue. I will be very happy when they can start filling up this ever growing hole again.

On Tuesday morning we were happy to see that nothing else collapsed that night. At 6:45 the constructor arrived and they started constructing the temporary double walls that will hold the concrete for the final walls. It was quite nice to see that they have a complete fitting system for this. We expected them to use wood or something like that, but that wasn't the case. They use big panels that are apparently reusable. But still a lot of work. It took them all day to build this construction. Quite impressive to watch this.

In the pictures on the left you see the final construction. On top you see wooden planks that makes a path they can walk on. Very clever. You can also see the double wall now. In the space in between the concrete will go. You can also see that they put poles to the walls in the middle to hold the walls up. The weight of the concrete is a lot and it is nice when the walls end up straight of course :) These poles are fastened to the foundation so the whole thing can't go anywhere. They left it like this on Tuesday because it was already quite late.

On Wednesday they returned to put in the concrete. They used a big crane to hoist up small portions they could put in between the double wall. They went round the project a couple of times filling everything up smoothly and equally. This whole process took about half a day to complete. Now this has to harden again for another few days and the planning is that on Monday they come back to remove the temporary double walls and they we should have nice concrete walls for the basement :) I'm very curious how that will look. The step after that will be construction a roof on top of this all. I'll update you next week on the progress. For now we are a bit less worried and hopefully we can sleep a bit better. I just hope not more of the neighbors garden will slide down again. We can only hope for the best on this and repair whatever damage is done afterward.

Synth.nl at Electronic Circus on Saturday

On Saturday I will go with my friend Hanz to the Electronic Circus in Bielefeld Germany. On this event there will be some concerts from colleague artist that play electronic music, but also a lot of people will be there that I know. Groove Unlimited my label will also be there with a stall to sell my CD's. And if you want to meet me that would be a good place to do that. I will bring my Ipod with my new album on it so you can also have a quick listen there if you like. You can regognize me I guess by the 'Synth.nl' T-shirt that I'll be wearing. I'll let you know how it was afterwards. You can go to the website for more information on the event: http://www.electronic-circus.net/

Semtex XL Semi Modular

In this picture you see the Semtex XL from Anywhere Instruments. I have it on loan now from Hanz. Here you see it on top of my Formant modular. Because of the semi modular setup the Semtex XL it is very flexible. We used it extensively on my AtmoSphere album for the creation of sound effects. Hanz made most sound effects on this one. I used the Korg MS20 from Chris and my own Moog Voyager RME myself to make even more. Together with these synthesizers and my Eventide Eclipse some pretty nice sound effects were made I think. You will hear a lot of them on my new AtmoSphere album. It is amazing what frequencies this beast can produce. I have seen stuff above 20 Khz in my spectrum analyzer coming from this synthesizer.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 10)

Last week a lot has happened here. On Monday the foundation was hardened. And they could continue the work. A wall was constructed under the foundation of our existing part of the house. It will hold the ground under the foundation in place and between this wall and the wall of the basement there will be a layer of isolation material. They filled up the space behind this wall with the sand you see in the container. It is a nice feeling to know that no more ground can fall from under the house anymore.

After this they started to build a steel wire construction for the walls. At first we though the wall would come pre-constructed but this not the case. They will make these walls on the spot from concrete just like the foundation. The steel construction will be inside the walls to strengthen the whole construction. It now even gives a better idea about how big the new studio will be. It looks promising :) I'm already imagining what will go where :) The door seems to come on another spot than I put it in my 3D drawings, but I think it is even better where it is now.

Unfortunately on Friday we had a major setback. We had very bad wheather here in The Netherlands with lots of heavy rain. That caused a lot of clay to come down again on the sides of the hole. We had that before, but now it damaged the whole steel construction as you can see in the picture. Today 4 guys were busy to dig this clay out manually. They were not very happy about his and neither are we. This will mean further delay. I hope they can repair the steel construction on Monday and still start with the walls. We can only hope now not more clay will come down. I will be happy when the walls are ready that we wont be bothered by these kind of problems any more. Well we will see next week :)

AtmoSphere Final Track List

The track list for my new Atmosphere album is final now. The CD will hold 12 tracks in total and it will be a bit over 70 minutes long. So you will get value for you money. At least in length ;) I have written some text for each track again to explain what inspired me to compose it. You can find them on my main website on this URL:

http://www.synth.nl/AtmoSphere

It could be that I'll have to shorten the text a bit to fit the CD booklet, but I don't know that yet. We are going to work on that soon. If you see anything strange in the text do let me know by the way, because I can still change it now.

Here is the final track list: (actual lengths may vary a few seconds)

1. Troposphere (5m54s)
2. Cumulonimbus (5m30s)
3. Stratosphere (5m50s)
4. Stratocumulus (5m42s)
5. Altocumulus (5m38s)
6. Atmosphere (7m22s)
7. Mesosphere (6m34s)
8. Nimbostratus (6m21s)
9. Altostratus (4m37s)
10. Thermosphere (6m33s)
11. Cirrostratus (4m37s)
12. Exosphere (6m07s)

Next Wednesday I will do the last remixing and mastering session with Ron Boots and after that I can select some tracks for you to hear and put them online as a preview.