Electronic Circus 2009 Report

Last weekend I visited the Electronic Circus festival in Bielefeld with my friend Hans. It was nice to get out for a few days in these stressy last days in the studio before the release of my album. We had a bit of trouble on the way there since an accident happened just in front of us on the highway and we had to wait until the road was cleared. We unfortunately missed the concert from fellow Dutch man Meesha that you see in the picture next to me. We heard it was very good. Well we had a stall next to each other so we talked a bit there.

Since I had this stall we didn't go in the concert hall much. Luckily you can also hear the music that is playing inside in this area. The atmosphere is great on this festival. Many musicians to talk to and nice music playing on stage. And luckily I also sold some CD's even :) We also went out to eat in a Turkish restaurant. The same place we went last year. It was so good then that we actually waited for a long time to get a table. But it was worth it again. In the picture you see a bit of the area where all the stand are, but there is much more.

I think this is the nice thing about this festival. You can listen to music all day and actually listen to music. Here you see me talking to Frank Gerben one of the organizers. I think they did a great job again and if they organize another festival next year I will surely go, and so should you ;) Well thanks to everyone for a great time and also a special thanks to Thomas Wilberg Photography for the pictures. For more information on the festival visit the website ->
http://www.electronic-circus.net/

The next festival I'll be attending will be the E-live festival on the 17th of October where my new CD will be released. So you can get it there directly from me if you like. For more information on that festival visit -> http://e-live.groove.nl/

Culture Vulture on Lead Sound

Last week I was tired of sitting it the studio and needed to go out. So I took the car for a ride and eventually visited I4 Muzique in Eindhoven. That is one of the two shops that I buy my equipment from in The Netherlands. I just also went there to see what was new. But not much on that side. But one of the things I spotted was this Culture Vulture which is a very cool tube distortion. It can be very hard but it can also be very subtle. One of my musical friends Bart has one of these and he had some very neat stuff coming from it. So I asked if I could try it out, and they agreed.

And then last week I was working on a lead for one of the tracks of my new album and I couldn't get it right in the mix. I decided to put a tube distortion plugin on it and it work, but not exactly like I wanted to. And the I decided to hook up the Culture Vulture. I put a very ingenious device under it as you can see to tilt it up a bit ;) That way I could look on the VU meters a bit better. Man this thing is very touchy, but when I got it setup right it was worth it all the way. What a nice piece of equipment. It makes almost everything sound better that you run through it :) So I must add this one to my wish list I'm afraid. But the lead sound is going to be recorded with Culture Vulture for sure :) So you will hear it on the album later on.

Leak repaired (Again?) Hopefully

Yesterday our constructor came by to demolish our wall again. This time he exposed more are around the leak so that there was more room for a decent repair. We are very afraid that last time it just wasn't enough to completely fix it. I was a bit scared this afternoon because they did remove the old repair but the guy that was going to repair the waterproof materiaal didn't arrive yet and it started to rain a bit. But luckily it was only a few drops. And on the end of the afternoon this guy arrived. Here you can see him burning to surface clean that he needs to put on the repair.

In the picture on the right you can clearly see that a much bigger patch was put over the leak this time. The guy that repaired it was very careful to put enough heat on it but not to burn the house. Last time he thought he was to careful not to overheat. Behind the wall is isolation material that can catch fire very easily so this time he also brought a fire extinguisher :) Well luckily our house didn't burn down ;) We will leave the hole open now longer to wait for a couple of rain showers before we close the wall again. Just to be sure it doesn't leak again.

I made a final close-up shot of the repair. You can clearly see now that the material has melted good around the edges. Last time I didn't see this happening actually. So I'm quite confident now that no water can go in there at all. And when we have another leak maybe we should look in another spot I guess. Well I hope that is not necessary and that we can keep our feet (and equipment) dry from now on. If something changes I'll let you know for sure. Now back to some other stuff again :) I'm done with this.

Remote Recording with Tranzport

As you know I have lots of synthesizers and even though they are all midi connected to my PC and I can play on them from my master midi keyboard on some synthesizer it is just nicer to play on it directly, because of the expression you can give on them with the controls on the synthesizer itself. But then you are not near your PC to start recording. For that I use this little gizmo. It is called a Frontier Tranzport and it is a wireless DAW controller. You can use it anywhere in the studio to start/stop recording arm, solo and mute tracks en there is also an undo button on there. You can can record the solo remotely and when you are not happy just undo and record again. You can even see VU meters on the display for your track level, the name and some parameters so it is two way communication. My friend Hanz told me that they are going to stop producing this thing so I would say get one before it is too late. It is not very expensive and I couldn't work without it.

In this picture you can see how small it actually is. You can littelary put it on top of almost any synthesizer. On the other side is a wireless transmitter that you can just plug into your PC and the drivers are the most stable ones I have ever encountered. There is support for a lot of software. It works perfectly with Sonar at least. In the picture you see the V-Synth GT on top. I used this synthesizer to play some of the leads on the new album. So you will hear this on back for sure :) Look on this page when you are interested in the Tranzport:

http://www.frontierdesign.com/Products/TranzPort

UPS in the Server Room works!

I told you yesterday that I had a small power outage. I was actually recording for my new album at that precise moment. And even though the lights went out my equipment didn't. Recently I put the whole studio behind a bigger UPS. It is a 6 KVA and can deliver power enough to keep the whole studio running for about half an hour when the power fails. And that gives me enough time to finish an ongoing recording, safely save my files and shut everything down correctly when it lasts longer. And yesterday it proved to work. The 6 KVA unit are the two bigger ones stacked together in the rack in the picture. The lower is the battery pack and the upper the intelligence. Below that you see another UPS that feeds the rack itself. Another neat thing about the big Tripplite is that it is an online UPS. So it produces a clean new power for my studio. A newly generated sinus wave without any noise from the outside power grid and also I put the Voltage down to 220 Volts in stead of 230-240 Volts we have nowadays since I have a lot of old equipment that is from the 70's that could be damaged or its lifespan shortened with a higher power.

Studio Leak

Last night I was working with my friend Hans on some track for my upcoming album. Suddenly Hans heard a sound he couldn't place in the song. We stopped the song and we still heard it. We found the source quickly. Unfortunately it was water dripping from the ceiling on the floor :( I had a leak before in the server room but that was repair so this looked like a new leak. But the first thing we did was get some material to catch the water. Luckily is was only over the carpet just in front of the modular desk in the back of my studio. So no equipment was wet.

At first the water appeared to be coming from this whole. It is a ventilation channel where air is being pumped out of the room. But when we removed the cover that is over it normally we saw the water was coming from just next to the hole and later we found also that on the places water was dripping straight from the ceiling. We decided to stop working because I was quite pissed of at the moment actually and couldn't concentrate anymore. I had a bad night sleep as well since I went down stairs a couple of time to check what the status was. But it kept dripping all night.

I looked in the server room as well and found that there were also some drops of water coming from the hole that caused the leakage last time. So I immediately concluded that the repairs that have been done last time we had a leak were not sufficient. I called the constructor this morning and told him the bad news. They will come by next week to tear down the wall again :( I hope that until then it stays a bit dry. I can't go anywhere now when I know it is going to rain, because we have seen before that the water comes out on different places every time. And I need to take precautions where something happens. This afternoon I also had an unexpected power fail downstairs. So I'm afraid some water hit some electric wiring :( I hope this gets solved quickly.

Surprise Release 'SynthWelle' on SchallPlatte XI

Yesterday I visited the Grill Fest that the German music club Schallwende organizes every year. Traditionally they also release a yearly sampler CD there. This year it was already the 11th version of that so it is called Schallplatte XI. Last year I was on it as well with a cover of a classical tune. This year they invited all the price winners and nominees from the Electronic Music price they organized last year to send in a track. I was nominated in two categories last year, best newcomer and best CD, but unfortunately I didn't win both. But I'm still very proud to be on this CD with some great other artists. This year there was no theme or assigned so I just made a track out of the blue with no specific theme in my mind either

I listened to the entire CD yesterday evening and I must say it is very pleasant. When you click on the picture on the right you can see the track list. Unfortunately this CD is not for sale. Only the members of Schallwende get this one. So if you want it I guess you can become a member. More information is on their website -> http://www.schallwen.de/. They have a nice magazine and also organize very nice event throughout the year to keep the Electronic Music scene alive. Well I did put my track on my website so that you can listen to it. You can find it here:

http://www.synth.nl/SchallPlatteXI

I hope you like it :) I think it is a nice warm up for my upcoming album. Do enjoy!

OceanoGraphy Cover and Track List

I just uploaded a new version of the cover of my upcoming OceanoGraphy album. Unfortunately the logo of the World Wildlife Fund had to go from the front because they only allow front cover logo's on their own productions. And well this is obviously my production ;) Well at least the cover even looks more peaceful now. There is still a reference to my cooperation on this project with the WWF on the back fortunately. I have clearance now to use the logo in this way. My designer Bart is now working hard on the rest of the artwork like the booklet and the CD itself. I myself still have to create text as well for the booklet etc Kees Aerts from Groove Unlimited will make the final artwork then. It is always a job that comes all the way in the back since it is depending on some information that isn't always clear until the very end of the production.

One of those things is the final track listing and the length of all the tracks. While the track order is final now I still don't know all the exact lengths since I'm still working on some on the tracks. You can see the final track names and the order that they will appear in the picture on the right. This will be on the back of the CD, so on the final version you will see the lengths as well. On my website there is already a very short explanation what the tracks are about. You will better understand the track names when you read that. I will add more text later on, but now I first need to work on the music. On this URL you will find more information as well as the pre-order link from Groove Unlimited:

http://www.synth.nl/OceanoGraphy

Synth.nl at Electronic Circus 2009

I'd like to inform you about a very nice Electronic Music Festival that is taking place soon. It is called 'Electronic Circus' and it is organized in Bielefeld in Germany. It will take place on the 12th of September. There will be several concerts there and I will be present there as well with a stall. On this stall you can buy my current CD's directly from me and I will also bring a special preview version of my upcoming 'OceanoGraphy' album. It will be almost finished by then so you can get a real sneak preview. I have visited this event last year and I must say it is very professionally organized and the concerts where great. The concert hall is in the middle of the town so there is plenty to eat just outside. You can find more information on this event on this URL: http://www.electronic-circus.net/. I hope to see you there! It would be nice to meet in person of course.

OceanoGraphy Album Update

I promised a little update on the progress of my upcoming OceanoGraphy album. Here you can see a screen shot of how the album looks at this moment. This track order will be the final one. I updated the page as well. As you can see I have 12 tracks on the album and there is about 70 minutes of music. I'm still working on some tracks though in terms of arrangement. Especially OceanoGraphy and Artico can vary a bit in time. The other tracks are ready enough, but I'm working on the details on those. I still have about 5 weeks left and until then I'll work every minute I have on it polishing and trying to improve even more. I'm currently working closely again with my friend Hans again who helps me with idea's and points me to things he things can be better. But as you can see it is starting to look like something and I'm quite on schedule actually. Well enough for now. I'll update soon again.

Small Trip to London

I know I have been very quiet on here lately, but actually I have been working almost day and night in my studio on my new album the last weeks. But I needed a little break from it so I went on a small trip to London with my wife. We stayed there 5 days and did some nice things. You don't have to be bored in London. On of my favorite places there is the Science Museum. All kinds of new and old stuff. They even had this EMS VCS3 there that was used heavily by Jean Michel Jarre. They are hard to come by nowadays. Quite rare, but it was standing there as an example on an analog synthesizer. In front of that is some very cheap casio as an example of a digital synthesizer.

In the Science museum there is also a space department and because it was the 40th birthday of the apollo mission they had a very nice 4D like show about the moon landing. And there is also a very big IMAX theater in the same building were we watched a 3D movie about the construction of the International Space Station. I can tell you that watching a 3D movie on a big screen like that is very impressive. Besides the space stuff I also like the department where they have very ancient computers. I'm very into old electronics as you may know by now. But actually the whole museum is very nice and interesting. There is also some medical stuff, maritime etc. And next door is the Museum of Natural History also nice and you can both enter them for free. I can recommend it when you are there.

Above you see me in the picture with a scale model of the Moon Lander that the Apollo 11 put on the moon. Left here you see a picture of an actual Capsule that was used to get back to the Earth on some space mission. Quite small actually. Another interesting trip we took was to Greenwich to the Royal Observatory. There is also the zero hour time meridian and some museums. Again free entrance. There is also a very nice Planetarium there were they also played a very nice show about the Apollo program :) So this trip was a real treat for me :)

Beside all this space stuff we also visited the London Zoo and some nice pubs and restaurants :) I took my samples a long with me as well on this trip, so I also made some nice recordings that I can use in some music later on. But for now I'm back to working day and night under the ground in my studio. I have to be finished with the album by the end of September so the clock is really ticking on me now and I'm starting to feel a bit of stress already. I will give you an update on the status very soon on here. Have a bit of patience with me please :)

OceanoGraphy up for Pre-Order

Last week I signed a new record contract with Groove Unlimited for my upcoming 'OceanoGraphy' album. I'm still working hard on it as we speak by the way. It is nice that Groove Unlimited is going to release my music again. (thank you Ron and Kees). The release date is set final now to October 17th 2009. It will be launched during the E-live festival in Oirshot in The Netherlands. So the album is coming real soon now. Groove Unlimited has already put the album up for pre-order in their web shop. You can be with the first persons to get it when it is release when you pre-order it. The first period it is usually only for sale directly from them anyway and only later other places will follow. Ordering from them is safe and they do deliver World Wide so don't worry about that. You can find the album on this URL:

http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?attnum=6001

Thanks for your support! I'll do my best to make it even better than the previous ones :)

Interview about my Apollo Project

I got quite some nice reactions on my Apollo 11 track. Also by Jude Calvert-Toulmin. I met Jude through MySpace when I was just on there and was just trying to promote my music. She did my first ever interview actually back then. She liked the Apollo 11 track so much and the idea behind the upcoming album, that she did a second interview with me that she posted on her Blog. You can find it here:

http://judecalverttoulmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/synthnls-apollo-project-album.html

The first interview we did in June of 2007 is also still available. It was also nice to read that back myself. You can find that one on this URL:

http://judecalverttoulmin.blogspot.com/2007/06/synthnl-synthesiser-music-from-holland.html

40th birthday of Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Today it is exactly 40 years ago, July 20th 1969, that the Apollo 11 crew landed their moon lander on the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong was the first human being to ever set foot on our moon. I have always felt very connected to the NASA missions connected to this event since I was born in 1969 and always related that event to my own birthday. Since I became 40 myself this year I decided to dedicate an album to these missions. I hoped to have it finished this year but unfortunately I didn't make it. I'm even working on another album that still has to be released this year. But to celebrate this event I worked on a track to honor the crew of the Apollo 11 and put it online on my website today.

You can find it here: http://www.synth.nl/Apollo

The track is not finished yet by the way and still unmastered as well, but I think it is nice for now. After I finish my OceanoGraphy album I will resume work on this album. I have already found a nice CD with original live radio broadcast recordings of all the Apollo missions. So I will replace the samples in this track later by better ones. There will be much more tracks about the other less know missions that went up to the moon. This project is very personal for me and I enjoyed working on this track a lot. I also named my current studio after this project as you have probably guessed by now by the way ;) But now I'm going back to the dolphins, sharks and whales in my virtual Ocean :) Happy 40th birthday celebration!

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/Beisbroek

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 ;)