Synth.nl meets Jean Michel Jarre

On Tuesday the 26th of May I had a memorable meeting with Jean Michel Jarre and his band members after his concert in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. It was a very good concert in my opinion. One of the best I have seem from him. He played a lot of older material from Oxygene, Equinoxe etc. So great music, but the sound was very good too and I loved the laser show. Also it was obvious that he enjoyed himself. After the concert we went with a little group of people backstage and had to wait a while. We heard that he had a meeting with Armin van Buuren first who was sitting two rows behind me in the audience actually :)

When Jean Michel walked in his manager Fiona said right away that he had only 4 minutes, but luckily he stayed much longer than that. I think more like 30 minutes or so, though I didn't keep track of the time. I thanked him for the great concert and then I gave him my latest CD AtmoSphere as a present. He was very happy about this I could tell from his reaction and I asked him if he was actually going to listen to it and he promised me that he would do that for sure. So I really hope that he is going to keep this promise that fact alone would be a great honor for me.

Even nicer of course would be to hear back from him, but I don't expect much from that to be honest. But you never know :) When he does I'll surely let you know!! Here you see another picture of him holding my CD. Doesn't this look just great? :) Well after that we chatted about some other stuff, but I can't even remember what. I was in such a rush of adrenaline that I hope I didn't say anything stupid ;) Well it was a big honor for me to finally meet the man that put my to buying my first synthesizer and inspired me to start composing and producing my own music. It will be a long life memory for me for sure.

After that his band members walked in. Here you see a picture of me with Francis Rimbert. I met Francis before on E-live in Eindhoven when my first album was released there. Back then I did give him a copy as well. It was nice that he recognized me immediately and we had a nice chat. I gave him my AtmoSphere album as well and he asked if this was me new one. So he did remember the first one. I was happy to hear. I also heard that they had looked on my website at several occasions. Francis is really a very nice guy and has worked with Jean Michel Jarre for a long time.

Also Dominique Perrier was there. I never met him before. So I introduced myself by saying my name and pointing at the 'Synth.nl' on my T-shirt. His reaction was nice. He recognized it so he probably saw my website as well :) He is not a big talker but we did chat a bit. And I also gave him a CD. So I guess probably one of them will listen to it and hopefully tell the other ones to do the same :) Dominique Perrier has played with Jean Michel Jarre also from the beginning and is the guy that introduced him to the Eminent 310, a Dutch build organ that produces the famous phased string sound on the Oxygene album and is generally seen as the 'typical Jarre sound'.

Well here is another picture of me talking to Jean Michel Jarre to close this report. I had a really great time. And I would like to thank Remy Stroomer for organizing this meeting. Remy is a very good musician himself, but he also distributes the music from Francis Rimbert through his label AKH record. He got in touch with Jarre's Aero Management to set this up. I would also like to thank Michel Voorn from the Dutch Jarre Forum who also helped to organize this meeting. Thanks guys :) I have much more pictures and probably will get more since more people were there with camera's. So let me know if you would like to see the rest too. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly did :)

Roland VP-330

I recently found a very rare and special synthesizer on E-bay. It is a Roland VP-330. It is an extended version of the RS-505 Paraphonic String Synthesizer from Roland with a build in Vocoder. It was intensly used by Vangelis on his early records and is often called Vangelis his 'secret weapon'. Besides very nice string sounds it creates ver nice synthesized choir sounds. They sounds almost human though no sample is used. It is all done by filters combined with synthesized waveforms. It is a truly unique machine. Of course it also has an external input so you can use the vocoder in combination with your own voice or an other external sound source to create some very awesome sounds. It had one of the nicest vocoders I have heard.

There is also an internal effect called 'Ensemble' dat fattens up the sounds. It is a bit Dimension D like I guess, but it really does some magic on the sounds. What is also nice is that the keyboard is split in two sections and you can select independently a male of female like voice combined with the strings or not on each section. And there there is come ways to adjust the sound of the strings with more or less attack or release and a tone regulator that is sort of a filter though witout resonance. On the voice you can only regulate the attack. It is a truly awesom and classic synthesizer that will never leave my studio for sure. If you find one BUY IT. You won't regret it. There is a possibility to retrofit midi in it, so that is also what I'm planning to do in the near future. But for now, playing on it is a joy :)

Visiting Jarre Concert in Amsterdam 26th of May

I'll be visiting the Jarre concert in Amsterdam on Tuesday the 26th of May. This concert is part of the new World Tour that Jean Michel Jarre is doing at the moment. If you happen to be there say hi :) You will recognize me by the Synth.nl T-shirt that I'm wearing. The planning is by the way that I will meet with Jean Michel Jarre after the concert for a little chat. I hope everything works out in this way. It would be great to meet him after all this years. I'm planning to give him my latest CD in the hope that he will listen to it some day. That would be a big thing for me so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 11)

The last weeks I have been studying the reports that Toine from Sound Scapes sent me. All in all very interesting stuff. In the picture on the left you can see a derived graphic that he made from the measurements taken in my studio. He entered this in his specialized acoustic room simulation software. The blue line represents the actual measurements and the green lines are the boundaries where the room response should be in between. You can clearly see the problem that is there in the lower frequencies. After this start scenario different acoustic materials with know results are placed in the room and the computer calculates the effect this has on the room respons. Toine made 3 scenario's for me to chose from. One with the use of only commercially available materials, one with only DIY material and one with the combination of the two.

Here you see a picture of a self build bass trap using lat absorbers that he proposed. The lats are supposed to be horizontal by the way in the final design. Toine send even building plans and everything for this thing. Very cool. The disadvantage is though that this thing takes up a lot of room that I rather not sacrifice and also that building it myself doesn't really attract me. For two reasons. I don't have much time and to be honest I'm not very good with wood. And when I let someone else build it, it will be more expensive than going for the commercially available products. So I decided to go for the easy way and buy the stuff he proposed. In this way I can get this up and running hopefully before I make the final mixes of my new album and hopefully have a good room response in the low frequencies by then.

Toine proposed to use Modex plates from a company called RPG. In the picture on the left you can see how this looks. These plates are mounted against the wall and are 1 meters wide and 1,5 meters high and only 11 centimeters thick. So they don't use that much space. For comparison the self build bass trap also was 1 meters wide but, 80 cm's thick and 2,40 meters high. The modex plates come in two types. Type 1 absorbs frequencies between 50-500 Hz and Type 2 absorbs frequencies between 35-100 Hz. Toine has calculated that I would need one type 1 and two type 2 plates for optimal results. It is really amazing how this stuff works. Very innovative. If you are interested you can read more about this stuff on this URL: http://www.rpginc.com/products/modexplate/index.htm


And the after placing the virtual models of these plates in the simulation software the computer calculated the result you can see in the graphic on the right. You can clearly see the change in the low end response. So basically this should to the trick in theory :) Well we will see the result in the end I guess. I really have good hope that this will make my studio a lot better acoustically and after this we will do another measurement to see what the actual result was and if more needs to be done. Of course I will keep you posted on the results and let you see what it looks like. The last question I asked now is if they can paint the panels black for me in stead of white :)

Kurzweil KSP8 Repaired

Last year I bought an Kurzweil Mangler FX processor and fell in love with one of the presets called 'Laserverb'. My friend Hans told me that I should look for a Kurzweil KSP8 then, because it has much more power and much more effects on board. I found a very nice set including an ADAT board installed and a remote controller and even an extra 8 channel AES board. When I hooked it up I couldn't get it running though. It worked on the Analog inputs and outputs and also the AES port worked, but I wanted to hook it up through ADAT to be able to use all 8 channels on it. It started already at the fact that it didn't want to sync its clock to the ADAT input. That gave me the impression the board was broken. Then I installed the AES board and everything worked fine. I decided to give to board a closer look and to my surprise I found a loose soldering just at the optical receiver for the ADAT input. I resoldered the whole connector put it back and it worked :) And boy is this thing nice!

Here you see a picture of the remote that came with it. A very convient way to control the unit. There are 8 rotary knobs on it to adjust the effect parameters and also a joystick to do some nice modulation stuff on some of the presets. I played around with some of the presets today and the KSP8 sounds awesome I can tell you. Especially the freaky stuff you can get from it is amazing. And having 8 channels is great. You use them as 8 x mono, 4 x stereo of even 5.1 surround. There are even surround presets in there. The KSP8 is being dumped for low prices everywhere on E-bay (even new). I can recommend it to you if you like good sounds effects. Only the ADAT and 8 channel AES boards are harder to come by. But if it is out of your budget look for the cheaper Mangler or Rumour from Kurzweil. My Mangler is going for sale soon by the way because the KSP8 out powers it by far.

Synth.nl on Australian Spectrum FM Radio

My music was played several times the last weeks on Australian Spectrum FM Radio. I think it is so cool to hear that my music gets played all over the World. I didn't get to hear the shows unfortunately myself. Sometimes I get a heads up notice, but not this time. I got the play lists from my record label Groove Unlimited. Well I sent them an E-mail and hopefully they will inform me next time. If you want to read more about this radio station you can go see their website at this URL: http://www.spectrumfmradio.org/

RME Audio MADI

Unfortunately recently one of my RME Audio HDSP MADI interfaces broke down. It was send for repair and after a few weeks I got it back. It was repaired just within the guarantee terms. It worked for two weeks after I got it back and then broke down again :( I talked to RME about this on the Musik Messe and they asked me to send it again. I explained that it was very inconvient for me since I'm in the middle of recording my new album. RME Audio was so kind though to supply me with a loan card in the mean time. Now that is what I call service :) I thought it was such a nice gesture that I wanted to tell you about it. I just hope now that when I get me own card back it will work a bit longer now. But thank you very much RME Audio :)

Waldorf Blofeld upgraded with Keys

About a year ago I bought this little synthesizer. It was the new Waldorf Blofeld. It holds about all the technology that Waldorf developed so far in the Q series (virtual analog) and the Wave. And even though I have a MicroQ and a MicroWave this is so much more easier to edit because of the display and of course it is also nice to combine these techniques. And there is more as well. Waldorf put some very nice stuff in this very small box. And even though it looks good and it is metal in stead of plastic and very decently build I somehow couldn't take it very serious as a synth and didn't use it much so far in my productions. Waldorf came up with a nice solution for that.

This solutions comes in the form of the Waldorf Blofeld keys. So I traded in my module for this keys version recently. You can see it just below the three Clavia's in the picture on the right. It is still nice looking and actually all the controls are the same and the layout is the same, but it has keys now and a pitch wheel and modulation wheel and somehow I like it WAY more now :) I know it sounds stupid but for me it is a way more mature synthesizer now. The keys does have something elke extra by the way. It has extra internal memory that you can use some sample bases sounds. So in this way it actually is more then the module. I played around with it last week and I like it a lot actually. It is great especially for pad sounds. So I'm sure you will hear it around on my future songs somewhere :)

Synth.nl on Facebook

Facebook seems to get more and more popular. So I have a profile there now as well. This is my personal page where you can add me as a friend:

http://www.facebook.com/mvosenbruggen

And here is my music page where you can become a fan if you like.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Synthnl/70315782298?created

I just don't understand why they don't make these URL's easier. Well maybe see you there soon. I still need to upload some music on there, but I do update my status there more regurlary. Less spam on it, it seems so far.

Review on Side-Line

On the website Side-Line a nice review was posted on me and my music. You can find it here:

http://www.side-line.com/reviews_comments.php?id=42279_0_17_0_C

Please enjoy reading it. I will place a copy on my website where you can also read more reviews:

http://www.synth.nl/reviews

Roland SH-2000

I found this very nice and old Roland synthesizer on E-bay. It is a SH-2000 and it is actually the second synthesizer Roland produced right after the SH-1000. Both where released in 1973. So it is pretty old. It only has a few presets that are on the switches on the front, but you can tweak them as you please. But the greatest thing about it is the after touch. It has a really nice feel to it. I was playing on it for quite some time when I tried it out. It lacks midi unfortunately. That did not even exist in that time, but maybe there is a retro fit possibility. The sound coming from it is very warm. I loved it. If you come across one I can recommend it and they are not expensive at all. I uploaded a little sample to hear how it sounds like here:

http://www.synth.nl/samples/sh-2000.mp3

It was just a quick recording playing it through a Roland RE-201 Space Echo and a Quantec Yardstick reverb unit. The low note is a Yamaha SY-99 and the lead sound is the SH-2000.

Elka EK-22

I haven't written much here the last week, because I was very busy with a track. But I'll try to update you on some new things. Like that I came across this rare polyphonic Analog Synthesizer. It is an Italian produced Elka EK-22 and it was sold from 1986. It has 6 voices with 2 DCO's per voice.

I haven't really tried it out yet, but when I came home I was looking for a picture of it on the Internet and didn't really find a good one, so I took some pictures myself right away and decided to put them online. I'll try to find a nice spot for it and maybe I' write about it a bit more later.

You can click the pictures for a larger version.

Synth.nl on TDFZ Radio Dream of Peace Special

I'm happy to inform you all about a very nice radio show that is online for you to enjoy on the Tangerine Dream Fan Zone Radio hosted by Chris Newman. The show is called the 'Dream of Peace' special and it is all about promoting the peace and how music unites all of us in that. I made a contribution to this show with two nice surprises. Chris plays a very unusual track from me called 'WarGames'. I made this track just for fun in the past and it won't be released anywhere I guess, but it fitted in this show. I announce it myself in this show and tell a bit about the movie that this track was inspired me on. This movie has been very important for me and you can read in my biography why that is. The other surprise is the music that is played behind the announcement. This is actually some rough material from a track I'm working on for my new 'OceanoGraphy' album. So be sure to check this out. The show can be found on this website:

http://www.soundfuturesdirect.com/blog/

The show is in two parts since it is quite long. I'm in the first part by the way. Here are the direct download links for the two parts:

Part 1: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_One.mp3

Part 2: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_Two.mp3

Have fun! I hope you like it.

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 10)

As posted before I'm still testing different monitors in my studio. I liked the sound ot the 8050's a lot, but I saw that they also have an all digital system with build in room correction (in the speakers itself). So I decided to give them a go as well. I'm currently testing the Genelec 8250's that look exactly the same, but are from the DSP powered series from Genelec, also the sub was exchanged for a 7270A and that is also the digital (DSP) version of the 7070A that I had before. It comes with a piece of software that you have to install on your PC, a special audio interface that connects with USB to your PC that also works as a network interface for the speakers and a specially calibrated test microphone that also connects to this box.

The first thing you have to do is install the software on your PC and then connect the audio interface so that the drivers are automaticly installed. This all went very smoothly. Then you connect the speakers with UTP CAT5 cable (same you use for network) to each other. You just make a big loop going from the audio box to the sub woofer and from there to the left speaker and then to the right. They all have a network in and through for that. Then when you fire up the speakers they instantly are recognized. You will also have to hook up audio after that. The sub again acts as a central hub and only accepts AES/SBU for input signals. So I put a converter on the SPDIF output I used for my monitoring. Then again you just loop to the other speakers. And in the software you appoint which speaker is left and right. A very weird way to connect speakers if you think about it, but it works just fine :)

After that you set up the microphone onto your primary listening position and start a wizard in the software that takes you through the room correction process. Speaker by speaker it does a number of tests to determine the distance, and after that a frequency sweep to measure the room response. What is very remarkable by the way is that you have to enter the serial number of the microphone. All microphones are calibrated by Genelec in a special room and a compensation is done in the software for each individual microphone. On the left you can see what was measured and compensated in the EQ of the particular speaker. I'm still experimenting around, so this wont be the final settings. But you can see how much parameters are available and also you can adjust them later manually to your own taste. As you can see it did some corrections in the low end that are in line with the measurements Toine did from Sound Scapes.

After the main speakers also a series of tests is done for the sub woofer. The most important one is a phase test. Usually the biggest problem using a sub woofer is to get it in perfect phase alignment with your other speakers. Well this is just a dream come true then. As you can see in the picture also the sub woofer has a build in equalizer and it is really bad to see how much had to be compensated here. Again proving that we need to do more on the acoustics of the room itself. But the end result is stunning. It really sounds terrific. So balanced it is almost unbelievable so I can say that the system actually works :) And it really does make the overall sound way better than the already good sounding 8050's I had. I wouldn't want to go back at this point. Actually I'm so satisfied with the result and the flexibility of this system that I think I'm going to go for it. I love the concept and sound of it. I wouldn't know what could possibly impress me more than this. Besides that it allows me to start working on my mixes already before the final room treatment is done. I like that idea as well :)

Synth.nl at E-day 11th of April

I will be at the E-day festival in Oirschot (The Netherlands) tomorrow. It is a very nice electronic music festival that is organized by my record label Groove Unlimited. I will be present there with a stall so you meet me there and buy my albums there with a nice discount. You can also get them signed there if you want, also if you already own a copy. Just bring it along. There will be some nice performances during the day and there will be a lot of other artists present as well. If you can make it you should come. You can find more information about the festival on this website: http://e-day.groove.nl/

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 9)

Last week Toine from Sound Scapes send me the first results of his measurements of the studio. He measured on several positions in the room. Here you see a combined graph of my primary listening position (shown in red) and 1 meter behind that (shown in green). Then you see three green lines. 90 dB is the volume that was send out and the graph shows the room respons. Then the result should be between the 90 and 100 dB lines. As you can see it isn't even that bad. Only in the low end on my primary listening position the are some dips. So far this is consistent with the measurements we took. We only looked at the low end until 200 Hz, so this graph looks different because it shows the whole spectrum.

Here is another graph from a measurement that was taken just before the wall in the back of my studio (at the modular desk). Here you can see also some big peeks and dips. These are the problem frequencies I hear in the room. We also walked around in the room to determine where the standing waves occur. And especially in the very low end we could determine that there was a build up in the corner near by door. We did some sine waves at 25 Hz and the door started resonating very badly and it was immensly loud. The funny this is when I opened the door it was gone. So we determined right away that this would be a good corner to do something extra to dampen these standing waves.

Toine also did some RT60 (dampening) tests like I did with Hanz as well. The first thing Toine noticed is that the test results were quite consistent. He had seen that differently. Apparently due to background noise, but my studio is very quiet so there is no interferance what so ever. Which is a good thing of course. Again in the graph you see the red lines indicating the upper and lower boundaries that the measurements should be between. You see a peak in the high end that should be ignored. Toine told me that is the measurement microphones fault. But you can also see that at 80 Hz there is clearly still a peak. This means it takes too long for these frequencies to die out in the room. The rest lookes actually quite OK. Again confirming our previous findings that we should concentrate on the low end. Toine is now calculating and simulating what has to be done to make things better. I'll update you soon on this.

Roland Jupiter 4

Since I heared that all the Jupiter models from Roland sound so much different from each other I just needed to hear the Jupiter 4 as well. I started bidding on one on E-bay a while ago and I actually won it. It just arrived last week. It looks very different from the Jupiter 6 and 8 as you can see. Especially the knobs on the front are quite unusual. It was designed to put on top of an organ and I happen to have one of those :) So that is exactly where I put it. It is not in perfect condition unfortunately. Some of the preset knobs are stuck. The rest of the electronics seem to work, but it will need some service since I heard at least one voice to be out of tune a bit.

Here is another view of it. As you can see it just barely fitted under the synth mount above it. Well actually at first it didn't but I removed the rubber feet that were on the bottom. As you can see the Jupiter 4 also has wooden sides where the other jupiters have metal sides. OK now to the sound, because that is what a synthesizer is all about right :) And indeed it sounds way different. It is quite aggressive and thick where the Jupiter 8 is more creamy and soft and the Jupiter 6 is cleaner and clearer. Especially in ensemble mode with chorus on it sounds fantastic. I'm also checking now how to get midi on it. All in all a very nice addition to my collection.

New Ikea Furniture

Last week I have been very busy building a lot of Ikea stuff. I don't understand why everybody hates it so much. It is actually very nice to see and it always fits. You just need to read the manual :) (several times). What you see here are four cabinets that hold my CD collection. In the left two cabinets is only synthesizer music and in the right two cabinets is the other music I bought on CD during the years. It is not only synthesizer based music by the way. My taste is actually quite wide, you will find some pop, rock and even some classical music. There are some band that I like a lot besides instrumental music. Examples are: Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, Level 42, U2 and even Madonna. There is also some Guitar stuff there like Patrick Rondat (who played with Jarre) and Gary Moore, Jan Akkerman etc.

Here is a close-up from my Jarre and Vangelis collection. I think I have most albums by the both of them. While I was putting them in the cabinet I thought it would be nice to rip them to MP3 and put them all on my Ipod as well in 192 Khz quality. So that is what I also did last week. On our next holiday (whenever that may be) I will be able to listen to all those albums again :) The last years I'm actually buying only synthesizer music. I'm still discovering lots of new but also old stuff that I apparently missed back then. There are some colleagues on the Groove Unlimited label that I start to appreciate a lot like: Ron Boots, Gert Emmens, Frank van Boogaert and Nattefrost. If you don't know them yet I can recommend you to check them out.

If you thought that is all I did and why that took me so long. Well there is more :) These ones I also build to hold our DVD collection. My wife and I love to watch movies. All these cabinets are in the hall now between the studio and the cinema and in this way that hall has a nice new function as well. If you look close you can see that on the right are also some concert DVD's and even some VHS tapes. I just love those Jarre concert DVD's. The audio on there is in surround and so very good. My favorite though is the Oxygene 'Live in your living room' DVD. I only don't like the 3D thing they did since I get an instant head ache watching that. But luckily there is a 2D version as well. It is great to see those vintage synthesizers being used in such a nice way. If you don't know this DVD I can recommend it. There is also a Kraftwerk concert DVD in my collection and of course some movies with soundtracks from Vangelis like Blade Runner, 1492 Conquest of Paradise and Alexander. I still need to find some others that also have scores by him.

Synth.nl on the Musik Messe 2009

On Thursday and Friday I will be at the Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany together with two friends. It is a always great place to be. We have bee there last year as well. It is the biggest exhibition of musical instruments in Europe. A lot of manufacturers wait with releasing new products there. So we hope to see some nice new stuff. I'm sure we will have a great time anyway :) We booked a nice hotel and I'm sure well find a nice restaurant as well afterwards. I'll try to make some nice pictures and show them on the blog here when we get back. So maybe I'll even see you there :)

You can find more informaton on the Messe on this URL when you are interested:

http://musik.messefrankfurt.com/

The Juno Brothers

I keep getting more and more request when I will post new overview pictures of my studio on my website. Well not yet. I'm still not completely done and I want to let my friend Chris take the overview photographs since he is a much better photographer than I am. But I'll try to sneak in some nice shots in from time to time until then. So how about this nice shot of these three Juno brothers :) On top is the Juno 106, then the Juno 6 and below the Juno 60. So do they sound the same? No not really. The Juno 6 and 60 are quite similar, very warm and deep where the 106 has a much cleaner sound. It sound a bit more digital. On the Juno 60 you can save patches though while you can not on a Juno 6. But the 106 has standard Midi and the other two don't. On the Juno 60 I use a Kenton Midi to DCB converter and the Juno 6 has a retro fit midi kit build in. Which one is my favorite? Definitely the Juno 60. I love bass lines with the arpeggiator on that one with the internal chorus on :)