PrimiTiveS on Dreamscape Radio

Here is the first chance for you to listen to a track from the upcoming PrimiTiveS album of Remy & Synth.nl. Ron Boots plays a part of the openingstrack from the album on his weekly Dreamscape Radio. The track is called 'Underground Tubes' and it slowly warms you up for the rest of the album. (we hope). The whole track is 12 minutes and 18 second long. I hope you like it. You can listen Dreamscape Radio on this URL: http://www.dreamscaperadio.nl/. The show will be online for a week so be quick to listen to it.

Another Release coming with Ron Boots!

While I'm very busy together with Remy Stroomer to promote our new collaboration album I have more exciting collaboration news. Last year we spend a weeks holiday again together with Ron Boots and his family in BorkHavn, Denmark. And YES we brought our synthesizers along with us again! We made a lot of new music there and decided that we will release this music on a new collaboration album. We still have a lot of work on this album, but the plan is to start working on this right after E-day. We already selected the best pieces that will go on the album. I'm really looking forward to another release together with Ron Boots. More news will follow later this year.

Quick Update on PrimiTives and E-Day

I have a quick update on PrimiTiveS for you: Everything is done for PrimiTiveS. Wouter Bessels has done an excellent job on the mastering and everything is of now to the mastering plant. I also send out the first album previews to some radio stations and the reactions are very positive. I already got 4 interview request from that, so keep posted for news on those. I also replaced the sneak preview clips I uploaded last week with the final mastered version. You can find them on the usual URL's: http://www.synth.nl/PrimiTiveS and https://soundcloud.com/synthnl. of course this is only mp3 quality so the actual CD will be much better. More good news is that E-day goes on for sure! Enough tickets are sold now so you can definitely pick up your copy on Remy's stall on E-day 2013 on the 6th of April in Oirschot in The Netherlands. More info http://www.e-live.nl

Keep E-day Festival Alive! Order Tickets now!

The release of PrimiTiveS was planned on the yearly E-day festival that my record label Groove Unlimited organizes every year. Unfortunately the ticket sales are very bad and the event maybe cancelled :( That would be a real bummer and mean no release party for PrimiTiveS either and possible the end for the festival definately :( So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE buy a ticket and come and pick your copy up at the E-day festival in Oirschot in The Netherlands on the 6th of April. Remy and I will both be present and sign it for you if you like. E-day is a great festival with concerts all day a lot of artists present and a great atmosphere. Go buy your ticket here NOW PLEASE!

http://www.e-live.nl

Let me know if you need any assistance.

PrimiTiveS Sneak Preview

I promised to get back to you when I had some sound clips. I have put together a short mix with sound clips from the first masters I got back of all the tracks of the PrimiTiveS album together with Remy Stroomer. The mastering process is not complete yet, but this will give you a good idea of the music and the overall sound of the album. You can listen to them on both my SoundCloud page or on my own website. Here are the URL's:
https://soundcloud.com/synthnl + http://www.synth.nl/PrimiTiveS
I hope you like them.

PrimiTiveS pre-order possible from Groove Unlimited

Remy and myself finished our work on our PrimiTiveS album. Wouter is very busy now for us doing his mastering art. We can hardly wait for the final release on the 6th of April. In the mean time Groove Unlimited is already preparing the release as well. From now on you can already pre-order the album from the Groove Unlimited CD shop. If you want to get it as one of the first I would say go to the website an order your copy. We will have audio clips available very soon, but I guess when you like Remy's and Synth.nl music you don't have to wait for that ;) You can pre-order your copy on this URL: http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?artiest=synth.nl. If you want to be sure you can also get your copy first hand on the E-day festival on the 6th of april in Oirschot in the Netherlands. There are still tickets available. More information on http://www.e-live.nl/. More information soon!

PrimiTiveS Artwork Animation

I made a little animation of the artwork for the upcoming collaboration album together with Remy Stroomer. This animation and all the artwork was made in Cinema 4D.

New E-Day 2013 Website Design

Twice a year Ron Boots asks me to make a new design for the yearly E-Live and E-day events Groove Unlimited organizes. This this it is E-day time again on April the 6th. I made a new header graphic based on all the pictures he got from the artists and tried to make it look a bit like they are all on stage. I hope you like it. There are still tickets available by the way for this fabulous event where also the new CD 'PrimiTiveS' by Remy and myself will be released. So some listen to some nice electronic music concerts there and pick up your copy of PrimiTives from Remy and me personally. More information on http://www.e-live.nl where you can also have a better look at the new graphic I made.

PrimiTiveS Artwork Pre-Renders

This weekend I had another studio session with Remy Stroom in my studio. We are really almost done with the music for the album now. There is only one more studio session planned for the final touches. We also finished the artwork for the album now. I made some pre-renders of the artwork so you know what it will look like when it is finished. It always gives a nice idea to put the images on a jewel case for a rough idea. I thought it would be nice to share there views with you. I presented the cover before but in the picture on the left you can see the pre-render of the front of the CD.

And in the picture on the right is a render of the back of the CD. You can also find the track list here. As you can see the CD hold 9 tracks and it will be approximately 72 minutes in length. Today also Ron Boots visited my studio and we listened to the album. He agreed with us that this album is a good mix between Remy and Synth.nl and that it is music neither of us would have made on our own. I hope that gets you excited :) At least we are for sure.

And here you can see what you will see when you open the CD. There is also a little story about Remy and myself and how this album came about. In the mean time this story is also on my website together with the track list on this URL http://www.synth.nl/Primitives. Here there will be some audio material to listen to as well very soon and the links where you can pre-order the album as soon as that is possible. I will keep you posted on that. I hope you like the artwork in the mean time. Btw. You can click the pictures for larger versions. More information coming soon!

PrimiTiveS Studio Session with Remy and Wouter

At the moment Remy and I are working hard on finishing the collaboration album we are working on called 'PrimiTiveS'. Recently we had another session in my studio and this time also Wouter Bessels joined us. Wouter is Remy's mastering engineer and he will also do the mastering of our upcoming album. It was nice to chat a bit with the both of them, but we also did some hard work. Remy and I played the last lines of music so from now on it is only producing, mixing and mastering. The hard work has begun.

Wouter didn't stay all day, but we discussed a good bit about what we would expect from his mastering work. I worked with two different mastering engineers so far and they all have a different approach I guess. Wouter sure knows what he is talking about though so I have confidence in him :) He did like the rough mixes we have so far, so I guess we are getting somewhere soon. We have to by the way since the dead line is nearing. We discussed with Wouter that we would have to deliver track end februari. And that is soon.

This weekend Remy is coming over again and we have another final session planned in the first weekend of March. That will be the last chance to make any alterations. This weekend we will also finalize the artwork and we will probably share that with you after the weekend. We already determined the track names etc, but now also the track lengths are knows, so expect an update on that soon as well. I know you are all waiting for audio samples. You can expect those somewhere next month I guess. It is getting very exciting for me 2012 was a year without any release, so I cannot wait to get some new music to you guys. Keep on reading here for more news :)

PrimiTiveS Cover and Release Date

Just before the end of the year I had another meeting with Remy Stroomer to work on our collaboration album called 'PrimiTiveS'. Initially this project was planned for 2012, but we didn't make that deadline. We did set another dead line though. The release of this album is planned for the 6th of April during the yearly E-day festival in Oirschot that is organized by my record label Groove Unlimited. We also worked on the artwork some more and in the picture on the left you see the cover of the album. The album will be released by Groove Unlimited and will be for sale as a regular CD and and MP3 and FLAC download. I hope to update you with more news, artwork, soundclips etc soon. But I thought this was good news to start 2013 with and I wanted to share it with you. We are going to work some more now on the final mixing, mastering etc. Talk to you soon!

QuiRobinez Sounds for the Korg Kronos

Those of you who know my music and actually read the text in the booklets of my albums should have seen the name of my good friend Qui Robinez. He is an excellent sound designer and he made a lot of sounds for the Korg M3 and the Access Virus TI that I used in my music. Now he has discovered the Korg Kronos and started to make sounds for that synthesizer. He has some free sounds on his website, but now also started selling some very good premium libraries for the Korg Kronos. Together we build an online website where you can buy those sounds as immediate downloads. You can preview the sounds in his excellent YouTube clips that are also online so you know what you are buying. Go check his website out and if you own a Korg Kronos do buy the sounds he made. You won't regret it! You can find the website here: http://www.quirobinez.nl

Happy Holidays and Groove end of Year Sale

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

DIY Rotating Clock Divider

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

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

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

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

EC2012 Video Interview with Stefan Erbe (In German)

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

E-Live 2012 Report

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

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

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

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

Electronic Circus 2012 Report

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

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

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

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

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

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 :)

New album with Remy will be called Primitives

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

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

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 :)