New Album Coming together with Ron Boots

It has been a while since I wrote something, but I have some good news to share. There is a new album coming together with Ron Boots. As you may know Ron and I have become very good friends over the past years and we did two albums together before. Both those albums were created during a holiday were we brought some synthesizers. And we thought it was time to do that again. So we booked a house in the Belgian Ardennes for 4 days and went there together with Monique and Sonja. We did not only make music of course we also visited the Bastogne War museum and we went to the Chouffe shop and brewery. My favorite beer :) We also visited Frank van Bogaert and his wife Pieke and had some of those Chouffes and a lovely dinner with them. All in all we had a great time. 

 It was so much fun working with Ron again. It was way too long ago. It is amazing how quickly we can create a track together. It feels very natural to play with Ron. For me it was a bit harder this time than the previous two times we did this though. The last years I didn't play much unfortunately due to lack of time caused. by both my divorce, moving a couple of times and starting a new company again. So my playing was a bit rusty from time to time. Ron brought his notebook with Cubase to record
everything with a multi track audio interface, so we could do some retakes from time to time. Mistakes mostly on my side :) But in four days time we created a lot of new music.

 I know some of you are gear heads and are always wondering which instruments we brought. Ron brought his UDO Audio Super 6 which is really a power house of a synth. Ron also brought some VST's that we only used for some drums to have some rhythm to go on. I brought the Expressive E Osmose that I recently received after I backed it on Kickstarter long ago, also my Roland Gaia and the Behringer Solina strings. I took me some time to get used to the Osmose keyboard, but it is amazing what you can do with it. The Gaia I brought because it holds my favorite lead sound. The Solina really surprised me, I used to have an Eminent 310 in my studio for those Solina strings, but I think the Behringer actually sounds better and it is a lot easier to carry :) 

So I can hear you ask the question already. When will the album be ready. I don't know for sure. First we will have to listen the tracks back and select which ones will make the album. And then usually we want to do a bit of extra producing and of course mixing and mastering. And in the mean time I'm also still working on my PaleaonTology solo album and time is limited for me at the moment. As you might know I moved to Boxtel now (near Ron's house) and that does make it easier now to work together. And also finally my studio is running in the new house. I will do a separate post about that soon. I will update you on the progress of this album and also PalaeonTology when I have more information. I will try to reserve more time for studio work the coming months, but I'm also quite busy with my new company ArtiLED. Thanks for reading and if you have questions just send me an E-mail. Thanks Ron, Monique and Sonja for a lovely time in the Ardennes!

 

Happy 2023 and Delays

 

Hello Everyone. First of all Happy 2023! All the best wishes from me for this new year. I know some of you are wondering if I'm still alive and yes I am. I have been very very busy. As most of you know I moved to Rotterdam about two years ago to live together with my lovely girlfriend Sonja. But unfortunately I could not get used to this big and crowded city. Too much light, too much noise, just too busy for me. I also started my new company in the apartment in Rotterdam and we also ran out of space over there. In no time the living room was a research and development facility, warehouse and factory. So eventually Sonja and myself decided to go look for a new city and a new house and we ended up in Boxtel in The Netherlands. We bought an old bakery from 1950 with lots of space and started moving there. Unfortunately this has cost a lot of time and I had to postpone a lot of stuff while work had to continue of course. I know some of you are waiting for my new PalaeonTology album and yes that should have been released in 2022, but I didn't make it. Because of the move I simply had no studio. I am currently working on building a new (temporary) studio in the new house, since the room where I planned the studio is not done yet. I will try to get the studio working in the coming months so that I hopefully can get back to producing my music again. My plan is to release it before the end of the year 2023. The nice thing is that our new town is very inspirational. There are even dinosaurs on the roundabouts in our city, since there is a museum in Boxtel having dinosaurs on show, both real size statues as actual fossils.

The biggest reason though that my new studio isn't finished yet is that I promised Ron Boots of Groove Unlimited that I would build a new website for him. The original CD web shop dated from 1996 and was already very outdated. A couple of years ago I build the download web shop next to the old one, but that only gave Ron more work. Every new music title had to be entered 3 times actually. It was just taking to much time for him. I postponed this project a couple of times, but in the end deciding between finishing my studio and album and helping my friend was easy. So we build a completely new website for Groove Unlimited, with the help of my daughter Tamara, where both CD's and download are just an option on most of the albums. We added a lot of categories like labels, music genres and artists so you can (hopefully) find the music you need a lot quicker. The website was just launched today and that is the reason for my late new years message. You can fine the new website here: https://www.groove.nl

So don't worry. I didn't stop producing music. I'm still working on it. It just got delayed for some good reasons. I will try to update you soon on the progress of the new studio.

Michel, Synth.NL

Synth.NL - TimeTravel officially release on CD and Download

 

Yesterday (12/12/21) my record label Groove Unlimited officially released my Fifth Solo album called TimeTravel. It is kind of different from my previous solo releases. In the last years I released a lot of single tracks on different sampler CDs. Some were for sale like the 'Dutch Masters' and 'Analogy 3' albums by Groove Unlimited, but I also donated some tracks to the German Electronic Music Club Schallwende. They give a free sampler CD every year to their members, so these tracks were never really available for everyone. There is also new (well actually old) material on the album, some tracks that were never released at all. One track that didn't make my AeroDynamics debut album because I had 68 minutes of music already and two old tracks that I found on my computer and decided to finish. All tracks haven been completely re-mixed and re-mastered by my good friend Ron Boots. So even if you have the Schallwende CDs: These versions are different and they are released as download in higher quality as well (48 kHz/24 bit). The artwork was done by my youngest daughter Tamara van Osenbruggen. I'm very proud of that and she will do more for me in the future. I hope you like it. I really do. This album is dedicated to my lovely daughters Joyce and Tamara. I know the divorce has been hard on them. I hope you like the music. At least it was a nice Travel back in Time for me :)You can find more information on my website: https://www.synth.nl/music/albums/timetravel. It is available as physical CD and also as download from both Groove Unlimited as BandCamp.

Synth.NL visits Iceland - North Video

 It has been a while but finally I went on a short holiday again. I visited Iceland with my girlfriend Sonja and we had a great time. We were there for two weeks and took a lot of pictures and did some filming. The first week we visited the North part of the Island and now we understand why it is called ICE land :) It started snowing when we arrived and it was very cold because of the hard wind. Here is a short video from that first week with some fast impressions and some Synth.NL music from my AtmoSphere album. The video from the second week will come later since I didn't finish it yet. I hope you enjoy it.

TimeTravel already up for Pre-order from Groove Unlimited

 

Hi everyone. I'm happy to inform you than Ron Boots has finished Remixing and Mastering my TimeTravel album. The artwork is done and CDs are being produced as I write this. You can already pre-order the CD is you want a physical product directly from Groove Unlimited (my record label). They will send the CD out as soon as they arrive from the factory and you will be the first to have it. The album will also be available as a download later on both from the Groove Unlimited download shop and from BandCamp including the artwork. The download will be available as 48 Khz 24/32 (not sure yet) Bit as well. You can order the CD on this URL: http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?artiest=synth.nl I will update you as soon as the album is officially released with the other buying options. Thank you all for your continued support.

TimeTravel Music and Artwork Finished. Release still 2021.

I'm sorry to have been quiet for a while again. I have been very busy with my new company ArtiLED and I also had some trouble with my ears and lost quite some time being ill. So I'm very behind schedule. I planned to release TimeTravel at the E-live festival in October but I won't make it unfortunately. The artwork is done and the music is done, but I'm still working on the final mixes and mastering with Ron Boots. We had a version ready, but I was not completely satisfied with it and now I'm going on a much needed holiday to Iceland first. So we will pick it up after my holiday. It will still be released in 2021 but only a little bit later. I won't attend E-live either because of the holiday. I really wanted to be there and see you all again, but I couldn't plan the holiday on another time. We are going with an organized tour with fixed dates.

I also did some work on PalaeonTology but I'm only on an estimate 60% of the album now. So that one is definitely postponed until 2022 now. I'm sorry about that. I'm really looking forward to let you hear some new music. It has been too long. But luckily there will be some new music on TimeTravel as well. And we remixed all the tracks that were released on samplers as well, so they are all shiny and new and we even did some small tweaks to some tracks. I'm also happy to say the besides a CD release (44 Khz/16 bit) there will also be a download version of this album in 48 Khz / 24 bit. So much better quality. From now on this will be the case for all future music I release. I will update you as soon as I know a release date or have more information about the album. Thank you all for your continued support and patience.

PalaeonTology Cover Revealed

I'm currently working hard on both the music and the artwork for my upcoming new solo album. The album will be called PalaeonTology and it is inspired by dinosaurs. This album will be a travel through some of the more well know prehistoric periods and will feature several dinosaur species. On land, in the water and in the air. I already have about 60% of the album done and the plan was to release it in October on the E-live festival by Groove Unlimited in Eindhoven in The Netherlands. I'm afraid I didn't make it. It will postponed until 2022. I cannot be there either unfortunately. Normally on my concept albums I use a lot of sound I sampled. That is of course a bit hard with extinct species. So I did some sound design inspired by Jurassic Park and made my own dinosaur sounds. Can't wait to let you here those, but for now here is the cover of the album. I hope you like it. I will show more of the artwork and the album later. You can already fine the track list on this link: https://www.synth.nl/music/upcoming/palaeontology
 

New Album coming called TimeTravel

I have some good news. I told you before I'm working on a new solo album called PalaeonTology,  but there is another album coming very soon. It will be called TimeTravel and it is kind of different. In the past years I released a lot of single tracks on different samplers. Some where for sale like the Dutch Masters and Analogy 3 album by Groove Unlimited. But I also donated some tracks to the German Electronic Music Club Schallwende. They give a sampler CD every year to their members, so these tracks were never really for sale for everyone. There is also new (well actually old) material on the album. Some track that were never released. One track that didn't make my AeroDynamics debut album because I had 68 minutes already. And 2 old tracks that I found on my computer and decided to finish. All track will be completely re-mixed and mastered by my good friend Ron Boots. The artwork was done by my youngest daughter Tamara van Osenbruggen. I'm very proud of that and she will do more for me in the future. I hope you like it. I really do. I will show more of the artwork later. You can read a little bit about the album here already: https://www.synth.nl/music/upcoming/timetravel

Jurassic Studio Tour

 As you all know my old studio was gone because of the divorce. With the help of my good friend Ron Boots I was able to build a new studio again in our new apartment in Rotterdam where I live with my girlfriend Sonja. She didn't plan for me to move in so there isn't much room. The studio is actually 2 x 3 meters, but I'm very happy with it. Here is a small tour of my new studio. I managed to save some equipment from my old studio and bought some used and new stuff to start all over again. Here is a nice overview of my desk. I'm still using Cakewalk Sonar from Bandlab and a Native Instruments Komplete master keyboard. Since the studio isn't very wide I build in as compact as possible. Most stuff is modules and eurorack modular. as you can see.

Behind me are some more synthesizers with keys. On top is the Nord Wave that I used a lot on the collaboration album together with Ron. So I had to keep that since there were still sound in there from that recording. Then there is a HydraSynth that I like a lot since it has a polyphonic after touch keyboard that also is nice to use with the Deckard's Dream I build.  The the Alesis Andromeda, still one of the nicest synths to look at in my opinion and 16 voices of analog. The the Roland V-Synth. I used to have one of these in the past that I upgraded to a V-Synth GT later, but actually the old one sounds a lot better in my opinion. And of course it is cheaper as well. And last but not least the Korg Kronos. This one is also from the old Apollo studio since I used that on the album with Ron as well. Oh and by the way the new studio is called 'Jurassic Studio'. You will know by know I guess that I'm working on an album inspired by dinosaurs. Called PalaeonTology. Hopefully finished this year. I think I'm about at 50% on that now.

Here is a close-up view of my main tools. As you can see I'm a trackball person. I think that is way better than using a mouse. I also still have my Genelecs. I'm so used to this sound that I couldn't switch to other monitors only newer Genelecs. But the heart of my system if this (old) Euphonix/Avid Artist series set that I bought from E-bay. I really love it. It is connected by Ethernet and it integrates perfect with Cakewalk Sonar. I did have to do some customizing to use the Jog Shuttle. But even that runs very smoothly. I actually like this set better than the big Avid console I have in my old studio.

Here is a close-up of the left corner. Here are my newest additions. The Behringer ARP2600 to start with. I really love it. As you might know I did have a vintage ARP2600, but to be honest I like this one even better. Compact, more functionality and the sound is for be the same. On the right is a Midibox SID that I build myself back then. So also from the Apollo studio. C64 sounds all over. And finally the newest machine I bough the Waldorf Iridium. That is really a great synth with so much possibilities that I hardly don't even know where to start. But I'm sure you will be hearing a lot of it on my upcoming albums.

And lastly an overview of what is right in front (and above) of me. Yes a lot of Behringer in the new studio. I really love all their clones. They sound very authentic and no I'm not sponsored by them. If that was only true ;) On the bottom row there is the Deckards Dream with an K-2 , the Pro-1, Neutron and Model-D. And on the top row is some Eurorack stuff. First the new ARP2500 stuff. I think it is soooo great they released this. Then a case with the Roland System 100 modules and the last 2 cased are filled with the Moog Modules from the Sytem-55 series. All in all enough stuff for me to be creative again. And actually more than enough. I hope you like my new studio. It is not as impressive as my old one used to be. But I'm very happy with it and producing music again and that is the most important I guess ;)

New Company ArtiLED BV

 

Again it has been quite for a while. And for a good reason. I started a new company. On this blog I will also update you on that. The company is called ArtiLED and as the name suggests it has something to do with Art and Leds. When I moved into my new apartment in Rotterdam I was looking for some special lighting and what I wanted wasn't available. So I decided to start building my own lights based on Smart Leds. Every light will be custom build from a raw piece of aluminum and every light will be it's own computer. Every led can be individually addressed and it will react to music and images. I will show you more later. If you can understand Dutch (of know how to use Google Translate) you can have a peek at the website I'm building even though it isn't finished yet. The first product will be a single Led Computer without the lamp. I will explain how and when later. For me this is the ideal combination of my hobbies. Electronics, 3D design and programming. Here is a small intro video. Here is the link to the website https://www.artiled.nl. You can also follow the company on Instagram if you like: https://www.instagram.com/artiledbv

BorkHavn Nominated for Schallwelle Best Album of 2020!

I have exiting news. The BorkHavn album I released together with Ron Boot is nominated for the Schallwelle Preis best album of the year 2020. We are in the top five which is pretty nice of course. People could vote on their favorite album on their website so I'm very honored that you chose our album. Thank you very much! Now a jury will decide I guess. Normally there is an award ceremony in Germany but because of Corona it will be done online now. You can read more about the award and the other nominees on this website: https://schallwelle-preis.de/. And in case you didn't know. My albums 'OceanoGraphy' and 'Apollo' did win this album of the year award in the past. So be sure to check them out if you haven't heard them. So fingers crossed :)

Deckard's Dream DIY (Part 9)

The external 12V power supply brick has arrived. So I could finally finish the Deckard's Dream. First thing I did was again test all the voice boards individually. They all worked fine. I labeled them so that I know which board is which because they all have their individual tuning. Then I inserted them into the main board and attached them to each other with the spacers as you can see in the picture on the left. I was a bit surprised I had spacers in different lengths but it turns out that the distance between all the slots is not equal. I didn't expect that but luckily I had all the correct spacers in the parts kit. If I had ordered them myself I would have probably ordered all the same based on the first gap :)

And then an exiting moment. Testing the whole synthesizer. In this picture you see everything that is inside. Starting from left to right with the front panel, the hardware PCB sandwiched to the main PCB. The inserted in the Main PCB first the Power Supply board and the 8 voice boards. In the right bottom you see the output board and in the top right the external 12V 6A power supply brick. All tests went flawless and then I uploaded some patch banks I found online 4 banks in total, one of which hold some recreated Vangelis sounds. They sound so awesome :) I ended up playing a long time with them just with a little midi keyboard and my headphone on. Even without any effects. But I had to stop just there and do the last remaining bits. Everything still had to fit in the case. In the back of the case is a fan for cooling that should not be necessary but I installed it anyway. Luckily you can switch it on and off from the settings menu. So I'll start with it switched off and see if the Decard's Dream wont run hot in the studio.

Then you have to put the IO board in the back and attach the flat cable to it. The IO board is just attached to the case with the rings of the jack plugs for audio input and output. The fan is attached to the IO board with a connector. It is all vert well thought of in my opinion. So after putting it in the case again I tested it one more time and again I ended up playing on it for way too long. But last step left was to put it in the studio. I did leave room for it of course :)

And here it is in all it's glory. I think it looks great. In the studio I could finally put some reverb on it and use my Roli Seaboard to play with polyphonic aftertouch and wow! just wow! I was impressed before but when you start using polyphonic aftertouch on some of those Vangelis patches it really sounds so big and organic. I love it. I will surely use it on my upcoming album. There is one more thing to do. There is also an expander module from Black Corporation which makes the Deckard's Dream even better. It is a 1U unit that can fit right where the patch panel is now. It adds Ring Modulation, Chorus, Delay and Reverb and makes the unit stereo as well. I already ordered the kit from Black Corporation and also the parts kit and case. So that will be my next project in the near future and of course I will post the progress of that as well on this blog. OK that concludes this DIY series. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you want to build one yourself I'd be more than happy to share my experiences and answer your questions where I can. But do keep in mind this is an advanced project not very well suited for beginners.

Deckard's Dream DIY (Part 8)

 While waiting for the new external power supply I did something useful as well besides playing on the synth with 4 voices. I decided to put on the colored slider caps. Actually I wanted to wait to that it as a finishing touch when it was done, but I couldn't wait any more. I even read the manual since I didn't really understand what all sliders did, but it all makes sense to me now. Unfortunately the package with the power supply was delayed so more waiting .....

The next useful thing to do was put on the cooling blocks on the power supply. I was a bit surprised that everything so far was in the parts kit I bought from synthcube but not the m3 bolts for screwing these on. Luckily that is stuff I always have lying around at home. After that I started twisting the wires for the power supply. I did read that putting on these cooling blocks is not necessary when you change to TL062 and TL064 because the Deckard's Dream draws less current because of these and get less hot, but I decided that it wouldn't hurt either. More cooling is always better with electronics. I also took the rest of the case and started looking how everything should fit together. And then I found out the main board didn't fit in the case. Luckily there is a clear instruction about this on the build website. There is a 5 mm strips on both ends on the PCB that you can break of. There is a line cut into it to make that easier but I did it very carefully with some pliers trying not to damage anything on the main PCB.

Then finally the missing IC's I ordered arrived and I could finish all 8 voice boards. After that I started testing them by pairs. I run the calibration procedure for the voices and unfortunately one board did not wait to tune. So I put that one in solo and I could hear sound coming from it, but getting stuck on tuning. Later I found out that VCO B was running fine on the board and I did have a square and saw wave on VCO A but with a very low frequency. VCF and VCA seemed to work just fine. I started with a close visual inspection of the faulty board but couldn't find anything wrong. I started comparing it with another working board and all components were the same. Orientation of all components was the same. So I decided to swap components with a working board. Starting around VCO A. And bingo suddenly when I swapped the CEM3340 it worked! Luckily there as one extra in my parts kit, so I put the spare on on this board and voila. It worked like a charm. So now I have 8 working voice boards! Now only wait for the power supply to test them all at once.

Deckard's Dream DIY (Part 7)

In the previous part I already said the Decard's Dream was coming alive. I had a menu on the display. Here is a picture of the display and knobs. I already put on the volume knob as well. The display is small but very high resolution so it is readable, but I do need my glasses for that :) So first I scrolled through all the settings to see what is there. I did find some interesting settings that I will try out later. But for now I especially want to know if everything works. I could not find a good test procedure on the build site so I started googling to see what other people did. And apparently it is a good idea to start testing all the knobs and sliders.

There is a special option in the menu to calibrate the sliders first. There are a number of sliders with a dent in the middle position. They go both up and down. Pitch course and fine. Balance between oscillator one and two, overall brilliance and the keyboard control sliders. You have to set them in the middle position before you start calibrating. Then there is a special option in the menu called 'debug' with this you can test all the sliders and know one by one. It reads out the value from 0 to 255. But I did see some stepping while doing this. I was a bit surprised. But I will figure that out later. For now all sliders seemed to work.

Nest thing to do was connecting the IO board back to the main board. It is connected via a flat cable. Here is the main output (mono) and also the midi connectors and the usb connectors. I hooked it up with USB to my notebook and then you get midi over USB. Next thing up was testing all the voice boards. I inserted a voice board in the first slot next to the Power Supply boards because I assumed that was the first slot. Then hookup up a midi keyboard to my notebook and used Midi-OX to connect the keyboard to the Deckards Dream. I expected to get some audio even though I would assume it would be out of tune or something, but nothing happened :( Then I read on the forum that you need to calibrate the voice boards, so I went in the menu and selected that option. Nothing happened. Like it didn't see the voice board at all. So i tried another voice board and same problem. I started panicking a bit and posted on the forum. But I was impatient for as answer and they I saw I made a very stupid mistake :) The slot next to the Power Supply board is actually slot 8 and now 1 :/ Duhh..

So then I calibrated the first board and it worked :) I had sound. After that I did all the boards I had complete since I still missed a couple of IC's. The supplied didn't send me the right amount. I had 6 complete boards and they all worked like a charm. They I wanted to hear the Deckard's Dream with multiple voices and inserted the 6 good boards, but apparently my lab power supply could not take that amount of power, so finally I got 4 running. I must say it sound fantastic :) Even mono and without any effects just on my headphones. So first thing to do was order a 12V external power supply that can deliver 6 Amp. I think the Deckards Dream has a high power on current, since with the four boards installed it only took 1 Amp on 12V, and my lab power supply should be able to deliver 3 Amp. We'll see when the power supply arrived. More next time.

Deckard's Dream DIY (Part 6)

Next thing to do was connecting the main PCB to the hardware PCB. After that I also did a quick power test and again the magic smoke stayed in :) I had some trouble determining how to mount the oled display so I didn't solder that yet. There is not much information available unfortunately about the mechanical construction of the Deckards Dream. I did look at some pictures online but still I didn't know for sure. So it was time to also screw on the front panel to see how it all fitted together. At first I had the spacers wrong so that the front panel was too far away. So this is a picture after the second attempt. And now I could also finally solder the oled display.

And then it was time for yet another exiting part of the whole build. Finally putting some software in the Deckard's Dream. You do need to buy a ST programmer for this and connect it a flat cable to the main PCB and with USB on your computer. You can freely download the programmer software. It did see my programmer right away and they you hit 'connect' to hook it up to the main PCB. There is actually a micro controller on the PCB. It is kind of a mini computer that controls everything and it needs software to run. You can download the 'bootloader' software from the Deckard's Dream build page and then you hit 'program' and it actually worked :) I got a success message. After this you disconnect the programmer and switch the Deckard's Dream of and on again. Some garbage appeared on the oled display. But then the manual said to hold the 'shift' button to boot it in USB mode. So I did and then the Deckards Dream acts as a USB drive and you can copy the firmware and factory sound banks on it. Reboot again and voila ! It came alive :) I had a working menu on the oled display.

Here is another picture of the backside where you can see the sandwich of the main pcb the hardware PCB and the front panel. You can also see the correct spot and orientation of the Power Supply PCB in this picture. The only thing I find strange is that all the boards will be connected together in the end. I don't know how yet at this moment, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. There are all hanging horizontally though in the cart-edge connectors without any fixture. So that is a bit surprising to me. But we'll see later about that.

And finally here is a picture of the front of the assembly. Here you can see all the sliders and what they do and everything seems to fit fine :) I also soldered the headphone connector on now. I didn't do that yet again because I wasn't sure about the fit. The only thing missing now is the power switch. I will do that when I assemble everything together in the case.

 

A Few Copies of SchallPlatte 23 for Sale at Groove

The German Electronic Music Club Schallwende released the SchallPlatte 23 sampler album with a brand new Synth.NL track on it called 'Gemini'. Normally the album is only given to the member of the club, but Groove Unlimited my record label has a few copies for sale on their website. They are very limited so if you want this CD I guess you have to be quick. There is also some other nice music on there by Ron Boots himself, UNI Sphere (Eric van der Heijden and Rene Splinter), Spyra, Stefan Erbe and more. I also liked the first track a lot Meteorite by Tonal Assembly. You can buy the album as a factory pressed CD here: http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?artnum=88044

BorkHavn Video - Venskab

Bellerob did it again! Rob has a very popular video channel on YouTube and he made a very nice video from the last track of the BorkHavn album I did together with Ron Boots. You can find it here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP1tboVoXmA Do give Rob a thumbs up on this and subscribe to his channel. More information about the album here: https://www.synth.nl/borkhavn. I also put the video for you to enjoy below. Thank you Rob.

 

BorkHavn Review by Sonic Immersion

Another very nice review came in on the BorkHavn album I did together with Ron Boots. This time by Bert Strolenberg of Sonic Immersion. He gave our album 4 stars. Which is actually a lot since Bert very rarely gives our more and he put the 'My Choice' label on the review which mean he would buy the album himself. You can find the review on his website on this url: http://www.sonicimmersion.org/ron-boots-synthnl-borkhavn/. I also put the text of the review below. 

More information on the album here: https://www.synth.nl/music/collaborations/borkhavn

Ron Boots & Synth.nl – BorkHavn
CD/DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, Groove Unlimited, 2020

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Many will recall Ron & Michel’s fine debut album “Refuge en Verre” based on music drafts made during a vacation of both families in Belgium. A decade later “BorkHavn” sees the light of day, distilled from live improvised music made in a similar setting a few years later during a vacation in Denmark. Make no mistake though as “BorkHavn” is a different sonic breed as its predecessor. As the musicians elaborate in the liner notes, the music is an true expression of their friendship. It’s also a powerful statement showing how both musicians complement each other in a surprising as well as beautiful manner.

The nine tracks feature emotive electronic music with a strong dynamic current connecting them. Many string pads and drums pass by on the outcome taking various twists and turns as its progresses. There’s the dynamic undercurrent sensed on the engaging opening title. Things take on an energizing orchestral/symphonic shape “Nordsøen”, entering psychedelic-infused and slightly experimental territory on “Gåpåmod”, firing off a powerful sequencer-lead on the jolly “Hjortebøf” while reflective sonic universes open up on “Stjernekiggeri” and “Torden”. Energy runs high on the freestyle yet groovy “Vindmøller” with a slice of “Acoustic Shadows” thrown in on the first half before the lush “Venskab” brings the album to a closure.

If you want an album with solid, attentively-made electronic music, “BorkHavn” should be your pick without hesitation.

Website: http://www.groove.nl

 
 

Deckard's Dream DIY (Part 5)

 Like I said in the last part it was time for some testing. I did a visual inspection of all the boards and could not find anything that seemed wrong. The only thing is that there was an error found on the output PCB. Once of the Capacitors was actually wrong on both the PCB and the schematics. So before testing I decided to desolder it and turn it around. After that I attach the power supply to my lab power supply and applied 12V to it. The nice thing about a lab power supply is that you can limit the current it gives so I slowly turned up the current and the power supply lit up and all voltage led were OK. After that I measured all the voltages and everything was fine :) No magic smoke this time :)

After this I put the power supply board in the main board. First without the ICs as you can see in the picture on the right. Main goal here is to see if there are no shorts in the soldering or anything. It is very important to look for the right slot for the Power Supply since it is exactly the same connector as the slots for the voice PCBs, but they are not interchangeable. Also you have to watch the orientation of the boards. So my main board was also OK. After this I inserted all the ICs and did the same test. And I could see on my lab power supply it drew more current but everything still looked OK. The only problem is you don't see anything happening yet on the board. There are no leds or anything to indicate it is working. So more testing is needed for that.  After this I also inserted all the voice boards without ICs to also see if there was no shorts on these PCBs. Again no problems so far. Still always a scary moment to be honest powering up self soldered PCBs for the first time. Even after all these years of soldering.

After this I did another modification on all the voice boards. The advise was to solder two 1 mega-ohm resistors on the backside of the voice boards. It has something to do with the glide function and making it more like the behavior on the original CS-80. You have to be very careful here you solder them to the right pins of course which is a bit more difficult to see from the back side. But luckily there is a clear picture on the Decard's Dream build page. After this I compared them and actually I made a mistake on one board I had to correct.

Then I started inserting the chips on the boards. I did another modification here as suggested by the builder. My original components kit contained TL074 and TL072 IC's. Later on they suggested to change them for TL064 and TL062. I decided to this this. The advantage is that they draw less current. So the synthesizer will get less hot because of this. This results in that you can omit the fan in the case and you supposedly don't even have to install the cooling blocks on the power supply board. It was some extra cost but I decided to do it. Eventually you earn it back in power cost and I don't like noisy fans. Unfortunately I didn't get the right amount when the order was delivered so I had to contact the supplier and straighten that out. And that meant a lot of waiting. And I'm not very good with that so that was a bit of a struggle. But here is a nice picture of the whole stack of voice boards with all ICs inserted. More in the next part.

Happy New Synth Year!

 I wish you all the very best for 2021! I hope it will be a better year than 2020 and that there will be Electronic Music events again where we can meet in real live. Let's make 2021 a Happy Synth Year! I'm currently working hard on new music, so I hope to bring you some new releases as well in 2021. I spend New Years Eve together with Ron Boots and his wife Monique and my girlfriend Sonja. I also brought the music for the new album (about dinosaurs) along with me and played for Ron what I had so far in his studio. He liked it a lot so that is good news and motivates to continue working on it. He also liked my dinosaur sounds and how I integrated them into the music :) I hope to see you all soon. Stay healthy and Safe!