Synth.nl Interview with Sonic Immersion

Recently I did an interview with Bert Strolenberg from Sonic Immersion, a very good website about electronic music with lots of reviews and interviews. Bert asked me some very different questions and it was a lot of fun to answer them, so I hope you will like reading it. You can find the interview on his website on this URL: http://www.sonicimmersion.org/interview.php?letter=S&interview=90508. Be sure when you are done reading to bookmark his website and read some more on it. It is a treasure of information and Bert is a very good reviewer in my opinion. Enjoy!

Single Releases on Synth.nl ReverbNation Store!

Again I have some very good news for you. For the very first time you can buy all the single tracks I released so far on several compilation CD's. They are available as MP3 download from my ReverbNation store, so you can also buy them directly from me. I might release them on CD as well in the future, but that can take quite some time. So go for it now :) Also my other albums are in the store available as complete album download or indiviual track. I have provided them in the highest possible MP3 quality for your optimal listening pleasure. The single tracks to look for are: SynthWelle, Synthology, NachtWacht, DonQuixote and Mercury.

Here is the link to the Synth.nl ReverbNation store:

http://www.reverbnation.com/store/index/artist_281496

Please note that the prices are in US dollars. I hope you enjoy and thanks for the support!

Synth.nl Visits Le Mans 2011

In Juni 2011 I visited the 24 hours of Le Mans race together with my friend Hans Landman. We had a great time. This movie is a compilation of some of the footage I shot during that weekend. I made the intro 3D animations in Cinema 4D. The music is taken from my debut CD 'AeroDynamics'. The track is called 'Turbulence'. I hope you like it. You can find more information about the album on http://www.synth.nl/AeroDynamics

Apollo 3D Project (Part 10)

I thought it was time to update you again on Apollo. On the music side I'm really making progress now. I'm still working on the details of some the tracks, but some are already completely finished and ready for mastering. Only in two tracks I still have some work to do. I'm also still working hard on the 3D project. I did another scene the last week that was quite complex. The whole docking scene. Here you see a picture of the third stage of the rocket.

The first thing I had to do is get everything into scale. The third stage model, orbiter and lander were all in a different scale. Then I had to re-texture them like I had to do on all models. And then finally the animating part. First the doors had to open on the third stage, then the orbiter flies away and unfolds its antenna dish. From a safe distance then it turns around towards the opened up third stage and docks with the LEM (Lunar Lander) that is inside the third stage. You can see that in the picture on the right.

And then the Orbiter pulls the LEM from the third stage and the fly away again to a safe distance. In the mean time the third stage floats away into space. To make things more exciting I shot the whole thing from 4 different camera views and did some camera movements as well. Slowly but surely I'm getting the hang of that. In the mean time I'm constructing a teaser movie that holds some short sound clips of ALL the track of the album and show some quick shots of the 3D animations. The whole movie will be about 5 minutes long. I'm not happy with it yet. I need to make a few more scenes. And then I will put it on YouTube for you to get a grasp of what both the music and video will be like. When the album is out I will make a longer version of this video. But it all takes A LOT of time to make. So please be patience with me more just a little longer.

NachtWacht and DonQuixote on Klangarten #20

On the latest KlangArten podcast #20 Brammi played two of my tracks. He played the new 'DonQuixote' track I made for the SchallPlatte 13 sampler and also he played 'NachtWacht' from the Dutch Masters sampler CD.

Since the show is a podcast you can still download it and listen to it when you have time. You can find it on this URL:

http://www.klangarten.de

Groove lowers prices on Synth.nl CD's !

I have some great news. As of today Groove Unlimited (my record label) has lowered the prices on all its own label CD's. So that includes all my albums. Here is the original text from the news letter:

Dear Groove costumers. As of today almost all Groove Unlimited's own releases have a new sales price. As of today they are only € 13.75. So we have reduced the price with over 2 UKP or Euro's and over 3 USD per CD!! We have also reduced a lot of other prices in the catalog. And many of Grooves older releases are only € 9.99. This way Groove Unlimited is not only the best in service but also the cheapest store to get many of the Electronic music that is available. If you have bought a Groove CD in the last month (May 2011) you get an extra 5% reduction on your orders in June and July!! We have adjust all prices for people who have CDs in stock. We still want to give the best service tat is available for you, our customers!!

You can find my CD's incl. the collaboration album I did with Ron Boots on this URL:

http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?artiest=synth.nl

Thanks for the support!

SchallPlatte XIII Released Today

Today the new SchallPlatte XIII sampler CD was released by the German Electronic Music Club Schallwende. It was released at the yearly Grill Fest they organize in the Gruga Park in Essen Germany. They made a CD this year where all member musicians could send in a track. A jury then selected 12 tracks from a lot of entries. So I am very happy that my track was selected. The theme for this album was literature. The Theme for this CD was literature this time and I chose the book fully titled: 'The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha' but I think everybody knows the main person as Don Quixote, the guy that fought wind mills on his donkey, because he thought they were giants. The book was written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes and was published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615). This CD is not for sale by the way. It is only distributed among the members. If you want this CD you will have to become a member I guess. You can listen to my track on this url: http://www.synth.nl/SchallPlatteXIII

Apollo 3D Project (Part 9)

The last week I worked some more on the 3D work for the Apollo teaser video. One scene I had to make was the Orbiter and LEM docked together. I used the occasion to work some more on the materials as well of the orbiter that I took from the LaunchPad scene I did before. I think it looks much better now actually. The downside is though that I'll have to re-render all the scenes I did before. But ah well I don't doubt that I was going to do that anyway since I leaned a lot already in the mean time again.

Here is another nice shot of them docked together. As you can notice I left the background black. I did that intentionally. On all photo's from outer space that NASA provides you don't see stars. So I guess it is more realistic this way even though you miss some reference to your position when you animate these scenes. Camera movements for example are less easy to experience. But it does make it look more mysterious as well and that is good :)

Then I realized something else when I was animating the docking scenes. When the orbiter docks for the first time with the LEM. The LEM is still inside the third stage of the Saturn V rocket and has to be extracted. So I have to do that scene as well. And I reversed the scene I had made to make it an Undocking scene in stead of the Docking scene. That was easy enough to fix. The animation turned out quite OK I think even though I haven't done any retro rocket action yet
.

I also have to do another docking scene that happens when the crew returns from the surface of the Moon back to the Orbiter. But then the LEM will have lost its descend stage. So that is just a matter of deleting that. Should be a piece of cake now. OK enough again for now. And yes I'm STILL working on the music too :) Don't worry. I know it is taking up a lot of time, but I think the result is getting nice already :) Just a bit more tweaking around. I'll keep you posted as always!

Punch, Rob Papen and Synth.nl

This evening I visited I4 Muzique in Eindhoven where Rob Papen introduced his new Punch plugin. Rob gave a nice demonstration of the product for quite some people that showed up there. It is a drum / percussion oriented plugin that uses samples, but also synthesized drum and percussion sounds. I liked it very much. It was nice that by accident by the way that I read about his demonstration on Facebook today and I happened to have nothing else planned this evening. Of course I took a copy of his product home to support Rob, since I like both the person as his work. All his plugins are top notch. It was nice to talk to Rob again and Marc from I4 took this picture. I tried to smile I guess ;) Well it was very late already and I was quite tired. As you can see I even pulled my Rob Papen T-shirt from the shelve for the occasion ;) If you don't know Rob's plugins yet I would say go check them out on his website http://www.robpapen.com