Rob Papen filming in the Apollo Studio for his DVD

Today I had some special visitors in my studio. Rob Papen and his crew (producer Jeroen and cameraman Jochem) came over to film in my studio. Rob is a well know synthesizer musician in the Netherlands from playing in bands like Nova and Peru, but he is also well know sound designer and maybe even famous for his very good software synthesizers like Predator, Blue, SubBoomBass and recently Punch. As you might know Rob also gives courses in synthesizer sound design and he is now working with his crew on a book and DVD about sound design.

 Rob filmed quite some material for the DVD in his own studio where he has a Moog Minimoog and a Jupiter 8, but he wanted to show the layout of some other synthesizers as well to explain where they differ from each other, but also what the similarities are. Here you see Rob playing with my Yamaha CS-50 where Rob especially focused on the Ring Modulation and the other features that make the typical sound of this synth.

Rob also had a lot of fun with my DIY modular and one of the dotcom sequencers. Here he explained how patching works and that you can use the sequencer to control the pitch of an oscillator but also to control the cutoff of a filter. He also showed some other examples of sample and hold on the ARP 2600. From time to time we did have to move some synths around to get a good shot and it is a good thing they brought some extra lighting since it is quite dark in my studio which is great for atmosphere shots, but not to explain stuff on synths of course.

Rob also used the Moog Memorymoog and Roland SH-101, but didn't want to stick with only vintage synthesizers. He also did some shoots with the DSI Prophet '08 and seemed to have fun with the D-beam on the Jupiter-80. The problem with filming this synth though is the touch screen so Rob explained that there were 10 Roland GAIA's in there and did some more in depth explanation on the Roland GAIA itself. There were many more things Rob wanted to do I think, but after about 10 of shooting hours we called it a day.

All in all we had a very nice day and I think it was very productive for Rob and his crew. They actually did a little introduction shot with me on it as well, so maybe I'll appear on the DVD as well. Judging from what I heard about what they did so far and what they did today I think it will be a great product to see if you are into synthesizers. I also filmed a bit with my own camera when they were shooting and Rob gave me permission to put it online, so I'll try to make a little compilation to give you an impression of what to expect. I'm really looking forward to the DVD. You can find more information about Rob Papen's software on http://www.robpapen.com btw. And  I guess the DVD will be for sale on there later on as well.