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 The original CD web shop dated from 1996 and was already very outdated.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

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
 

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 ;)

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!

Designing Dinosaur Sounds

As you all know I like to use my own recorded samples in my music. I went out a lot with my portable audio recorder to sample ocean sounds, rain, wind, thunder or dolphins or whatever else I needed. But when you make an album about dinosaurs that is a bit difficult since they are no longer around. So last week I decided to start designing my own dinosaur sound effects. My inspiration was of course Jurassic park because nobody knows how they actually sounded. Of course I could not use the sounds from the movies since, first of all it is not allowed due to copyright and secondly there is usually talking or music or other noises over the sounds. I recorded and collected a lot of animal sounds over the years and I used them for this purpose. Since dinosaurs where very big you can imagine they make big and low sounds. Most of the work was first cleaning up the sounds. Removing background noise and wind noise and after that  stretching the sounds to make them longer en lowering the pitch. After that I layered multiple animal sounds together for the maximum effect. In the picture there is a little give away which sounds I made. There will be tracks about these animals on the album. But there is still a lot of work to be done before you can listen.