Apollo Best International CD of 2011 at Schallwelle!

I just recovered from a very long and exciting day yesterday at the Schallwelle electronic music award ceremony in Bochum Germany. I knew I was nominated with 4 other artists, but since the competition was very fierce I didn't expect to win at all. Then when the category 'best international CD' came up I suddenly heard my name with my Apollo album as the winner. I was in total shock since I had to go up front to the podium and a microphone was put under my nose. I had a total blackout and no idea what I said. Ah well nobody looked weird at me afterwards so I guess it was OK. I was (and still am) very happy of course to win this award. An honor to be picked by both the audience and jury from a long list of albums. Another nice thing was that my friend Eric van der Heijden won the 'best artist international' category. And Ron Boots our label owner and good friend was sitting right in between us. He had a good day too :) He was so happy that he announced a 10% discount in the Groove Unlimited webshop for our music the coming week.  I want to thank you all for voting, because that got me nominated in the first place and helped with the final result for sure! Thank you, thank you, thank you :) Well this certainly motivates me to go and make some new music to thank you all. You can read more about the price/event and all the other winners on this website: http://schallwelle-preis.de/. When I have more pictures I will post some nice ones as well. More information on the album here: http://www.synth.nl/apollo (in case you don't know it yet).

New Website with 3D Animation work

I know some of you like my 3D work as well as my music. I plan to do lots more work in this direction with or without my music. But because it doesn't really fit on the Synth.nl website I just put up a new website on http://www.osenbruggen.nl/. I'm planning to do some jobs for customers as well together with my wife. We already build a few websites, videos, logos and animations for customers and we are hoping to get a few more jobs in the future of course. We are using the name 'Van Osenbruggen Productions' for this from now on. Maybe you have seen the name popping up in one of my videos already by the way. Well anyway on the website you can find the videos, websites, logos and animations we did so far. More will come for sure :)

Another Studio Session with Remy

As you might have heard before, I'm working on a collaboration album with Remy Stroomer. We already did some sessions in his and mine studio and yesterday we did another session in my studio. My wife took a couple of pictures when we were just getting ready to play some more music together. In the mean time we have nearly 80 minutes of music that we both like and that should be enough for the album. So now the editing and production fase will start.

There is still a lot of work to be done from now on for the both of us, but we are making good progress. I cannot make any promises yet, but I hope we can release it somewhere in the end of this year. I'll keep you informed about that on here. So keep an eye out for more news on this blog. I can promise you already though that it will be an interesting mix of both our styles. I hope you can all have a little bit of patience for it :) OK. Back to work.

Bootstrapping Apple IIe over Audio

I recently did another project that took me a lot of time and effort and that I wanted to share with you. When I was in school I learned to program assembler on an Apple IIe. Back then I had a C64 myself with a tape drive and the Apple IIe already had a disk drive on it with 5,25 inch diskettes. Back then that was the coolest thing I ever saw and I started saving up  to buy a 1541 disk drive for the C64. A while ago I could get an Apple IIe from someone for free and I couldn't resist that. The only problem was there were some diskettes with it but not much usable stuff. Well not for me anyway. But how to get software on it I don't have any other hardware anymore with 5,25 inch diskettes. I did manage to get a couple of boxes of new and unused diskettes though.

I started looking for a way to transfer diskettes from a PC to an Apple IIe and found this little tool called ADTPro. The only thing is you can install a server on the PC side but you also need a client on the Apple IIe of course. Well this tool can do something that is called 'boot strapping'. It is a way to get an OS running on a Apple IIe without anything to start with. It supported serial and I happened to have a Super Serial card in my Apple IIe, but I could not get it to work. The hard thing is though with serial you never know why until you get it working. Could be interfacing, cable, protocol. Who knows.

An other option was using audio. The Apple IIe has a casette port that wasn't really supported in the DOS implementations because it had diskette and everyone used that, but with some assembler calls you can get you Apple IIe to read data from the audio in port. You connect you Apple IIe with audio in and out to the sound card of your PC and after a few system calls the ADTPro tool starts sending audio through your sound card into the Apple IIe and loading ProDos directly into the memory. And then when you have ProDos loaded you can again transfer the ADRPro audio client over audio to the Apple IIe. And suddenly you have the ability to transfer disk images from the PC to the actual floppy drive. It only takes a very long time to do that.

The first thing I send over because of this was a serial terminal program. With that program loaded I could finally find out why my serial connection wasn't working. It turned out to be a problem on the PC side. The USB to Serial device I used under Windows 7 crashed after a few bytes. So I installed ADTPro on an older Windows XP machine that still had an actual serial port on the motherboard. And that worked. Now I can transfer diskettes at 11520 bits/s and that is as quick as the disk drive in the Apple IIe is anyway. So it is just as fast as a normal disk to disk copy. The next thing I found out though is the Apple IIe has old Roms installed. It is not the 'enhanced' version. And I need that to get an ethernet card and IDE interface running. I just got some Roms of E-bay and am waiting for them to arrive now. So I guess I'll have an update to this story somewhere in the future. Well I enjoyed this project and I am happy I got the Apple IIe running now :)

petSD for the Commodore PET 2001

A long time ago I bought an old Commodore PET 2001 in quite a good condition. It came along with a tape drive with just a few very simple games on it. Of course there is much more software out there for the PET but I needed a reliable and comfortable way to get it on there. Then I found a DIY kit on the internet called 'petSD'. It simulates a disk drive and stores it files on a SD card. It is quite easy to build. The only thing that is a bit tricky is the SD adapter itself since it is SMD and has very small pins to solder.

The website has very clear instruction for the assembly. You can also see a battery on the PCB and that actually is for a clock interface that should tell the PET the current date and time. I don't think I'll actually use that. But then it was time to switch the power on and everything looked OK. I did notice the odd looking centronics like connector and thought that would hook up to a port on the PET. And I was wrong :) Good preperation..... NOT !!. It is a IEEE 488 interface and there is one on the PET offcourse but it has a different connector. So you actually need a cable to hook it up. I thought it would be easy to find something like that on E-bay, but WRONG again.

After a long search and reading a lot of forum articles I managed to stumble on the TPUG (Toronto PET Users Group) from Canada. And they had them on stock :) So after that I had to wait for that cable to arrive before I could test the petSD. And today it arrived! So I hooked it up right away and did a LOAD "$",8 and LIST and got a directory listing of all the programs I already put on the SD card. So it actually worked :) Very cool.

And then it was time to test some games. My youngest daughter also joined and played with the old machine. She was complaining that it was slow :) LOL. Sure it is. But now I can put all the software ever made for the PET on a 512 Mbyte SD card. I already found some games that don't fit in the standard 8 Kbyte of RAM. So next thing is looking for a memory expansion for the PET. So if you happen to have one laying around. Let me know :) OK. If you are interested in the petSD project. You can find more information on this URL: http://www.retro-donald.de/sinchai-shop/

Apollo made the top 5 at Schallwelle awards!

I'm very proud to say that my Apollo album made the top 5 in the Schallwelle awards for best international album of the year. I will be present during the award ceremony that will take place on the 10th of March this year. There are still tickets for sale if you want to attend too. You can find more information on http://www.schallwelle-preis.de/. On that website you can also find the other nominees. As you can see the competition is fierce. I don't expect to win, but I'm very happy to be in this list again. I'll be happy anyway because when I don't win I don't have to give a speech in front of all those people. That is some kind of price for me as well ;) So good news anyway. Thank you all so much for voting! I really appreciate it. This motivates me to go and make more music again.

Boot Selector and HxC for Amiga 500

The last weeks I haven't done much music. The Apollo album has taken a lot of my energy and I needed a break. So I have been working on some projects on another hobby. Next to synthesizers I also collect old retro computers and game consoles. In the place where my studio used to be (before I moved to the basement under the garden) I have build a bit of a computer museum. The last weeks I spend a lot of time testing and repairing stuff and adding modern electronics to old hardware like on this Commodore Amiga 500.

The software for this machine used to be distributed on 3,5 inch double density floppies. After a couple of years these diskettes go bad since their magnetic layer deteriorates in time. So I bought this HxC floppy emulator for it. You can put floppy images on a SD card and select the image you want to load on with little knobs. Once you have the image you want to boot in the display you hit a key and the Commodore Amiga doesn't know better than it is talking to an actual disk drive.

Most people replace the internal disk drive with this HxC emulator, but I didn't want to do that since my internal drive is still working fine and I also have a lot of diskettes that do work. The Amiga 500 is only ably to boot from the first floppy drive though and that is the internal one. I put the HxC on the electronics of a external drive but that becomes drive 2 then. So you need to be able to switch them. I build something for it called a boot selector. It takes two pins from the floppy controller chip inside the Amiga 500 and swaps them when you toggle the switch.

In this way the internal drives becomes drive 2 and the external drive becomes drive 1. So now I can boot from the HxC and my Amiga 500 is still original. I didn't want to drill a hole in it either for the switch so it is sticking out on the back with a flat cable coming through the housing. Now I'm going to transfer some of the diskettes that still work to the SD card and look for some new ones. I'm happy that the boot selector works. Time for some retro fun. I did some more projects so maybe I'll post some more of them up here.

Nominated for the SchallWelle Award

Like the previous years I have been nominated for the yearly Schallwelle Award that is organized by the German Electronic Music club Schallwende. The price is decided by both a jury and the audience. As a listener to electronic music you can vote on your favorite artist and album in both national (that is German in this case) and international categories. Feel free to vote if you want. You can find Synth.nl under international artists and my Apollo album under international album. You can find the voting link here: http://voting.schallwelle-preis.de/.

Only 3 AtmoSphere copies left!

Yesterday I visited the Ron Boots & Friends New Years concert and had a great time. At the stall that my record label Groove Unlimited had there I learned that from the original print of my second album AtmoSphere (2008) only 3 CD copies are left! After that they are out of stock and I don't know yet what is going to happen. All three copies are signed by me personally by the way. So if you don't have this album in your collection yet, NOW would be a good time to order one before they are gone. You can find more information on the album and also the link to the Groove website on: http://www.synth.nl/AtmoSphere

Merry Christmas!!

I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas!! I was working on a little movie that I wanted to have ready for today, but unfortunately I didn't quite make it, but I still wanted to share some of it with you. I'll guess the movie will come next year or maybe some parts later this year in the demo reel I'm making for my website. Here is a simple scene I made with only primitives in Cinema 4D. The snow was done with the Magic Snow plugin.

But this one is a lot more complex and there for the movie took a long time too render. It ran on 10 machines here for a couple of days and then when it was done there was an error in it, because one render machine didn't have the Turbulence FD plugin on there that I used for the fire :( I also wanted to put even more decoration in the tree, but just didn't have more time. To be continued I guess.

And here is a close-up scene. As you can see the tree is very detailed. That also adds up to the render time. Ah well I had a lot of fun making this while I also made this years Christmas track called 'SynthHerald'. It got me in the Christmas spirit early. I hope it will help you a bit too :) Again have a great time with your loved ones today. Merry Christmas to you all!!

Syndae Christmas Special Online!

The new Syndae Christmas special is online! It features my new Christmas Song called 'SynthHerald'. There are two editions my track is in the family edition. All the music on this Christmas special is especially made for this special by all the artists. I always find this a very cool concept.

You can listen to the Christmas special on http://www.syndae.de

20% Discount on All Synth.nl titles at Groove Unlimited

I have some great news for you. My record label Groove Unlimited gives 20% discount on all its own releases until the 30th of December 2011! That means you can buy all my CD's now for a very low price now. Buy 5 and get 1 free :) This offer includes also all CD's from other artists that Groove released in the past years. I can recommend you to check out artists like: Ron Boots, Eric van der Heijden, Gert Emmens and Nattefrost might you not now them yet. And do also check out the Dutch Masters and Analogy compilation CD's. Highly recommended. Well more information on http://www.grooveunlimited.nl. Go to 'CD shop' and then press 'Groove Products' in the menu on top for an overview of all Groove Products. Don't let this offer pass! Right in time for Christmas I think ;)

Synth.nl Soundbank in Rob Papen's Predator 1.6.2 update

I have some nice news for you. In the latest update of the Predator synthesizer made by Rob Papen you'll find a nice surprise. I made a complete bank with 103 sounds for Rob. All the sounds are in the traditional classic synthesizer music style that I also use in my own music. So now you can play with those Synth.nl sounds yourself :) The update is free if you already have a license and if you don't I would suggest you to check Predator out because it is really good in my opinion. You can find more information about the 1.6.2 update here: http://www.robpapen.com/nl/15Dec2011.htm and more information on Rob Papen's Predator here: http://www.robpapen.com/predator.html. If you download the update do let me know what you think of the sound bank. It is the first time I did something like this and I'd like to hear if you appreciate it.

Apollo now also on Itunes and Amazon!

My Apollo album is now also available as an MP3 download purchase from Apple Itunes.com and Amazon.com. I guess that should make it available to anyone now. Here are the direct links to the albums:

Itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/apollo/id485526488

and Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006H580EA/ref=dm_sp_alb

If you have any problems, please let me know and you can find the other sales links for CD's and more information about the album on http://www.synth.nl/Apollo

Building SammichFM DIY Video

This year I build a Wilba SammichFM DIY synthesizer kit. It is based on the famous Yamaha OPL3 sound chip that was also used on the famous Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 and SoundBlaster 16 ASP sound cards. It is a 4 voice FM synthesizer that sounds a lot like the famous Yamaha DX series. During the construction of the synthesizer I filmed the whole process. This movie is an excerpt of the 4 hours total build time. I made the 3D animations myself in Cinema 4D. The music you hear in the background in a track called 'Thermosphere' from my 'AtmoSphere' album that I released in 2008. More information on the album on http://www.synth.nl/AtmoSphere.

Synth.nl on Last RoboCast Podcast

Unfortunately Ian Price decided to stop producing is fabulous podcast called RoboCast radio. I think he did a great job in making this radio show over the last years together with his two droids. I want to thank Ian for all the airplay he has given my music and I'm honored to be with even two tracks on his last show ever. He played my last years Christmas track called 'HolySynth' and he also played a track from my latest Apollo album called 'Apollo 11'. I think most of the shows will remain online for a while, but go give this farewell show a play for sure. You can find the podcast on this URL: http://robocastradio.podomatic.com/
Thanks again Ian and I hope life treat you good in whatever your plans are!

BIT Project (Part 2)

Last time I showed you the rough model of the building of BIT BV, but now it is time to add detail. Today I spend a couple of hours modeling this security camera. BIT has a lot of these all around the building. I modeled it as close as I could from some picture I took of them. It looks simple I guess, but I can tell you it is a LOT of work to model something like this from scratch in Cinema 4D. Well I'm quite happy with the outcome myself and I'll put them on the building soon. There is a lot of other stuff I also need to model and I'm starting to get an idea of how huge this whole project will be. I hope to update you soon with some more stuff I made.

Recorded some Seasonal Greetings

Last week I recorded some Christmas and New Years wishes and send them to all the radio stations I know. Lots of them are preparing or already recording their Christmas and New Years specials so I though better early than late :) So the chances are big that you will hear me talk through some EM radio shows here and there ;) I also send them the Christmas tracks I made the last years. I'm still working on a new one for the yearly Syndae Christmas Special. The deadline is the 17th of December, so I still have some time. I guess you will hear it somewhere around Christmas.

TC 4000 Reverb and RME ADI-8

Recently I added two new devices to my studio. My friend Hans found a very cheap deal on two TC 4000 Reverbs, so we both bought one. I didn't use it until now, but I can tell you it is very good. I missed the VSS3 and NonLin2 algorithms since I sold my PowerCore X8, but they are back :) And more! This reverb really sounds top notch. I also bought a very cheap RME ADI-8 AD/DA converter that was traded in at one of the music shops I come a lot called Live Music in The Netherlands. Both of them are now in the spot where my Eventide H8000 was before. This one is now on it's way to the USA for repair. When it gets back I'll have to find another spot for these two, but they are here to stay for sure :)

One set of MB-6582 knobs left!

A while ago I build a Wilba MB-6582 synthesizer kit. I was too late for a group buy and had to buy a full bag of knobs for myself. In the mean time I have sold a large part of the remaining knobs and today I'm sending away another set of them. I just counted my knobs and I still have one set left. So be quick if you need these knobs, they are hard to get by in small numbers. If you are interested just send me an E-mail and I'll make you a nice deal.