Jeremy Janzen Biography

Want to learn a little bit more about the man behind Nucleus SoundLab?  Read on!

Early Days

Jeremy Janzen grew up playing bass and guitar in local bands in Saskatoon, SK Canada.  But in the late 90s he began to look for other musical outlets, and started to experiment with early computer music, using Cakewalk and Propellerhead products.  Soundfonts were cutting-edge sampling technology back then, but Jeremy was unhappy with every electric bass Soundfont he could find.  So he recorded his own bass Soundfont, and uploaded it to a Soundfont sharing website and promptly forgot about it.  Several years later, he checked back and it had been downloaded thousands of times, with a variety of glowing reviews from users.

By this time in the early 2000s, early VSTs were being releases and the possibilities for computer music were growing exponentially.  Jeremy discovered Reason 2 and was blown away by the NN-XT sampler and how easy it made sampling, and distributing sampled instruments.  He began to release free NN-XT sample packages on the KVR-VST website, to share his experiments with the world.

As Jeremy tried more commercial VST and sample offerings, he realized that what he was offering for free was actually quite close in quality, if not better, than what many companies were selling.  So one night he brainstormed the business name of Nucleus SoundLab and the first commercial product name SoundCell.

SoundCell was offered in a variety of formats including Soundfont, SFZ, and Wusik.  It cost $9.99 and Jeremy expected to sell just a few.  When dozens and dozens sold on release day, he knew it was not just a coincidence.  Musicians and producers all over the world were really connecting with these sounds.

A watershed moment occurred when Jeremy decided to port SoundCell over to Propellerhead Reason ReFill format in 2005.  This was the first of Nucleus SoundLab’s many Reason ReFills, and the Reason community embraced it.  It was very obvious that the future for Nucleus SoundLab was diving full-on into production of Reason ReFills, and becoming known as an authority on Reason sound design worldwide.

Reason Era

Since then, let’s have a look at a non-exhaustive timeline of major events for Nucleus SoundLab:

• August 2008 – releases the first effects ReFill: Filter Research 1
• Fall 2008 – releases the first 3rd-party product (Filter Research 1) in the Propellerhead PropShop
• January 2009 – releases Pantheon I – a massive ReFill for Reason’s Thor Polysonic Synthesizer, with detailed PDF documentation.
• Summer 2009 – Jeremy was a featured speaker at Propellerhead’s Producer’s Conference, at Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
• August 2009 – December 2011 – begins a subscription service called Reason Wizardry: delivering advanced Reason video tutorials directly to subscribers every month.
• September 2011 – participates in factory library sound design for Reason 6.
• 2012 – participates in factory library sound design for Propellerhead Rack Extensions: PX7, Radical Piano, Pulsar, Polar.
• October 2012 – releases BFD Core ReFill, one of the most advanced drum ReFills ever created – created in collaboration with FXpansion.
• October 2013 – creates entire factory library for FXpansion Tres Rack Extension.
• November 2013 – releases Antimatter, one of the first 3rd-party ReFills specifically built for a Rack Extension (Synapse Antidote)
• April 2014 – creates entire factory library for Propellerhead Synchronous Rack Extension.
• December 2014 – releases Beat Crush 12-bit Distortion Rack Extension in the Propellerhead Shop.
• May 2015 – releases BFD Jazz and Funk ReFill – another collaborative drum project with FXpansion.