Jean Michelle Jarre sounds

[Z1202]

I think having as many synths as shown on that studio pic is counterproductive. I would get lost in sound design and technology instead of making music And my music would be too synth-etic

interesting sidenote. i think thats the difference between you both.

That might be the difference between the real analog and VA synths. I must admit that I personally never really worked with real analog (only quickly tried out). But there is one VA synth (I think I have been mentioning it a little too often recently, so I'll skip the name) which I believe is the closest emulation of the analog gear ever. And the sound design feels so incredibly different on that synth. I mean, anything you dial in sounds good. It might be not the sound you're looking for, but it sounds good. With ALL other VA synths I have or had, I spend lots (or at least significant amounts) of time looking for tiny sweet spots in the knob position ranges. In most cases I needed to use the fine-tune mode of the knobs to hit those sweet spots. So, I'm under the impression that the sound design is incredibly more difficult on VAs, for whatever reason. Others with real analog synth experience might correct me.

PS. The "sweet spot" problem goes away if I'm not so picky about the "analogishness" or "JMJ-ness" of the sound. The sounds are usable. But they feel very different in style.

[Lotuzia]

I like his quote in that SOS article though...

“By playing with real analogue stuff, you realise how unique these instruments are. All the musicians and engineers working with me said the same thing. Those instruments are incredibly rich — no one can beat that. We have fantastic virtual synthesizers and emulations of vintage instruments, and you can do lots of interesting music with the technology, but they are so different you cannot compare them — just forget it! "

That was 2008… before things changed

Yes, there have been some advancements in getting the "basic analog sound" right since then. But analog synths are so much more than that. Besides the "perfect" side of analog sound, there is an incredible number of imperfections, contributing to the richness of the sound. And my belief, is that, while, as the perfect side of the analog sound goes, we are pretty close, at the same time we are still rather at the beginning of the path, as the imperfections go.

Edit: to make myself more clear. The examples of the perfect side:
- no aliasing
- consistent response of the filters at different signal and cutoff frequencies
- smooth modulation behavior of filters even at audio-rate modulations
The imperfect side:
- the specifics of the oscillator tuning issues (the random "detune" is just a very basic first shot to emulate that)
- various saturations (I believe that even Antti's model of the Moog filter is not "fully close")
- various leakages (which are not really arbitrary)
- lots more

Furthermore, in a real analog synth, these imperfections are tuned against each other at the stage of the synth prototyping, so that they interact in a nice and musical way. Personally I don't think that the engineers who constructed those synths were explicitly aware of the "musical significance" of those imperfections, but they invested time into the sonic and musical consistency of the final product. In the modern VA emulations the primary goal is to be "close to the original". But it's never possible to be 100% close. Still, I would assume that instead of musical consistency tuning, the effort is being put into being as close as possible (because those two goals are somewhat contradicting, as long as the sound is not 100% identical, and you have to choose between the two).

Edit2: also the analog synths were made for professional musicians and aimed to substitute (if not fully replace) the "real" instruments. So they had to compete against real instruments in playability, expression, response etc. OTOH, if you look at the modern software synth market, the 99% of the customer demand is just for the "features". Some people complain about more "musical" issues, but their voice is drowned in the roar of the rest

Agree with that. Regarding musical issues, I think most devs aim to offer some at some point. Whether they succeed in doing that is left to the appreciation of users ....

[fmr]

Edit2: also the analog synths were made for professional musicians and aimed to substitute (if not fully replace) the "real" instruments. So they had to compete against real instruments in playability, expression, response etc. OTOH, if you look at the modern software synth market, the 99% of the customer demand is just for the "features". Some people complain about more "musical" issues, but their voice is drowned in the roar of the rest

Actually, no, the analogue synthesizers were not meant to substitute ANYTHING. Thet were meant to be NEW instruments, to make NEW music (I am talking about the first Moog and Buchla synthesizers).

When Herbert Deutsch approached Robert Moog to build some modules to produce and modulate sounds, he wasn't thinking in replacing any instrument - http://moogarchives.com/ivherb01.htm

The RCA synth, which dated from the 50s, was once promoted as to being able to replace real musicians, but again, it was used in the Columbia/Princeton studio to make NEW music, specifically thought for it.

In the 70s, rock groups used synths to expand their sound palette, not to replace other instruments, and some new music genres were born based exclusively on synths (Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Space, etc).

Only in the 80s did synthesizers started to be used to replace other instruments.

[fmr]

Duplicated post - DELETED

[PatchAdamz]

i never really got into JMJ. I tried and listened to a few albums but in the end I preferred other stuff .. like stuff from Vangelis.

I still got to give the guy kudos for his achievements though..

and it's pretty wild how he and others can manage to run all of this stuff together for a live show..


I imagine how infuriating it must have been when the synthesizers would go out of tune and stuff..

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb08/a ... mjarre.htm

Nice photo!

From owning many hardware synths myself (not as many as this), I can imagine the cost of up-keep.
It must be a true pain in the ass.

The first studio I worked in had a Synclaviar.
The owner paid $50,000.

Must be worth like $2000 now, if it still works.

[BlackWinny]

Also good old FM8 can do Jarre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZbIn_7WuBs

Awesome makes me want fm8

Since 2007 that I have it, it is invariably my number one in my gear (followed by the KLC).

Absolutely no other synth has never taken its first place in my gear. The persons who have not FM8 can't understand at what point this synth is totally special, totally made for absolutely all sounds, all progressions, all envelopes, all sequences, all arps. And in FM... which means a very, very, small amount of CPU and memory. And I have had FM8 by upgrade of my FM7 which worked for years on a simple Celeron 1GHz with 2 Gb RAM. And FM8 worked as well as soon as the upgraded installed, with 6, 8, and even 10 instances. I've got a more powerful computer only two years later, and it was not because of music. With my Fender guitar it has been my only synth during many years. Now with the CPUs and RAM that we have nowadays, its possibilities are without any limit.

But the backside of the thing is that it is very hard to program and to understand in the full. Seven years later I'm still learning things in it that I hadn't yet neither discovered nor of course experimented.

I don't know any other synth (even in all the excellent workhorses that we know all and that we love) except perhaps the couple Zebra and Ace (but even none of them two just alone), having so many resources and with so few CPU/RAM... at the point that it is absolutely inexhaustible.

[Numanoid]

Must be worth like $2000 now, if it still works.

With a bit of service, double the price
http://www.synclav.com/NED-systems-home.html

And 50000 dollars, couldn't the studio owner write that of on the tax anyhow?

[quantum7]

Some of the closest I heard is created with Spire!
https://soundcloud.com/reveal-sound/j-m-jarre-oxygene-2

Pretty cool! Some of those sounds are nearly spot on.

[HunterKiller]

and it's pretty wild how he and others can manage to run all of this stuff together for a live show..

How "live" was that? Didn't Dreyfus sue him because the Oxygene live record sounded just like the original Oxygene from 1976

As analogue gear has such lifes of their own, it's quite strange that they sound exactly the same 30 years later

Only the re-release from 2008 was original tapes with some reverb. However all the shows since then have been mostly, if not completely live. Prior to that was his big concert era, where everything live was unfeasible.

[HunterKiller]

I think he made some fair and valid points. When you take away the rose-tinted glasses and quite deserved hero-worship, it sometimes seems a bit excessive. Personally I believe Vangelis was the better composer and creator, he had a more mature sense of composition as well as sound design. Yet I think Jarre is way more famous, for some reason.

I like both of them equally actually, it's most people's nature to prefer - which on Earth, with the ego self manifests as competition. But truly I don't see one better than the other. Different focus, different results.

They contribute each their own natures and there is always place for both.

Vangelis's sound design never impressed me from the beginning, rather his emotional use of synthesizers.
However, with Jarre, he and Geiss spent much time, doing pure sound design. Buying synths specifically so they could attain a sound that was distinct. I think you have to say it has paid off, 30 years later and people can still listen to Oxygene and Equinoxe and you can think that this music was just recorded yesterday.
You often see Jarre spending inordinate amounts of time on one sound, trying to get it into that sweet spot.
Vangelis was much more a sounds on the fly type of guy, "whatever comes out is good" kind of thing.
It has to do with his intimate knowing of sound frequencies as he puts it, he was less interested in ethereal, and more in down to Earth.

However, as simple as some sounds are, reproducing them is not at all easy, as I have well learned over the past 10 years. There are some things they did (Jarre and Geiss) (Vangelis and team), that most people would never even imagine, to make their patches just that extra tiny little bit different and to take the sound itself out of 'amateur' territory into something that's lasting. Very subtle stuff, here, that most people do not even notice because they do not hear it. Or see it and how it fits into the larger whole. Definitely not what you're thinking. This is the reason why most covers lack something, because of the intricate details.

Most (not all) of the Youtube offerings and things I hear on KVR are not there. You'd have to hang around Jarre/Vangelis forums to see some die-hard sound designers pushing the limits of patch design in emulating those sounds.

There's quite a bit of hero worship for both musicians. However my somewhat rash post from 2012, speaks more from personal experience in trying to completely nail each sound from his albums. Believe me, it's not easy.
I think both men, deserve their place in history, they've done great things. One is a bit more impressionistic, another realistic.

I enjoy both polarities and how they've treated electronic music, both in a more humanistic way than the output from their German counterparts, during the early 70's.

[Luigo]

If you want the sounds he used on "Revolutions", you should check out the Roland D50, or the VC1 plugin card for Roland VariOS and V-Synth (standard in the V-Synth XT). Several of the sounds on Revolutions are presets on the D50, or some of its expansion cards.

[fartybreath]

Here's my emulation of Oxygene parts 1 2 &3 all done with vsti and using the sounds originally requested in this post. Some may have to compare with the original to spot the differences, discerning JMJ fans will spot them immediately.

BTW "Greetings Blackwhinny", re your reply "we discussed this a few weeks ago......". Have a listen and see who has the better judgement over what is good and "sucks". I think if you twiddle the knobs and get creative with Superwave Equinoxe, the sounds can be made very close to what Mr Jarre achieved. Personally I think your opinions are betraying your ignorance and creative ineptitude.

https://soundcloud.com/artybreath/oxygene-1-2-3

[fluffy_little_something]

I don't quite share BW's harsh verdict on SuperWave's synth, either.
The developer has always had an interest in Jarre's music, there are Jarre factory presets in his older synths as well. There is an audio demo of one of those Jarre pieces (sorry, can't tell them apart because of their names) on the SuperWave website, it sounds very good. Frankly, since the last time I heard the original was like 20 or 30 years ago, I could not tell the difference. Of course there must be a slight difference, but since SuperWave stuff is on sale almost year around and uses very little CPU, that synth is a bargain for people who want to make that kind of music.

How many instances did you use for your audio demo? I bet I could not use more than 3 any-Xils instances and my computer would be at its limits.

[fartybreath]

Only the one instance of Superwave, several instances of Synth1 Sonicprojects OPXII for the theramin and synthi AKS for the tweets and whistles. JMJ emulation can be achieved using freeware vst's, though the user needs to twiddle the knobs significantly, but there's the fun part!

There's many to be found here

http://lesitedeburnie.free.fr/index.html

Apologies if this site has been posted previously.

[fluffy_little_something]

Ah OK, judging from your post I thought you used only the SW synth

Anyway the audio demo on the SW site WAS done using only their synth, and it sounds very good in my view.

When emulating those patches one also has to consider the fact that nobody really knows the parameter settings Jarre used for any given sound. So software synths might actually come even closer if people knew those values.