BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

ARP2600 Finally went for £2320

VEMIA

(Page 4)Lot number 5627

Seems there's also another on there for Auction too

And also a Beasty EMS Synthi 100 currently standing bids near 18 grand

There was even a RMI Harmonic up for sale there... fetched £1770 excl. VAT.

I think Equinoxe is talking about the GAS (Gear Acquiring Syndrome) - it's more about having the thing than actually using it. A lot of people go drooling and wooaah at only dreaming about owning a vintage 2600, but as soon as they have acquired one, they don't even put it to proper use. I have seen a lot of pictures of studios which are packed to the brim with analog gear worth tens of thousands of euros... and the music made by the owners... well, they may as well have used some cheap shit cause it sounds really shitty. After all it's all about owning the thing. A 'real' musician/artist doesn't necessarily need that specific old oberheim or whatever to put his ideas into practise. Of course everybody can dream of owning that kind of stuff, but you have to realize that most of the sounds can easily be reproduced by the gear of today. Then don't go and say... "the ARP has this specific sound" - cause very few of those GAS suffering people actually know what they talk about. There's only a handfull of purists who can tell the difference. And much of this 'I-desperately-want-a-vintage'-talk is all about "I want to sound like Vangelis and his CS80" - but this kind of sound is not hard to reproduce on a VA of today, and the CS is capable of much more things a lot of people don't even know about...

I mean - it's all about owning and 'doing what they did'. Pointless, if you ask me.
People owning a few of those vintage bears and producing really decent music themselves? They are very small in number I think.

It's all about owning them, really. Not that I don't want a 2600 myself, surely If I can put it to proper use will be the question. I'm not much of a synth programmer, more of a keyboardist...

hehe, one sentence of me formed a thread in the original thread.

GeeJee wrote:I think Equinoxe is talking about the GAS (Gear Acquiring Syndrome) - it's more about having the thing than actually using it. A lot of people go drooling and wooaah at only dreaming about owning a vintage 2600, but as soon as they have acquired one, they don't even put it to proper use. I have seen a lot of pictures of studios which are packed to the brim with analog gear worth tens of thousands of euros... and the music made by the owners... well, they may as well have used some cheap shit cause it sounds really shitty. After all it's all about owning the thing. A 'real' musician/artist doesn't necessarily need that specific old oberheim or whatever to put his ideas into practise. Of course everybody can dream of owning that kind of stuff, but you have to realize that most of the sounds can easily be reproduced by the gear of today. Then don't go and say... "the ARP has this specific sound" - cause very few of those GAS suffering people actually know what they talk about. There's only a handfull of purists who can tell the difference. And much of this 'I-desperately-want-a-vintage'-talk is all about "I want to sound like Vangelis and his CS80" - but this kind of sound is not hard to reproduce on a VA of today, and the CS is capable of much more things a lot of people don't even know about...

I mean - it's all about owning and 'doing what they did'. Pointless, if you ask me.
People owning a few of those vintage bears and producing really decent music themselves? They are very small in number I think.

It's all about owning them, really. Not that I don't want a 2600 myself, surely If I can put it to proper use will be the question. I'm not much of a synth programmer, more of a keyboardist...

I totally agree with you. My G.A.S didn't stop until last year. I have owned a LOT of gear from 2002-2006 and made less music than I hoped I would.

I have been hunting specific synths for their possibilities not because JMJ owned it or because I wanted a Vangelis horn. It has been more about a search for a synth that I'd feel right at home with - like I did with my Epiphone Casino when I played guitar. Something that respond to my playing. Analog synths have brought me close to that but not as I have hoped for. VA:s and digital synths (those I have owned) can't give me that feeling at all. Sadly I have started to realize that no synth will ever give me that. So I have recently picked up the guitar again.

Many of those who have big setups have them because they can afford them. They can afford them because they work with nice jobs and because of that they probably have very little time left to make something decent with their machines. It's something to show other nerds on vintagesynth.com.

This days I'm pretty fed up with the whole analog hype thing since VA:s are getting better and better. Vintage analog still sounds best to me. But they are getting way to expensive compared to what you actually get. Is that small difference in sound worth it? No, I don't think so.
What I'm trying to say is that when everything is mixed and put on record nobody will know wether you used a Virus TI or a Minimoog for that bass if you don't tell them.
Not to say that you can't own synths just because you think that they're fun to tweak. But that's another story.

Sorry about the rant/offtopic. But I really agree with GeeJee!

My Nord Lead 2x has a performance bank of patches that is supposed to be a recreation of the original Prophet 5 patches. Still it isn't a Prophet 5 but it was suprising how good they were recreated. The synchlead used in among others "L'Ouveture" from CiC is there. I did also find a ptach that sounded completely like that sololead in the last part of Magnetic Fields 1, as Vince posted some time ago as being from the OBX. I don't know if Jarre used the P5 for that album and Vince might be right, the similarity just hit me.
I did also find some YMO patches

Jakob BC wrote:My Nord Lead 2x has a performance bank of patches that is supposed to be a recreation of the original Prophet 5 patches. Still it isn't a Prophet 5 but it was suprising how good they were recreated. The synchlead used in among others "L'Ouveture" from CiC is there. I did also find a ptach that sounded completely like that sololead in the last part of Magnetic Fields 1, as Vince posted some time ago as being from the OBX. I don't know if Jarre used the P5 for that album and Vince might be right, the similarity just hit me.
I did also find some YMO patches

If you know how to program a synth and what parameters make up a given sound you can program any sound you want,As I've said elsewhere,what tells a synth apart is its filter texture and responce times,you can easily replicate Moog sounds providing the synth has the same sort of Filter type(Moog 24 dB Low pass)and the Nord is more than capable of replicating most synths,Perhaps even more better than some because its a raw sound that sounds more Analog because its not swamped by effects.To me the Nords are more closer to Analogs than the majority of the other VA.

Whilst they only give you the Impression of the sound they can never fully replicate an analog,the Nords don't have much visual feedback,so you rely more on the settings of the parameters and there positions,a lot of VA have LCDs which already influence what your hearing,they display a name of the patch which will have some sort of cross reference to the type of synth its emulating so your already duped into thinking it sounds like that instrument before playing the patch,the nords don't have that influence so you tend to assume what the sound is trying to replicate,which means you trust your ears more.

I tend to listen to the sound I want to replicate and pickout the type of Harmonics of the sound,once you understand the type of oscillators those instances of patches use you'll begin to figure out easily how to replicate most sounds.

I'm currently working on an Eminent 310 Patch on the Andromeda.Its for me the closest to the String ensemble I've been able to get on any of the VA I have,the Virus TI does a good job,but not as warm,its a bit too Digital,I've also managed to do a convincing Laser Harp synthex Patch on the Ti

Some Audio snips coming soon..

For me, instruments used in Magnetic Fields Part 1 are :

Oberheim OB-X for Theme and Bright Pad (100% sure)
Sequential Prophet-5 for Theme (bell theme in Part 3) and Dark Pad (95% sure)
RSF Kobol with MDB Polysequencer for Sequences (100% sure)
Fairlight CMI for FX, String, Saxophone, Choir (100% sure)
ARP 2600 for arpeges (100% sure)
EMS AKS for FX (100% sure)
EMS VCS3 for FX (100% sure)
Electro-Harmonix Echo Flanger for some theme (Part 2 at 11:00) and fx (98% sure can't be Electric Mistress)

Jakob BC wrote:My Nord Lead 2x has a performance bank of patches that is supposed to be a recreation of the original Prophet 5 patches. Still it isn't a Prophet 5 but it was suprising how good they were recreated. The synchlead used in among others "L'Ouveture" from CiC is there. I did also find a ptach that sounded completely like that sololead in the last part of Magnetic Fields 1, as Vince posted some time ago as being from the OBX. I don't know if Jarre used the P5 for that album and Vince might be right, the similarity just hit me.
I did also find some YMO patches

Funny enough I was reading this yesterday over on the Clavia site. They say there are just a little over 40 of the P5 patches in the NL2x.

olivier_0001 wrote:question about separating effect with MP7 used in oxygene 4:

Guiro : use small stone ?

Quijada : delay L / R

can you confirm ?
small stone is used for another MP7 instrument ?

Hmmm... Regarding Oxygene 4:

Guiro: There is none in this track!
Quijada: Don't know if the MP7 has separate outputs, but there's a very short hardly audible slap-delay on it to prolongue it's tail a little.

The whole MP7 is routed through the SmallStone with a very subtle setting, which gives you the ever changing characteristics of the cymbal-sounds (the 'ka-chick' on the 3rd and 4th count (6/8)) and also gives the hi-hat that spacy character... The SmallStone however also makes for the kickdrum to be more and less audible every few seconds as it puts it's frequencies in and out of phase (which you can hear very well on the record).

As for the lead on Oxygene 8... most definately the Nord 1! You can hear subtle changes in the volume of the sound and the filter opening up just a little bit more in the notes that are played harder. This rules out almost every analog synth as they are simple not touch-sensitive which the keyboard used for the lead in Oxy8 clearly is. The filter uses keyboard tracking/follow as it opens up more exactly on the points where a note is played harder. Again a clear mark of a touch-sensitive keyboard.

Equinoxe 4 sequence is ARP2600 and Matrisequencer.

I also heard someone say here that the laserharp triggered the Eminent for Oxygene 7 during the Oxygene 7-13 tour. This has and will never be done as the E310 has no CV or MIDI input. The laserharp triggers the Elka Synthex or a sampler (which was the case on the Oxy 7-13 tour).

Armandox wrote:
I also heard someone say here that the laserharp triggered the Eminent for Oxygene 8 during the Oxygene 7-13 tour.

I think you meant oxy 7, because the laserharp was used at the begun of the show

Armandox wrote:I also heard someone say here that the laserharp triggered the Eminent for Oxygene 7 during the Oxygene 7-13 tour. This has and will never be done as the E310 has no CV or MIDI input. The laserharp triggers the Elka Synthex or a sampler (which was the case on the Oxy 7-13 tour).

You must be aware of that JMJ had his Eminent (or Eminents) Midified. On the other hand he could also have used a sampler for the tour.

Regarding the Oxygene 8 lead, as it looks now some has found out that the Eminent (again) was used for this lead. Otherwise I would always have thought it to be from the Minimoog. This is still an open question to me.

Anyway it was interesting to read you arguments

Armandox wrote:You must be aware of that JMJ had his Eminent (or Eminents) Midified. On the other hand he could also have used a sampler for the tour.

Regarding the Oxygene 8 lead, as it looks now some has found out that the Eminent (again) was used for this lead. Otherwise I would always have thought it to be from the Minimoog. This is still an open question to me.

Anyway it was interesting to read you arguments

Very interesting, especially the MIDIfication of his Eminent(s). That is something I have to delve into as I'm picking up my mint condition E310U tomorrow

Congrats man! I'd like to have one myself but the organsize is a problem here.

Jakob BC wrote:Congrats man! I'd like to have one myself but the organsize is a problem here.

No worries... I'll make some multisamples of it and pack it, then post 'em here so y'all can enjoy these fine sounds...

I'll sample it using maximum release and in all major thirds and quart (C1, E1, A1, C2, E2, etc.) that way you can set your samplers ADSR to any setting you like, and still have almost the full effect (apart from having the real thing).

Regarding that Oxy8 lead... still pretty convinced (giving all the factors which I hear happening soundwise) it's the Nord 1. But for the Oxygene 7-13 tour he definately used an Akai S2500 sampler. Just take a look at http://www.laserharp.org/html/technology.html

Grtz,

Armandox