By Tom Flint
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of his hugely influential
hit album Oxygene, Jean Michel Jarre has produced an audacious DVD performance
of the entire piece in a manner never before attempted.
If anyone can lay claim to having raised the popularity of instrumental
electronic music to the level of stadium rock it is Jean Michel Jarre, renowned
for spectacular live shows featuring lasers, fireworks and other unforgettable
visuals. As well as selling more than 60 million records worldwide over the
last 30 years, the Frenchman has made it into the Guinness Book Of World
Records, on three separate occasions, by attracting huge concert audiences, the
most recent comprising 3.5 million people.
There have been many other historic milestones in Jarre’s career. He was, for
example, the first composer to introduce electro-acoustic music into the Paris
Opera House and the first Western musician to tour China. From a technological
perspective, he has also been at the forefront of new developments. He was
among the first to embrace the 5.1 medium with his album Aero, and his latest
DVD, Live In Your Living Room, is the first release to use a new breed of 3D
technology developed for the latest home-theatre cinema systems.
Small Beginnings
JMJ is undoubtedly a great showman, entertaining millions with state-of-the-art
stage theatrics, but before becoming a household name, he spent many years
creating experimental electronic music using tape-loop effects and some of the
first analogue synthesizers, for a time under the guidance of the visionary
French composer Pierre Schaeffer. By 1977, Jarre already had a couple of albums
and a film soundtrack under his belt, but it was the reception received that
year by Oxygene that was responsible for his ascent to international stardom.
The LP’s success was remarkable, given that it is a fairly minimal instrumental
concept album recorded on a tiny budget in not much more than a well-equipped
home studio.
“I really did it in a kind of home way using what, I think, was one of the
first home studios,” Jarre reflects. “I just had three or four synthesizers and
was using a Scully eight-track and a mixture of Ampex 256 and 3M tape. The
whole album was done on just one eight-track and you can hear that in the piece
- it’s quite minimalist and I think that contributes to its timelessness.”
Remarkably, the album went on to sell an estimated 12 million copies and
produced the instantly memorable ‘Oxygene IV’, one of electronic instrumental
music’s most iconic themes.
So why re-record the classic, rather than simply re-release it for its
anniversary? Surprisingly, the idea has been on Jean Michel’s mind almost since
day one. “Actually, I got this idea to re-record the album very early after I
recorded it because, although I was OK with the music, I always thought that I
could have had better conditions for the recording process. It has nothing to
do with analogue versus digital: even analogue-wise I thought that I could have
better preamps and things like that. When the digital era exploded at the beginning
of the ’80s I said ‘OK, I’ll do that one day,’ but for me digital was, for
quite a while, not as good as the analogue processing by a long way, and it’s
only quite recently - I would say in the last five years - that with 96kHz,
192kHz, and 24-bit, we’ve entered what we can call the high-definition era. And
only since then I decided to take the opportunity of the 30th anniversary to do
a better recording.”
Jean Michel’s plan was to follow as closely as possible the original recording
process, using the same synths and effects wherever possible, but replacing the
Scully eight-track with a Mac-based Pro Tools HD3 system, recording at 24-bit,
96KHz via a Summit Audio TPA 200B Dual Tube preamp and Neve and API processors.
“I put almost everything through the Summit,” he says, “and I got this good,
fat, analogue sound. I also used an old Neve preamp and an API, just to put it
on Pro Tools, basically. When I mixed, I used only digital processing because I
realised that having analogue sources is what really counts. When you have all
analogue synthesizers and you put that in Pro Tools at 96KHz, 24-bit, it is
almost transparent. The main difference is when you are using virtual
instruments - when everything in the chain is digital - that’s definitely
totally different.”
The massive live area-cum-store-room in Jarre’s Paris studio, with synths set
up as they were for the performance of Oxygene on the Live In Your Living Room DVD.The
original was also recorded without the aid of a sync track or timecode, and pre-dated
MIDI sequencing, so Jean Michel elected not to use these tools for the remake
either. “I played and triggered all the sequences by hand,” he continues. “With
sequencers you are working with patterns and blocks, so it was very interesting
revisiting songs and realising that the process of not working with patterns is
a totally different journey - a totally different trip, really. I remembered
that when I started to do electronic music I was obsessed - I more or less
forgot that obsession along the way - about not having anything being repeated
in exactly the same way. For me it was exactly the opposite attitude to that of
Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and all those electronic bands who were doing
something more robotic. I considered electronic music in a much more sensual,
organic way, where nothing should be repeated.
“So, on Oxygene nothing is repeated the same way. Each sound, even if appears
to be the same, has a slightly different attack and release, and, as the
sequences are being made by hand, by definition they are not exactly the same.
Even the sounds of the drum machines were filtered in a very subtle way to give
life inside the patterns.
Two Revox B77 tape machines used for delays were, says Jarre, responsible for
“40 to 50 percent” of the sound of the re-recorded Oxygene.“I used a lot of
pedals like the Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phase shifter to create the
modulations and delays, and for the remake I had a pair of Revox B77s for tape
delays. Actually, I would say that 40 or 50 percent of the music is coming from
the Revox machines, because I was quite extreme, by having a signal direct on
one side and delay on the other, almost at the same percentage.”
Making It Live
Through the process of making the new Oxygene recording, which involved dusting
down many of his old vintage synthesizers, Jean Michel began to consider the
idea of actually performing the whole album live from start to finish,
something he had never done before for logistical reasons. The idea led
eventually to the production of the Live In Your Living Room DVD, which is
actually a studio recording, but performed live in front of cameras instead of
an audience. The performance will be of great interest to all synth
enthusiasts, not only Jarre fans, for it acts as a fabulous demonstration of
the world’s most sought-after analogue synthesizers being played in a genuine
live situation.
Jean Michel explains how the idea evolved. “I have often played excerpts from Oxygene,
but never the entire piece. These days, as we know, so many concerts are
pre-recorded or pre-produced to diminish the risk of mistakes and optimise the
result, but I decided to perform the whole piece in a real, live situation with
no computers. So we put everything in a big warehouse and filmed the
performance without any stops. The DVD is not made up of a few takes - it’s
like a concert film, except the idea is the audience is the people watching on
their plasma-screen TV or whatever.”
One thing Jean Michel really wanted to do was make sure that the same
instruments were used as on the original album, even though there was the
possibility of using more reliable modern equivalents. To complicate matters, Oxygene
was an eight-track recording, featuring as many independent synth lines playing
together. Having just two hands and no multitimbrality or sequencers meant that
a live performance required three other musicians and extra banks of vintage
synthesizers. Drafted in to provide the other six hands were Jarre’s long-time
collaborators Dominique Perrier, Claude Samard and Francis Rimbert.
“Sometimes there are two or three layers of the same sound, each with different
phasing and processing,” explains Jean Michel. “For example, there are several
Eminent String Machines that make up one of the main Oxygene string sounds. Having
four of us meant I had to multiply the number of instruments, and finding the
equipment was quite a headache, especially as I tried, as much as I could, to
avoid using instruments produced after Oxygene. There are one or two exceptions
but 95 percent of the instruments are of that time. For me it was really
important for the radicalism of the process.”
EMS VCS3 and Synthi AKS pin-matrix modular synths were central to the
recreation of Oxygene; no fewer than five are visible in the pictures of Jarre’s
studio.Most abundant in the setup are the EMS Synthi AKS and VCS3 synthesizers,
each one set up with a certain variety of patch, as Jean Michel explains.
“During the piece you have the VCS3 or AKS being used for lots of different
sounds, but because they have no presets it takes too long to change between
numbers, so we have four or five on stage and each synth is used for one
family, style or range of sounds.”
Having so recently re-recorded the album, Jean Michel was well aware of what
he’d used for each part, but he still needed to plan the setup in a way that
would enable four people to perform the piece together. “At first I had to see
who was doing what per song,” he explains. “It was more or less like a band
situation where someone says ‘OK, I have a good feeling for that part, I’ll
take care of it.’ That’s also a reason why we have some repetition in terms of
gear. Then I could say ‘OK, for this number this person will need this, this
and this, for the second, this, this and this.’ I planned it by drawing it on
paper and then everything went together like Lego!”
Remarkably, Jean Michel reckons that rehearsing the album to a point where it
was ready to perform in one take only took about two weeks, although he was
under a little bit of pressure to meet the important anniversary deadline.
“Everything went so fast because I changed record companies this year, partly
for this type of project. After that everything has had to be done with a kind
of emergency feeling, but that seems to fit the project so I love that.”
Camera Action
For the filming, the four musician were arranged in a ‘T’ shape (Perrier far
left, Rimbert on the right, Jarre out in front and Samard in the middle) within
the warehouse, so that each person was surrounded on four sides by his bank of
instruments. On stands facing the four, and fed by the Mackie FOH desk, were
two large Genelec PA monitors, ensuring everyone was listening to the same
thing. Two microphones were placed pointing outwards from the front of the
setup to capture the ambience of the warehouse. The synthesizer outputs were
recorded into Pro Tools on separate tracks.
Finally, a large corridor of space was left around the perimeter of the setup
for the camera operators, enabling them to capture the action from all angles.
Antwerp-based Alfacam, specialists in high-definition TV filming, were hired to
shoot the DVD, having previously worked on Jean Michel’s Beijing concert in
2004. “They are really nice people who are technically very precise,” comments Jarre.
“We rehear.sed the performance choreographically, to avoid a situation where
one camera man would get in the way of the lens of the other.
“On top of that, I decided to produce a 3D Stereoscopic version. I thought the
idea was quite interesting because 3D is retro-futuristic stuff; it reminds us
of the 1950s when you have these guys wearing white glasses and all that. I’m
quite familiar with the idea because about 10 years ago I worked with Apple
filming a concert in 3D. It’s going to be the next step in the entertainment
world. James Cameron has developed a new Stereoscopic movie camera and 3D
projectors have been installed in 1000 theatres in the US. Actually, the 3D
version is going to be released in 50 theatres in Germany and the US.
“For filming you have two lenses for each camera, so you produce separate HD
masters for each eye. The lenses are spaced the width of the eyes, and you have
to do some pretty precise, boring stuff to get the right angles depending on
where you want the focus, but the result is spectacular. With standard home DVD
players and screens, the only way to get 3D at the moment is by using the old
red and blue glasses, but Phillips is developing a new screen you can use
without glasses. Our film is ready for that but it’s still a prototype. I think
it’s very interesting, because until now music was the only mode of expression
invading the space around us.”
Of course, the Stereoscopic visuals go hand in hand with surround sound, and
JMJ is no stranger to the format. “I’ve worked a lot on 5.1 since Aero,” he
adds. “That was really the first album, I think, conceived and produced
especially for 5.1. It’s got the THX label and George Lucas is using it for THX
demonstrations.
“I’m not looking for realism; I’m looking for musical results, and I think
what’s great about electronic music is that you don’t care if you are in the
middle of this orchestra. You don’t know which instrument is doing what, so
having them in front of you and the audience behind seems, to me, a bit
irrelevant in that case. It’s much more fun and exciting to be in the middle of
all these sounds going around. In that aspect, electronic music is made for 5.1
more than anything else.”
The Performance
Some of the desirable modular and semi-modular synths used on both the original
and the recreated Oxygene. From top left, clockwise: Korg PS3200, ARP 2500, ARP
2600 (two were used) and Moog modular. Although Live In Your Living Room runs
through the Oxygene tracks chronologically, it also offers listeners three
extra tracks not found on either the original or remake. As the performance is
a continuous piece of music, the new sections form links between the main
movements. Jean Michel explains how the transition parts came about. “I
suddenly realised that to get from one part to another in a more live situation
it would be nice for the other musicians to be in a freer, improvised thinking
pattern. So we’ve either improvised variations between different songs, or
lengthened the existing parts. When I started feeling that it was the right
time to change, I began introducing the next part and everybody followed. It
happened in a rather natural way but we also used eye contact to communicate.”
In contrast to the free-form transitional parts, a notated orchestral score was
used by all the musicians to help them with the rest of the material. “It’s one
thing when you are all by yourself, overdubbing one bit at a time because you
know what you’ve just played,” explains Jean Michel, “but when you’re playing
all the parts at the same time, particularly when you don’t have a drum
machine, you need to have a method of counting the measures to be able to play
together. So, it was strange, but fun, using this kind of retro-futuristic
system that mixed a quite serious orchestral score with a performance on analogue
electronic instruments!”
Although the performance was undertaken without any click, MIDI or time
reference, there were still some electronic drum parts, emanating from two Keio
Mini Pops drum machines, which occasionally had to be started so that they fell
in time with the pre-established tempo. Claude Samard, positioned in the middle
of the other three musicians, was the official musical director of the project,
given the task of operating the Mini Pops and other critical rhythmical parts.
To help him start the drum machine in the right place, Jean Michel, or one of
the other musicians, would introduce a sound that acted as a signal for
everyone. “For ‘Oxygene IV’ he was getting this kind of crescendo of noise,”
explains Jean Michel, “and was just counting one, two, three, four, hitting
Play and we were all right in time, hopefully well, almost! The Mini Pops has
no in or output sync, so you have to play everything around it, even the song’s
bass sequence. It’s a bit of a problem playing like a human sequencer.”
Although separate feeds were taken into the Pro Tools system from all the
synthesizers, so that they could be mixed at a later date, it was always the
intention not to change much afterwards. “We all know that for a lot of live
releases you end up redoing everything in the studio,” says Jarre, “but for
this particular experience that would have been silly, so the idea was to keep
all the accidents - even if you have the wrong note being played, or something
not really in tune - to keep the whole thing and therefore the truth and
authenticity of the performance.
“The only thing I changed is the delays, and that was only because I didn’t
want to carry my Revox machines to the warehouse. I was just in the middle of
finishing the mix of the studio version; I didn’t want to change anything, and
when you are travelling with those kinds of things, you never know if something
will happen. So, just to be sure, I used some regular delays for the
performance and later exchanged them for the Revox machines. But what has been
played has been kept.
“For both the album and live recording I didn’t work with stereo sources at all
apart from mono-to-stereo reverb, just to give it a sense of space. Otherwise,
all delays and sources are mono. Obviously, when you work in 5.1, stereo is a
headache, so you have to be in mono.”
In terms of processing, the Summit Audio preamps favoured for the album
recording were not used live, only the direct feeds routed via the front of
house desk. However, Jean Michel is insistent that the raw synthesizer outputs
were perfectly good enough. “I was totally amazed, as were the sound engineers,
by the warmth and depth of the sound when you have all this analogue stuff on
stage playing together. Nothing is harsh, so you can push up the volume and you
have no aggressiveness; it’s amazing how very round, warm, solid and fat the
sound can be. And all these sounds mix, so you never get those kind of digital
phase problems or foggy type of effect. With all those instruments playing on
stage it’s like a symphonic orchestra, where you have violins mixing with
trumpets and they all really work together. I’ve never experienced that before,
so it was really amazing to mix a Mellotron with a modular Moog, analogue drum
machines, Eminent strings, AKSs and all that.”
Happy Accidents
One of Jean Michel’s main reasons for using the old analogue gear, despite its
quirks and issues of reliability, was to engineer a situation in which the band
were forced to react in a musical way to any random mistakes or accidents that
occurred. One issue thrown up by the relative tuning of the Eminent String
Ensembles proved to be particularly beneficial.
“The Eminents were not tuned to exactly the same pitch, and we had an
instrument where the pitch was blocked so we couldn’t change it. It made us realise
that nowadays everything is automatically at 440, 442. We detune, but we do big
important detuning as an effect. The sort of subtle detunes that you have in
acoustic instruments are found less and less with electronic instruments, where
the tuning is done somewhere in a digital patch. The stuck pitch was around 443
or something like that, so it gave us something strange. It was one of those
scary, silent movie soundtrack-type sounds that reinforced the atmosphere.
“Also, in the keyboard of the ARP 2600 there are two notes that make the synth
go berserk each time you play them. That created some interesting things when
we did a chorus or improvised. We had a few accidents with that so we built
everything around the accidents, making other instruments respond with strange
sounds.
“Obviously it’s a risky situation to go on stage with those instruments because
they are not reliable like a Mac, but at the same time it is also that kind of
risk when suddenly you have an accident that can give you something else. In
electronic music these days, where everything is so pre-produced and clean to optimise
the result, we are killing the effect of surprise. We have rock bands with just
guitar, drums and bass coming back instead of keyboards and synthesizers,
because of this reason. People are bored of being behind their computer and
want to express themselves with a rawer attitude, and with those analogue
instruments you are in exactly the situation of a rock band, where you just
plug and play.”
The Future Now
Now that Jean Michel has revived his love of old synths, he is adamant that he
will continue using them on future projects, and he has some strong views on
the pros and cons of today’s music technology. “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! You can’t compare a 400-kilo Mellotron with a virtual synth that’s
imitating the look of it. It has almost nothing in common. Oxygene could only
have been done with the old analogue instruments; that was part of the
experience, and now I want to experiment more with them.
“New bands today want Fender Stratocasters or Les Paul Gibsons from the early
’60s because they have a different sound, but it’s not a retro attitude,
because if you take, for instance, a symphony orchestra violin player, his
dream is to play a Stradivarius, made in the 17th century. It shows that with
all the technology we have, no one has been able to make an instrument of that
quality. It proves that building great instruments it is not just based on how
technologically advanced or sophisticated you are.
“What’s really interesting is that we haven’t invented many new instruments. We
have much more sophisticated ways of processing sounds or emulating
frequencies, but the irony is that virtual instruments are all about recreating
the past, right down to the look of the interface. But then you find yourself
playing in a rather awkward way with your mouse or remote control! This is
instead of getting back to the real instruments, which is a totally different
approach, where you have a large facade with knobs that you can instantly grab
and alter and you can be constantly processing the sounds and getting instant feedback
from the machine.
“In principle you can do all that with a computer - but you don’t, because you memorise
everything. But with these instruments, aside from the Memorymoog, you have no
presets. These ephemeral situations, in which you are all the time, put you in
a totally different frame of mind. It’s like when you are in front of a guitar
- you don’t preset your chords or sounds, it’s a dialogue with your instrument.
That physical response is something we have forgotten, and yet it’s the
foundation of rock & roll. It is based on intuition and doing music with
your instinct, not only with your brain.
“Looking back, the 1980s was a really dark time for me. The ’90s were better
and this decade is definitely far better, but back in the ’80s we were at the
beginning of the digital age. Even if it was a revolution, it broke an old
poetic attitude towards electronic music. Suddenly everything worked in terms
of patterns and presets, and we all became archivists for quite a while,
instead of having this kind of artisan, craftsperson attitude and an intuitive
relationship with our instruments. I think we all fall into that trap. It’s not
better or worse, it’s just something different.
“And the designers even stopped producing those instruments. Tom Oberheim, Bob
Moog - they all more or less stopped. And crazy guys like Mike Matthews, doing
all the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger and Small Stone phaser
pedals. They are absolutely amazing; you can’t get those sounds with virtual
effects. Those instruments are part of the mythology of electronic music at the
same level as the Stradivarius, Steinway, Gibson Les Paul or Fender Telecaster.
A lot of people have only seen these synthesizers in photos so it’s a good
opportunity to show everybody in the world of music - and the audience in
general - that they should be considered at the same level as Stradivarius. You
have this mythology in rock & roll, obviously you have it in classical
music and jazz, but, apart from Moog who more or less everybody has heard about,
the other synthesizers are relatively unknown.
“This whole thing is a tribute to all those guys who created these instruments,
without whom I wouldn’t be there, you wouldn’t be there and most of the people
wouldn’t be there!”
Inside The Studio
Jean Michel Jarre’s studio, on the outskirts of Paris, is pretty much under
construction at the moment, but is all the more interesting for that, as it
reveals so much about where he has come from and where he is going. The control
room is the one completed area so far, and is suitably soundproofed, decorated
and furnished. Here there is a Mackie Control 24 desk acting as the front end
for the Pro Tools HD3 rig, running on a Mac G5, a large screen for monitoring
DVD images and viewing the Pro Tools interface, plus a few racks of processors
housing, amongst other things, his prized Revox B77 tape machines.
Elsewhere in the building is a larger performance/store room which can only be
described as extremely rustic, with patched-up walls and a vaulted brick ceiling
shored up by steel girders. Although some plasterboard has been thrown up here
and there, the room is still very much the store area it no doubt was 150 years
ago, and, as such, is packed to the vaults with flightcases, boxes and shelves
containing miscellaneous gear gathered throughout Jean Michel’s career.
Squeezed in the middle of all this, however, wired into a makeshift PA system
and ready to play, is one of the most impressive vintage synthesizer
collections anyone is likely to see. These are no museum pieces, however: they
are fully functional, complete with custom modifications and surrounded by
soldering irons and torches so that quick repairs can be undertaken.
The setup, as seen in our photographs, is exactly what Jean Michel used for his
Live In Your Living Room DVD, and, by the time you read this, it will have
already been used for a series of live shows, performed without synchronisation
of any kind. “We are doing the first live performances in a very chic theatre
in Paris and I’m going to put all these instruments on stage. I’ve been
fighting to just use a PA rather than specific monitoring, but everybody is
telling me ‘Don’t push too hard, because with the feedback on stage it’s a bit
difficult.’ So we’ll probably have either wedges or ear monitors just to be
sure to arrive in sync, otherwise it might not be precise enough. But for the
DVD filming we had a big PA in the warehouse and everybody, including the sound
engineer, was listening to the same thing. I very much like this kind of thing.”
Big Influences: Pierre Schaeffer
Jean Michel is quick to name Pierre Schaeffer, inventor of the idea of musique concrète
and founder of Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), as his mentor. He explains
why Schaeffer was such an important influence on his musical career.
“I started being involved in electronic music when I was a student aged about
16 in the 1960s, and started studying under Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. In my
opinion, this guy is the father of all of us. He created absolutely everything.
He was the first saying that music is not made of notes, but of sounds and
noise, and back in the 1940s he invented everything. He was making loops with
records even before tape recorders, and he was the first to use delays and
reverse sounds. When I was a student of his we were doing all these kind of
looping things, re-injecting one tape recorder into another and creating huge
delays.
“At that time I remember going into studios where you had maybe 20 speakers
around and above, like multiple mono channels. That was something I experienced
a lot, but when I left art school and went into these sophisticated pop-music
studios I was in front of just two speakers and always felt frustrated with
that situation. But because of the cinema industry, we can now get a decent
sound system at home and I’m really happy to exploit that again.”
 |
| The massive live area-cum-store-room in Jarre’s Paris studio, with synths set
up as they were for the performance of Oxygene on the Live In Your Living Room
DVD. |
 |
| Two Revox B77 tape machines used for delays were, says Jarre, responsible for
“40 to 50 percent” of the sound of the re-recorded Oxygene. |
 |
| One of the most unusual synths in Jarre’s collection is the RMI Harmonic
Synthesizer, an early additive synth. On top of it is an even rarer device: the
Digisequencer matrix sequencer custom-built by Michel Geiss to Jarre’s
specification. |
 |
| Classic polysynths such as the Memorymoog (top) and Yamaha CS80 were also used
in the performance of Oxygene. |
 |
EMS VCS3 and Synthi AKS pin-matrix modular synths were central to the
recreation of Oxygene; no fewer than five are visible in the pictures of Jarre’s
studio. |
 |
| Multiple Eminent 310 string machines were central to the Oxygene string sound.
Here, a Moog Liberation monosynth is also ready to go. |
 |
| A Moog Taurus bass synth, stand-mounted for playing by hand rather than foot! |
 |
Two Keio Mini Pops drum machines provided an authentically retro rhythm track.
|
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