Oxygene 4 - Jean Michel Jarre's Timeless Masterpiece | Drum Patterns Explained

[@CaptainPikant]

Here's our free Oxygene WAV drum sample pack: www.patreon.com/posts/jean-michel-iv-110158905 If you're looking for a Mini Pops 7 plugin then we can recommend the free "Bucket Pops" by Full Bucket Music www.fullbucket.de/music/bucketpops.html

[@albertpauw8234]

Thanks for this. Brings me back to the summer of 1977. A friend had bought the album. When I went over to listen, his mother asked me if I came to listen to this "ghost music", referring to the start of the album. Happy times.

[@CaptainPikant]

That's a good way to describe it :) :) We're glad you liked the episode!

[@DeathMayBeYourSantaClausz]

Mini Pops has to be the most adorable name for a drum machine ever

[@DeathMayBeYourSantaClausz]

man I love this channel

[@Syrwll]

The quality of this channel is insane, great work!

[@pablowentscobar]

I really love the idea of using a really nice modern drum machine/sampler with really nice drum sounds and then working to make the drums sound like trash from a 70's dinosaur. It just makes me smile. Awesome video fren.

[@CaptainPikant]

It's true, we love our vintage trash ;)

[@pablowentscobar]

@@CaptainPikant There is a certain charm to it.

[@dankro279]

Not trash. It's classic!!

[@dickydoes]

Definitely not trash.

[@foljs5858]

"and then working to make the drums sound like trash from a 70's dinosaur" trash? dinosaur? I mean, you know CR78, 808, 909, 606, DMX, LM-1 are still beloved and used in all kinds of hits, right?

[@HANGINGOUTWITHAUDIOPHILES]

The making of the Quijada had me very interested. You nailed it. Super impressive. Thinking of the way the real sounds works seems the key. Superb!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Thinking of the mechanics behind the real sound also influences the resonance trick earlier on :) I find it's really, really invaluable in general

[@CaptainPikant]

Thank you so much :) :)

[@christdolphin69]

the synthesis is so felxible in a lot of the syntakt machines, that not only can you make a melodic synth with any of the drum machines, but you can make percussion with any of the synth machines. AND if you create a sort of complex timbral short burst of sound but leave some decay on the amp envelope on a percussive patch (like the clap machine or one of the bass drums, really any of them), then strike it with a much lower note, you'll sometimes get a rhythmic pulsing sound out of what seemed much less interesting at higher frequencies.

[@myNoiseDotNet]

The quality of your videos is remarkable, in so many ways. The contents, the aesthetics, the presentation, the tone... Wow!

[@kuglepen64]

Your cicada is a work of art. Tip of the hat Sir.

[@merindol73]

Please, more Syntakt sound design videos! Super inspiring how you went through each sound. Thank you 🥰

[@julianharris1068]

Please do a video on artists that used the LinnDrum like Prince and Kate Bush

[@Powhart]

I'm so glad seeing the Love You're showing to the Syntakt

[@RobbekenSynthMusic]

That was excellent. I liked Oxygene before I even knew what a synthesizer was!

[@josephmarkey9096]

There was a bit more to it than that. Jarre also had a small stone phaser with a 9v battery running low to smooth out the phase on the minipops with a delay on top. The phase added even more texture to the rhythm. And the iconic lead soft brass sound? An ARP 2600 programmed by Michel Geiss.

[@gabriel87462]

Absolutely astonishing! I often asked myself how to create that beautiful drum pattern. Now, I made it with Logic Pro using your sample files. Thank you very much! ;-)

[@prognosisunclear9445]

So many great techniques here! Thanks for sharing.

[@BeefMissileband]

I’ve learned so much about drum sequencing from you. I would like to request sometime a video on the PO-12. It’s one of the most basic out there, I know, but it’s what I have

[@MacXpert74]

Nice video! The thing you said about Jarre not having a polyphonic synth available and therefore having to stack mono synth notes for chords is not entirely correct though. Most of the 'polyphonic synth' sounds you hear on the album like the strings pads were played on the Eminent 310 Unique organ which is fully polyphonic. Of course he did do a lot of overdubbing to get more tracks, as he recorded everything on just an 8-track recorder. So the thing about adding noise as an effect is true.

[@artemvsprime]

Yeah but JMJ also used a string machine which was poly, wouldn’t that be considered a synth of sorts?

[@artemvsprime]

Guess my question is, what is a synthesiser and in my opinion (I’ve written a thesis about synths for my undergrad), it’s an instrument that produces sounds by the manipulation and control of electronic circuits

[@MacXpert74]

@@artemvsprime The Eminent is of course more an organ than a synth. For something to be considered a synth it would need controls to manipulate the sounds with filters and envelopes etc, which isn’t the case on the 310 Unique. He didn’t use a seperate string machine on the album, but used the string section of the Eminent 310 Unique for this, combined with an Electro-Harmonix Small stone phaser. On Oxygen this is what he predominately used for all the strings/pad sounds that are played with chords. So he didn’t record his mono synths multiple times to create chords as is suggested in this video.

[@artemvsprime]

@@MacXpert74 ah ok I see

[@sauermusicDE]

Thumb goes up for that insane effort on the drum sound programming.

[@ojnunezm]

Just wow! 🤯

[@claudiomalz]

love. JMJ good tutorial !!!

[@CaptainPikant]

Thanks Claudio :) :)

[@kaitlyn__L]

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. My favourite element of Oxygène, the shaped noise leading to feeling like you're soaring in the clouds... was just to cover up the tape noise?! 🤯 But, but! Probably due to Oxygène, I love using shaped noise (and real ocean sounds) in my tracks. And yet I also worry about the noise floor of my interface maybe this will get me to stop worrying, at least... (I think I commented it on the right video this time... dang KZbin glitches.)

[@CaptainPikant]

Absolutely! It's such a great artistic choice and we'd never have guessed it was born out of necessity. Apparently some people even thought the record was defective and tried to return it to the shop :D

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@CaptainPikant “hey my record is just making swooshes and bleeps, I think something’s wrong” 😅

[@artemvsprime]

It’s notoriously hard to track on a turntable, I had it and everything had to be perfect for it not to skip or sound distorted

[@AxelsoftMusic]

👍 Nice job!

[@Dutchman536]

Very fine piece lady and man !

[@cyrrustvirus]

Goosebumps❤

[@3k3k3]

Ohh Captain My Captain!!!

[@pakozdiattila]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation and presentation. You've shown several noise-making tricks. 🤓 THX.

[@originunknown3209]

I think of all the skin tingling sounds on Oxygene, that Eminent 310 has to be the finest sound of all, but JMJ ran it through an Electro Harmonix Smallstone phaser to get those goosebump pads!!!!!! Also, I believe he ‘borrowed’ part of the lead sound from Hot Butters’ 1973 classic, ‘Popcorn’ for his ethereal lead sound on Oxygene IV!!!!! A seminal album it is though!!!! 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌

[@MrDCPatterson]

learned a ton and I have always loved your delivery style! Thanks for enriching my music.

[@CaptainPikant]

Thank you, we're so happy to hear that :) :)

[@sonic2000gr]

Jarre... My favorite!

[@briannhinton]

This video does a great job demonstrating the sound design possibilities of the Syntakt. It is much more capable than the default engines.

[@txetxuaguado7318]

Amazing...It feels like the old Minipops, I need more Quijada!!! 😅...thx and greetz 😊

[@twitchbook-1]

Thanks for everything

[@tuc5987]

Big fan of the channel - I just can't get over how strange the waving is at "hello everyone" :D

[@CaptainPikant]

😄😄

[@MCcharliegaming]

Thank you!!

[@laurencehendry2368]

Hey! In live with your videos, Captain Pikant! Please, any chance you could consider Flying Lotus - “Do The Astral Plane”? 🐰🙇‍♂️

[@jamesvincent7649]

F O A D

[@MrTomcun]

Amazing video as usual. Thanks! Are you planning to publish the hard cover of your patterns book? I love the design too and I would love to buy it!

[@CaptainPikant]

Thank you! Maybe some day :)

[@kevinjbakertribe]

You got the bass line right :)

[@CreepyT]

Hi Captain! Love your channel and have been watching for at least 2 years. Curious if you have ever considered tackling drum patterns and fx done by cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy from the mid to late 80s. First release of a recording using an 909. Early adoption of mixing synthesized drums with live percussion. Blending of Rock, Electro, and Dance styles. Polyrhythms by use of delay and other techniques. If you've never dug into his evolution in percussion, I think you will find some interesting and innovative discoveries.

[@CaptainPikant]

Thank you so much CreepyT! While we haven't done a complete episode on Skinny Puppy yet, we have featured their patterns in a few of our videos, for example the 808 and 909 history videos :)

[@DJKickstarter]

This rhythm can also be found in the Rhythmus VST by Electrostudio.

[@RayBellis]

It took me a long time to realise that the sound effects such as the noise sweeps etc are what really "make" a JMJ track. You can recreate the actual instrument tracks as faithfully as possible but it won't sound like Jarre without the added sound effects.

[@ZozillaThaGreat]

Superb video , trying to prgram as i watch i noticed some diff in my units for the impulse and kik , they're more klicky , do you route those to FX track with filter lowered ? (i get the ruults by doing it (no lowering of filter but roouting all in FX track) Thks keep the work going , i've been designing all my fav drum masshines in syntakt and pretty impressed with what i got ;)

[@CaptainPikant]

Thanks Zozilla! We just checked the project and we did not route any of the tracks to the FX block :)

[@csrvzla]

Yeii🎉

[@iamtwilburn]

Do PRINCE ❤🎉

[@cslevinedivert]

( on the last part, i remember hearing a 5th, not an 8va motif "Do sol Do sol" + echo... , then "Re sib...", and "Fa do..." "CGCG......CGCG......DBbDBb....DBbDBb.....FCFC....FCFC...." )

[@djpewpew]

Super awesome video... Can I ask a newbie question... can't you just make this a 12 step sequence? How does the third-time work differently? Thanks, still learning synths...

[@CaptainPikant]

Thank you! That's a great question. We've dedicated a section to this in our Drum Machine 101 book, but here's the jist: It doesn't matter if you play the pattern at 126 BPM with a 3/4× tempo multiplier or you leave the tempo multiplier at the default 1× and just reduce the overall tempo of the drum machine to 94.5 BPM (three quarters of 126 BPM). But this will only work as long as you don't have the drum machine synced to anything else. In modern setups where clock signals are used to sync the tempo of multiple machines, changing the BPM on a leading drum machine just to get triplets in a drum pattern would affect every other machine that wants to run its patterns at the regular speed.

[@djpewpew]

@@CaptainPikant Ah... Like the Doctor Who theme? But with 70's tech and now our tech, all on old music theory? Ok, cool, that makes sense. Thank you for your message!

[@whosthatjt]

Could you do The Art Of Noise next please? I have the original samples if you're interested :D

[@texmexsauce]

yesss beatbox or the classics!

[@CaptainPikant]

I haven't read it yet, but I have Trevor Horn's book lying on the shelf here :) That might actually lead us down that road ;)

[@texmexsauce]

@@CaptainPikant oohh, wld be looking forward to it whenever it comes out! enjoying your latest videos lately!

[@ILLUDIUM_Q_36]

Lofi12 XT has an excellent pre track tempo multiplier. Don't take advantage of it like I should

[@thedoublek4816]

Not sure if somebody else mentioned it, but I think that you've missed one last sound of the minipops: the guiro.

[@CaptainPikant]

Hi, you're right the Mini Pops had a Guiro (also a Cowbell and Claves for that matter). But as far as we can tell neither of them were used in Oxygène IV :)

[@mateuszorlinski7334]

I've thought the Eminent 310 Unique organ was used for the pads

[@CaptainPikant]

You are right, but technically those kinds of organs are not poly synths - if I remember correctly they work with one single oscillator and filters to create the individual pitches :)

[@mateuszorlinski7334]

@@CaptainPikant Yes, that's what the Dutch at Eminent did.

[@Digiloog]

That’s correct. The Eminent for pads and ofcourse the Smallstone Phaser (slightly modded) on top of that.

[@the_glove]

The one thing I dislike about the syntakt is that every machine starts with waaaay too long decay time. Have to turn it down every patch , every jam… very annoying

[@CaptainPikant]

Now that you mention it and seeing how often we scribbled "less decay" into the annotations there might be some truth to that ;)

[@the_glove]

@@CaptainPikant we really need kits don’t we !

[@CaptainPikant]

@@the_glove yes I'd really love to see a few of those new DT2 features on the Syntakt!

[@ringtangting]

Nice video as always! I'm not sure I could hear the faint whistling noise. I should get my hearing checked, I'm kind of scared, though

[@CaptainPikant]

Thanks! Are you using headphones? Some bluetooth headphones have inbuilt gating that could cut off that noise floor. To be fair it can be a little hard to hear depending on your speakers and the environmental noise.

[@annother3350]

How did Jarre get the hats into triplets?

[@CaptainPikant]

Jarre didn't have to build the pattern since the Mini Pops 7 was a preset rhythm machine. And because he didn't sync the Mini Pops to anything he didn't have to worry about tempo multipliers either :)

[@80Jay71]

How come I seem to be the only one that consider Oxygen 5 to be the masterpiece?

[@analoguewings]

Hopefully someone German will make analogue minipops clones for us soon…

[@Digiloog]

Haha. They working on it yes.

[@matthias.t]

He is from Switzerland, not Germany.

[@discharge2331]

When i used to hear this when i was a kid I thought ,what a weird sounding tune .

[@artemvsprime]

Oxygene is very impressive once you realise that JMJ was punching in live analog synthesisers in his kitchen to a 4 track tape, pre midi that is! It’s an astonishing futuristic vision of what synthesisers can achieve…not my personal favourite because I prefer tangerine dream from 1972-1979 and I think Edgar Froese was more of a positive creative force for others around him while JMJ was selling out with light shows or other gimmicks but I digress…😂

[@artemvsprime]

Edgar Froese is to electronic music = Miles Davis to jazz.

[@GuyWicks]

Note to old people: for the first four minutes you probably wont be able to hear what captain is talking about... Note to young people: people who listened to this when it came out are now 50 to 60 years old and their h/f hearing is shot to pieces!

[@espacemaxim]

Bit of a headscratcher to use the Syntakt, when the Digitone can do the drum + every other sound easily. Well, I guess it's a beginner video, of course I would kinda like to see the pro level video of someone doing Oxygene on the Tone without overdubbing! Yeah!

[@CaptainPikant]

Yes it would be possible to use a Digitone, but I'm not sure it would be my first choice here. It only has 4 tracks (we need 8 for the drums alone) and none of JMJ's synths on that album were FM based. But it would certainly be interesting to hear :)

[@espacemaxim]

​@@CaptainPikant Well, obviously you would have to Plock the drums to get around the track limitation. As to what generates the sound...I'm not sure where to draw the line of being "authentic" but the Syntakt wouldn't be my first choice.

[@CaptainPikant]

@@espacemaxim while it's true that you can get around the track limitation with parameter locking take a look at steps 10 and 12 of the pattern. They have 7 and 5 instruments playing simultaneously there. That's not really possible with just 4 tracks, even with parameter locking.

[@espacemaxim]

@@CaptainPikant So you are basically saying a Digitone can't convincingly recreate the sound of this particular rhythm of the Minipop 7 without overdubbing. Correct?

[@CaptainPikant]

@@espacemaxim if you really wanted you could do it with the Digitone's multimap feature, it just wasn't our first obvious choice as an FM synth :)

[@JanMichalSzulew]

The remark about polysynths is not true - he wasn't layering anything. The only chords that are on the Oxygene album are done either on an Eminent 310, Farfisa organ or Mellotron (on Oxygene 2) - they were all polyphonic.

[@UBe-hhger]

Werrie intrestink as wie schermans say

[@RebirthoftheSun]

How much money make music?

[@christdolphin69]

so true. a modern day ghandi

[@CausticCatastrophe]

kill jester

[@fjfrancois]

Another jewel video ❤️ thanks 😊

[@CaptainPikant]

Glad you liked it :) :)

[@winteregon]

Original better. So. But respect.

[@quantum_ocean]

damn my ears suck. I can' hardly hear that hat. Is it just me? Anyone else?

[@piotr.wozniak]

Weak lead. It sounds like an accordeon