Jean-Michel Jarre On The Evolution Of Sampling & Delays In His Music

Native Instruments has shared the second video in their two-part feature on pioneering composer, performer, songwriter, and producer Jean-Michel Jarre

In the video, embedded above, Jarre takes us through the evolution of sampling and delay technology throughout his career.

Jarre explains how the Fairlight sampler inspired his album Zoolook, for which vocal samples were chopped and arranged to create the sonic bed. And, since it’s an NI video, it also features Jarre talking about he uses Kontakt.

Jarre also stresses the importance of sampling one’s own sounds, insisting that “even if it’s not as good technically, it will have something personal which can’t be replaced.”

Jarre also talks in depth about delays, calling delays and echo chambers his “second instrument”. He talks about his favorite delays, using “two Revox’s to do delays with analog tape,” and how this texture makes up nearly half of his seminal album Oxygène.

You can view the preview part of this series below:

17 thoughts on “Jean-Michel Jarre On The Evolution Of Sampling & Delays In His Music

  1. Zoolook even now there hasn’t been any album gotten close to integrating interweaving processing human vocal sampling from around the world.

  2. BUY MONARK AND REPLIKA!
    By that time i’ll take mda dubdelay with some very old saturation plugin.
    It hurts to hear old men talking such bullshit!
    He’d better off doing some real Jarresque music. 😉

    1. It is a little cringy to see NI.
      I understand regard NI have for JMJarre.
      Preferable still to be an interview from non product company.

  3. I do not care for the clear endorsement of this video, the cheeky “you may edit this out if you wish” however I concur with Jarre that progression is critical within any industry.

    What made those old synthesizers great in their time is that they were forward thinking. Nothing else previous to it came close. The regressive nature of re-issuing old synths and cloning these older synths I think is an utter mistake.

  4. haha i love how they jump strait from the Fairlight and Emu to Kontakt! missed a few units that have been in between those in the evolution of sampling! haha. still a great vid.

    1. I’m pretty sure AKAI was mentioned in there after E-MU… He basically said that after the S1000, AKAI pretty much killed it with sampling. And I’d agree. They dominated the sampling market from about 1988-2002. Sure, Roland put out their S-series, Ensoniq had the great ASR-line, and E-MU put out some ESI rack samplers and the SP stuff in that span, but nothing was quite as memorable and immediate as all the AKAIs. Aside from a few ‘groovebox’-type things, there wasn’t much else until Kontakt. That being said, I had a Yamaha A4000 in the early 2000s which I still think was awesome! However, I think if you were to do a quick ‘n’ dirty 30-40 second summation of the history of sampling, you could safely ignore everything else and go from the Fairlight to the Emulators to the AKAIs and land at Kontakt.

      1. The Emulator II was much more common in studios than the Fairlights, simply because of the massive price difference. That said, the Akai S900 and S1000 were the first seriousl go-to devices for individuals.

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