Monday, November 15, 2010

Jarre's 'Laser Harp' Sound for Propellerheads Reason

Those of you familiar with the music of Jean Michel Jarre will probably have heard, and possibly seen, his Laser Harp. It's a crazy instrument played by passing the hands through laser beams. The Laser Harp has been a feature at many of his concerts over the years and while it's mostly for show, I've always loved the sound, which is generated by an Elka Synthex synthesizer.

I set about recreating the Laser Harp sound in Propellerheads Reason, using Reason's Thor synthesizer and a few supporting effects. I'm very happy with the results and thought I'd share them.

If you have Reason Version 4 or higher, you can download a copy of the Reason patch here. If you can improve upon it, then please let me know.

Have fun.

4 comments:

Unknown said...
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Jean-Yves TARRADE said...
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Jean-Yves TARRADE said...
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Jean-Yves TARRADE said...

Hello Tony,

Your laser harp sound is really good but it could be better.
Before adding effects it would be better to use the whole sync osc effect provided by Thor. I mean to add a third osc with of course a little detune between osc 2 and osc 3. You will also get at better result by detuning osc 2 and 3 about 7 semitones.
Using this parameters you will see that no filter or enveloppe is needed (except to detnue asc 2 and 3) to get the basic sound.

Sorry for my french englih !
:-)
JYves