Surf (Oxygene)

Jean-Michel Jarre put out a hauntingly beautiful electronic album in 1976, Oxygene. One section of this album had a repeating surf sound: a sweep from the right to the left audio channel, a pause, and then a deep crash in the right channel. After another pause, this cycle repeated many times. Very relaxing to listen to. This sound generator plug-in will emulate that surf cycle, in either mono or stereo.

Start a new session of Audacity. To generate stereo surf, first open a blank stereo track (ALT, P, S in Audacity pre-1.3, ALT, T, N, S in 1.3 and later). Open the generate menu. Click on "Surf [Oxygene]".

Parameters:

1.Surf output: [1=mono 2=stereo] To generate mono or stereo Oxygene surf. 2. Stereo spread: [stereo only - percent] If you've chosen to generate stereo Oxygene surf, this setting will determine how widely the surf sweeps away from the center pan position. From +100 percent to -100 percent. Positive values make the sweep section go from the right to the left, with the crash in the right. Negative values reverse this pattern. 3. Fade-in and fade-out times: [seconds] Time to fade in and fade out the volume at the start and end of the surf, if you wish. 4. Number of Oxygene surf cycles: How many Oxygene surf cycles to generate. 5. Surf type: [0=white noise 1=pink noise] White noise is a higher-frequency "hissing", whereas pink noise is a lower-frequency "rushing" sound. 6. Sweep starting filter frequency: [Hz] 7. Sweep ending filter frequency: [Hz] The above two parameters set the starting and ending frequencies for the lowpass filter to sweep the sweep portion of Oxygene surf. A lowpass filter allows frequencies below a certain value to pass, while frequencies above that value are attenuated, or reduced in volume. 8. Sweep duration: [seconds] This sets how slow or fast the sweep portion of Oxygene surf takes. 9. Post-sweep silence duration: [seconds] Duration of the silence after the sweep. 10. Crash filter frequency: [Hz] The lowpass filter frequency of the crash. 11. Crash bass frequency boost: [dB] How much to increase the volume of the above filter frequency and below. 0 dB means no boost, 6 dB means double the amplitude of this bass frequency, and so on. 12. Post-crash silence duration: [seconds] How much silence before the Oxygene surf cycle repeats.

Notes:

If you get an error message "Nyquist returned too many audio channels", this means you tried to generate stereo surf without having first opened a blank stereo track in Audacity. See instructions at the top of this help file on how to do this.

In the original Oxygene, reverb was applied to the surf, giving it a more expansive sound and feeling. If you want to have reverb added to Oxygene surf, you need to apply it yourself after the surf sound has been generated. There's "GVerb" already in the Audacity effects menu, and many people use Anwida's free VST reverb plug-in.