What sound did Van Halen use for Jump?

Oberheim OB-Xa The synth which Van Halen used in “Jump” is an Oberheim OB-Xa. This machine uses polyphonic, substractive synthesis to generate its sounds. My first impression is that the sound does not contain to many voices which are not detuned too much. What's even more, the sound is defined by the typical 80s reverb.

medium.com - The secret behind Van Halen's iconic synth sound in “Jump” - Medium

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The secret behind Van Halen’s iconic synth sound in “Jump”

Screenshot by Dominik Braun showing Cubase plus several plugins

“Jump” by Van Halen is considered being one of the most iconic songs from the 80s. This is due to the synth riff which makes this song so special. Today, I want to talk about the sound design of this synth riff. Therefore, I’ll break it down using Native Instruments Massive, Cubase and several plugins. (Remark: I will NOT teach you how to play the chords on your piano. If you want to find out the MIDI notes, check out this YouTube tutorial here.)

Analysis

Before we dive in, let’s have a quick listen to the original song for analysis purposes. You can listen to the song here. The synth which Van Halen used in “Jump” is an Oberheim OB-Xa. This machine uses polyphonic, substractive synthesis to generate its sounds. My first impression is that the sound does not contain to many voices which are not detuned too much. What’s even more, the sound is defined by the typical 80s reverb. I think that’s enough background information to recreate the sound with the previously mentioned tools. I will do this step by step using text. In case you prefer a video tutorial…

Video Tutorial

There you go…

If you prefer the text version, go on reading.

The basic sound

The basic sound of our synth is a saw wave. So, we create an oscillator which generates just that. Then, we create another saw wave which is detuned by 0.13 semitones. This means we have two saw waves which are 0.13 semitones apart from each other.

Let’s move on to the amplitude envelope which has the following settings:

Attack: 8:30

Decay: 1:30

Sustain: 4:00

Release: 10:30

(I use the clock to describe the settings of each knob here.)

Filter and filter envelope

At the moment, our sound is way too static. That’s why we want to use a filter modulation to shape the sound. First, we create a lowpass filter (LP4).

Cutoff: 1:00

Resonance: 8:00

Next, we will build an envelope to control the cutoff of filter one. In NI Massive you can do this by drag’n’drop. You want the amount of modulation to reach from 1:00 to 3:00.

These are the envelope settings:

Attack: 10:00

Decay: 2:00

Sustain: 4:30

Release: 8:00

LFO

An LFO will bring our sound to life. We want the pitch to be modulated in a subtle way (0.10 semitones). The modulation curve is a pure sine wave. I brought up the rate to about 1 o’clock.

Effects

I use effects to sculpt the sound even more using the following effects:

tube emulation

feedback

tape saturation

reverb

parallel distortion

Conclusion

It’s not that complicated. With just a few steps you can re-create the famous Van Halen “Jump” synth sound. You need two detuned saw waves which you then shape with an amplitude envelope and a filter envelope. An LFO modulates the pitch, while the final effects make the synth sound like the original Oberheim OB-Xa.

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