Electronics Are Instrumental to Couple’s Music : Jazz: With the help of a synthesizer and a sequencer, singers Louis and Monique Aldebert get a big sound out of a little band.

Electronic instruments have forever changed the lives of Louis and Monique Aldebert.

For a long time, the husband and wife pair worked mostly duo and trio gigs. He played piano and sang, she sang also, and they sounded, well, like two people singing.

But the Aldeberts, who are both French and were both part of the famed Double Six of Paris vocal sextet in Europe in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, wanted more voices in their presentation. By using synthesizers to create a world of tones and timbres with a single plugged-in instrument, and with the help of sequencers to reproduce recorded sounds, the couple get a big sound out of a little band. And when they add an extra musician or two, as they will Sunday when reedman Jim Cowger joins them at El Matador in Huntington Beach, they’re really ready to go.

“We finally are happy with our concept and direction,” Louis Aldebert said in his thick French accent during a recent phone conversation from the couple’s home in Sherman Oaks. “We have found a sound that is like a vocal group but where the members are not necessarily all singers. Like we use Jim’s reed instruments as a voice.”

“We mix our two voices with his sound, then add the synthesized and sequenced parts, and we have a real arrangement,” said Monique Aldebert in similarly accented English.

The Aldeberts also occasionally work with a guitarist, bassist and drummer. “Six pieces is ideal--then we can create four-part harmony” live, Louis said. But if the two don’t have those additional players, they create the aural fullness they desire through the sequencer, he said.

As much as the Aldeberts relish their recently found plugged-in modernisms, they don’t always rely on them.

“Not every tune lends itself to that type of arrangement,” Monique said. “We do lots of tunes with just the two of us singing, or just one.”

Take their arrangement of Luis Eca’s “The Dolphin,” which is based on a recorded performance of the tune by the great pianist Bill Evans.

“Bill’s solo was so beautiful and melodic in that version that I transcribed it,” Louis said. “There are two choruses. I sing the first, Monique the second, and then we sing the two together to form a counterpoint.” (Perhaps the Aldeberts were inspired in this rendition by their tenure with the Double Six, which got its name by blending two six-part recordings to achieve a twelve-voice sound.)

“Bill Evans is God to Louis,” Monique added, laughing.

Although the Aldeberts have been in show business nearly 40 years, their repertoire is rife with contemporary stuff, from tunes by Brazilians Djavan and Ivan Lins to numbers associated with Steely Dan.

“Our style is more ‘today,’ not because we have to be ‘today’ but because we like it,” Monique said. “We want to go ahead, not be stuck in time. Still, everything we do is jazz. We come from jazz completely.”

Monique said they like certain Sting and Steely Dan tunes because they fall “within the boundaries of musical taste and sophistication.”

Added Louis: “If you analyze Steely Dan tunes, some have arrangements by Tom Scott, have solos by him or other jazz people; you can feel that influence of jazz, all this on top of a rock beat.”

Along with the traditional jazz of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Evans and others, the Aldeberts also favor Brazilian pop. “Brazilian music is so close to jazz, they’re almost interchangeable,” Louis said. “When Stan Getz played ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’ he just played it and it fit. He didn’t have to adapt it or anything. Harmonically, the music is very similar, so you can solo on a Brazilian tune the same way as on a jazz tune.”

“And it has that pulse, it swings like jazz,” Monique said. “Brazilian music allows jazz to come out of straight-ahead and go into a more ‘today’ jazz sound without going into rock. You can still have a little bit of a backbeat without it being overwhelming.”

These days, the Aldeberts work occasional nightclub dates and a party now and then. “But we aren’t on the casual circuit. We don’t do Top 40,” insisted Monique. “But we have developed a network of people who want a little something different” for their private functions.

The pair also teach. Monique instructs in voice and teaches a conversational French class, and Louis coaches pianists, emphasizing basic harmony and jazz improvisation.

The couple (who met in Paris in the mid-’50s and were married 10 years later) were successful in France with the Double Six, then came to the United States to work in a Las Vegas show, “Casino de Paris,” in 1967. That show lasted a year. They found they liked the possibilities that living in this country presented, and they moved to Southern California in 1969.

Asked what has kept their marriage going strong, Monique said, “Well, we like the same things.”

“We like working and performing together, writing lyrics, creating arrangements, matching our skills,” Louis said. “We also laugh a lot. We love to laugh,” Monique said with a quiet chuckle.

“We have the same tastes . . .” Louis began.

”. . . The same ideas and philosophies, the same goals in life,” Monique said, picking up the thread. “We know where we’re going, and we’re keeping at it. We feel very good.”

“It’s true,” Louis said.

The Aldeberts might like to work a little bit more, they admitted, but they need a new album, and they’re working on one right now. “We hadn’t really tried before because we didn’t know what we wanted,” Monique said.

Ultimately, they’d rather have satisfaction than money, they said. “If you go laughing to the bank but you’re sad in your heart, aah, we don’t agree with that concept,” Monique said. “We’d rather be happy with ourselves.”

Louis and Monique Aldebert play Sunday at 7 p.m. at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. No cover, no minimum. Information: (714) 846-5337.