Spitfire Interviews & Features: Hans Zimmer

I come from a pre sampler generation I come from as the kid having a tape machine banging things taping them cutting them up splicing them back together again and then somewhere in the late 70s my friend Steven Payne brought back this thing from Australia called the Fairlight and you know yes we did all those stupid things we got my dog to bark and wrote music on that but but but very quickly realized that this was actually on the one hand really interesting and at the same time it was actually sort of slightly dull unless you really did something with it because you know all you were doing is you are taking these still snapshots of a moment in time but you know so since the seventies I've been sampling everything that that makes a noise it was probably the dog barking and then it quickly you know gravitated towards more sort of interesting things like oh we can do a whole Orchestra well we couldn't do a whole Orchestra sound because one of the inherent qualities which I very quickly realized about the Fairlight was it sounded terrible and what you put in is not necessarily what you got out and my flat mate at the time was my recording engineer Steve Rance who was cursed with the gene of truthfulness were said to me but this thing sounds terrible you know and we just spent I don't know how many tens of thousands of powers on this thing and he started taking it apart and he you know to cut a long story short there were lots of phone calls from my flat to Australia to the Fairlight people and with Steve ending up as being head of software at Fairlight and my machine constantly being tweaked and updated then suddenly all these other samples started to appear like like I still think the archives 1000 is one of the greatest samplers at the end of the day I don't think the issue really is about the recording medium but it is about the players and the band and the whole team and I think you're not going to get quite the same results by having your mate and flattening stalk or bang on a biscuit tin even though it might be interesting then if you get some yeah if you if you get the best players in the world to go and know where to hit it you know in a drum is sort of this interesting our cake thing but you know they're like sweet spots when you hit it just right and you know and and and I mean these guys have been doing it forever so so so it's really about the the human beings that go and create the sound that ultimately will tell you if it's any good my sonic world evolves it keeps evolving the Orcas and the orchestral sounds keep evolving as you know as our technology becomes redundant the funny thing that's never become redundant is are those sounds are those performances we got from the players you know it's the best investment I ever made was to start sampling the orchestra in 1994 it's it's something I still use on a daily basis because the orchestra is the orchestra we just keep adding articulations and refinements to it and the the same with the percussion I mean I could still drag out an old Fairlight and it's still hard to beat the tar polka samples on that which were all over Rain Man and you know if I dragged it out now everybody would be going mouths it sounds really new but it's really not new it's just timeless it's not a preference it's just it's just that that's my aesthetic it's very simple the music always sounds best in my head before you know as I invent it it sounds best in my head and then from there on there comes this sort of topsy-turvy slope off sometimes things get better when the real orchestra plays it sometimes things can't be played you know for instance I mean if you take precaution when they're all roaring away and they're in the middle of the orchestra yeah it sounds fantastic but the thing you can't do is you can't find the bounce between a really really quiet hit and an orchestra playing route and when you have a really really quiet head and just of brooms beautifully in the room so that's where you have to go cheat you have to use technology after you you know you it is physically impossible and one of the things that I love about technology is is that it forever pushes up against the boundaries of physics so whatever works works and you know I mean I remember when you know Trevor Horn I were working together and we started getting people to play two click tracks and you know they just thought that was awful and it would take all the humanity out of her supposed to you know the way we thought was that there was a tightness turret there so there was a there's a commitment to hitting the drum really in time and it took here I took all the musicians awhile to get get around to it to figure out how to groove in the soft-eyed way now everybody doesn't well one of the things I'm really interested in is perspective we're in the depths things are happening you know I try to create these sort of 3d landscapes basically and one of the things about that is is this why you place your microphones well what hole you and I mean I think I think one of the things but other reasons I like working with the Spitfire guys and that they have a wicked sense of humor is we seem to sort of agree on the aesthetic that if you put a musician into a great acoustic environment they automatically will get feedback from that environment and play better you know what so whatever noise they make will be a better noise I think the things that make up a great sound as a great performance in a great space with a great recording engineer and each recording engineer has a different style and a different sonic picture now head so first as one of the things I've been doing on Superman Batman as you know for instance of using both Alan Morrison and Steve Lipson you get this sort of you know they're very different sonic aesthetics but they're both really interesting and really valid and both of these guys have made records or soundtracks or whatever you know have made recordings that I love but Steve you know I mean all the Frankie Goes to Hollywood stuff the Graystone's slave to the rhythm the Annie Lennox records I mean you know the I think those are sort of milestone recordings you know with Alan obviously you know all the stuff that we've done together it it feels like 50 my newest secret reference as well as a Tom hülkenberg junkie XL who is a drummer is huge in this of electronic dance music field is an amazing programmer himself and has you know I mean our aesthetics overlap but he has different methods of doing it so I thought what if we take the same sources and just give it to all these different people and just see what happens I keep wearing more than one hat you know one second I'm the composer the next second I'm the sound designer I can't help myself I've gotta go and sit there and drum tracks come in etc and I have to take them apart and I have to do my own EQ and my own compression and because I hear a sound in my head and I and I know how to get there I mean you know I suppose in a funny way I would have been just as happy being a recording engineers as a composer you know and sometimes it's actually very difficult to stop me from mangling sounds and engineering or doing doing any of those things and actually getting me to sit down and write the notes totally absolutely Who am I using I got junkie I got Steve lips and I got on my ass and was the fourth one I am the fourth one am I on the fourth one Oh Jeff foster god yes I forgot about let's start at one again so much of the stuff originates Foster Foster and you know Jeff I think Jeff probably engineered my very first session and might have been soft one of his first sessions as well so we go back and Jeff knows this whole better you know than anybody I I know or he knows how I use that hole so between Jeff and Alain there's a you know there's a sort of a patented handsomer sound and then bringing in Steve Lipson and breaking bringing and drunky and bringing in myself you know there's there's a way that we can take that raw material and one of the reasons there are so many microphones is because Steve wants a different set of microphones than Jeff once for instance and Alan wants a different set of microphones and Steve forms and they all want them placed in different ways so there's a lot more to be gotten out of it and I'm not even just talking about giving people flexibility I'm just talking very much about giving people something that that has a different point of view and as well it's probably great to have different uses you know you know always gonna write the same piece of music so there has to be you know these sounds have to be adaptable I've just finished this movie called Man of Steel and at one point I had this idea of this sort of drum circle and I invited some of the best drummers in the world into this I mean at Sheila E I had Pharrell Williams I had jr. Robinson I had been occur Utah Jim Keltner I mean okay that's a fair list you know and I'd phone chase and said you know Jason lives in Miami and I said hey do you wanna come and just it's just one day of you know Fair mayhem do you know Kareem he he said yeah absolutely and the thing I noticed was that even with all these other drummers around Jason was just louder there's a there's a spirit you know there's a there's a sort of it's of course it's in his DNA you know and I think there's something to be said for that and it was just Suffern absolute delight to have him come in and because here's my thing about sampling the ultimately there is a performance in every single hit and so and and the personality is its music is this of a subtle thing I mean it's like Andy Nelson the great dubbing engineer once said to me you know how come you can recognize an Ennio Morricone track on the first note you know because the way his orchestra plays you know you can recognize the the character of the players in one note and this and so what you try to do is you try to surround yourself with people you know this this this thing this my little drum circle there it wasn't about name recognition I mean there is name recognition because these guys are extraordinary because you were you you want to find these players that have a sound of them that that where each hit has an identity in a commitment behind it and and you hear it you feel it and it does something truly extraordinary nor do i it's it's always something I'm looking for I mean the best music really happens once people really know what they're playing and they're not looking at their notes anymore you know they have made it their own you know and I spend a lot of time rehearsing where's the orchestra's and I found lots of different ways of figuring out how to make things so it becomes not just you know a cold reading for them you know I had two weeks of piano lessons that's my formal education so I know that that's not the absolute be-all and end-all of knowing how to make music listen everybody in the world reads but it doesn't make them into Shakespeare does it so the reading part isn't that important the hard part is important you know and and Jason is all soul and all heart I mean he really is and at the same time there's a you know there's a courage to hit things in a certain way you know and there's an imagination that goes on as well which I really find really great you know plus the other important thing is he's he's a good chap to hang around with you get to have a bit of a giggle completely different acoustic I mean airs a big it's a big hole it's really a church so the acoustic is very different and the Newman stage is a big room really plus it really has a beautiful acoustic I have a beautiful top end and the bottom end is second to none it's actually my favorite stage and Los Angeles even though we did some stuff over at Sony as well but between us of those three rooms actually a plus we did some stuff here we have a very interesting let's say sounding room which is it's really rough and you know it's got a real grit and character and you know you can't leave without having turned on your fingernails so having these different acoustic environments as is I think a real plus because you you're just suddenly first of all the musician responds differently to each acoustic and secondly you know you get a much larger palette to play with and one of the things that I thought would be interesting for this project this is to really create a fairly large palette of sonic possibilities everything takes ten times as long as I planned because what starts off as a simple little idea then suddenly you know as soon as you put the word out that you have an idea other people come and add their ideas to it and some of those are great and you embrace them and some of them you don't want to embrace but whatever happens this you know the project is going to expand so what solid off us oh let's just go and do a couple of days at air and be done with it now turned into this enormous undertaking plus there was there's one other miscalculation I made which was it is the season of summer movies so between Superman Lone Ranger and two other movies I got on the girl that needed a little attention you know I'm Way behind and so's my whole team at the end of the day but you know we really do want to end up with something extraordinary because once you get the guys in to start playing and you see how much effort and sweat they put into this you need to sort of honor that at the other end and do a good job of you know preserving that energy and and and you know you can't just crank it out you know each one has to be treated like a each hit is treated like a little diamonds that needs to be shaped and polished and tweaked and played around with I like I like that they like the same room that I like using plus they consistently have ripped me off over the years which you know imitation being a certain form of flattery but if I think about it it means that their sense of aesthetics is not that far from mine so that seems to make a good combination plus I think they committed from the same way that I covered it went by the seat as a means to an end because they're musicians and really the only reason they're doing it is because they're trying to get more ammunition for their own music so it's it it's you know look I don't have to do this this isn't this isn't gonna make a difference to my bank balance I'm doing this partly because I think it's interesting it's an interesting experiment and I thought it you know people have always been asking how we make these percussion sounds and it just seemed like a fun thing to do you know the musicians are sharing in this so it was actually a way of for them to actually profit beyond the point of just doing this one performers you know there was a way of saying thank you thank you but you have to go put a bit of sweat into it as well for the last nine years of bashing drums for me well no nobody knows where it's heading you know the serious note about it is if we were to lose the orchestra's if we were to lose these holes and if we were to lose the ways and means of creating music with a large body of people in a room it would be a tragedy way beyond the impact on the musician it would rob our culture of a means of communicating you know and that's of the serious aspect right so one of the things I'm interested in I've always been interested in is how can I keep the orchestra's of life and if you think about what I do and what all the other film composers do is we on the daily on a daily basis Commission orchestral music and we're keeping these orchestras their life and if I can somehow persuade by giving young composers young musicians tools that will make them sound fabulous I hope that somewhere along the way from their demo that has gotten them some crazy fantastic job and a decent budget they're gonna go oh you know something I should go and hire some real musicians to go and play on this you have to see it as a means to an end progress and technology is not necessarily a good thing it's it but it is a thing that exists and we just have to go and figure out how to navigate in this world where these possibilities exist sampling isn't the reason that concert halls are empty what our job is is is to drive music forward to make it to make it interesting to make it commercial in the best possible sense to say you know an orchestra can rock out I mean you can go and see an orchestral performance and it'll knock your socks off I'm just interested in and seeing how far we can push that I mean movies is one way sampling is another way life performance is another way and the way these you know it's one of the reasons I love working with drunky Excel because you know I mean he does these shows in front of 250,000 people and you know they go they go nuts and it's just one man and his synthesizers you know he's just written his first symphony which was performed in Amsterdam so you know yes with a full orchestra so these the these these ideas are not mutually exclusive your tools are tools all music relies on technology a violin is just you know a bit of good carpentry and some dead cats I mean it it does involve a certain amount of technology to get you there at the end of the day it's the ingenuity of the play under the ingenuity of the composer that are going to go and really make something out of this thing what I do care about is to give people the opportunity to go and make music one of the things which I always thought was phenomenal about music it's that sense of all of us getting into a room and they're bringing a piece of music to life and that doesn't mean you can't be sitting there with your sampler you know you can still play along with other people you know I mean the playfulness I think is really important and whole thing and I said you know you asked me why Spitfire does I think they're reckless and playful so I think they fit right in well yeah oh here's an interesting thing about sampling something is inherently boring because it just captures one moment in time and then you regurgitated moment in time time and time again so it's a never-ending process because as soon as you got the perfect string sound you already bought with it so you have to keep going back to the world you have to keep getting those dramas and you have to keep getting those players and and you know adding fresh meat because otherwise you know you pull it you go up to your keyboard and you play that chord and it sounded just the way it sounded yesterday so I see this as a constantly evolving process and yeah sure there look just just now I'm working on Lone Ranger and it's about the you know the train being built through America so yes I wouldn't demolished a couple of train tracks and trains with sledgehammers etc you know that was quite a good sound wherever I go I hear things you know and and as the technology gets better I'm actually more interested in you know how can we capture really quiet things and bring those really close and bring your attention to them you know put things under the microscope reveal things that aren't revealed and I mean this world this modern world we live in is inherently noisy so so much of of beautiful sound gets masked by you know just the sheer you know anarchy of engine noises and air conditioners and somebody drying their hair and mowing their lawn and all that laughs and part of what's happened over the years as well because I've been doing this sampling for so long as there's a there's this of a certain preservation ISM that goes on there's a for instance my favorite cellist in London who played you know who I've sampled for years he just retired and sold history various so that's the end of that era to a certain degree except that sound still exists in my library and that performance still exists in my library so there's a there's a sofa historical archival thing that rather than just having you know a recording a great recording of a fought magnet performance you actually can go and create new music from scratch with those great performances because they cut a great off flat there no that's probably not the answer you were looking for unless that's why I started and you know as a session musician in London you know didn't join the band you know and sort of went from there and the greatest compliment I think I've ever gotten better than Oscar better than Grammy etc was towards the end of the last Dark Knight Rises you know working with those percussionist that we've just sampled these guys have played on everything there they are the guys you know there's and there's nothing they haven't played so my great ambition was always been to go and do just one thing where they go wow I haven't done that before I actually figured something I've noticed I'm not gonna go into the details but you know number one I got the compliment of crying wow we've never done this before and it sounds really good and the other thing was one of them took me aside he said you know like 30 years ago or so you know you were in amongst us and then you left me went to Hollywood and he could have turned into a right old frat and you know but at the end of the day you're still just one of our see a sort of complete music bastard and somehow I thought there was the best compliment I ever had I hadn't I hadn't lost my roots and it's really important to me out of many reasons to support those roots and one of the things that I love I love the way that space sounds that's how I hear music you know it is in that space but it's where I grew up and so it always gives me not only a sense of where I come from but you know I have worked very hard over the last thirty years at really learning understanding manipulating and recording that space and getting better at it you know with the help of Jeff Foster's and Steve Lipson Sandow myosins you know it's not just me it's it's a whole you know music doesn't happen in some sort of vacuum it's there's a whole team effort I think I probably said too much very welcome it's all right no it's just I'm getting vertigo with him going I hope you're doing the same with the sound because you know you've got you have to keep the phase symmetry between the image you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 93,073

Rating: 4.9506936 out of 5

Keywords: Hans Zimmer, Spitfire, HZ01, Percussion, Inception (Film), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Film), Air Studios, dunkirk movie

Id: me_8pWY2HpQ

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2013