Hans Zimmer Loves Zebra

[hakey]

deleted

[highkoo]

Hardware is great, but it weighs too much.
If I want a workout I will go to the gym ffs.

[Sascha Franck]

First off: I am sometimes kind of jealous when I hear certain (pseudo-) realistic patches that some sound designers get out of whatever synths. I think I could never get even remotely close (well, I don't exactly try too hard, either - in the end I'm just a guitar player, not a sound designer).

However, while it showcases the skills of the programmer, I don't think these patches in themselves are making all too much sense.
- Very often it's like "impressive for a synth" - yeah well, but still not 100% there.
- On most of those patches, CPU consumption usually is quite high. I doubt you'll be able to do a full orchestra score without freezing/bouncing. Playing, say, a sampled violin patch however is using very little CPU power.

Of course there's still quite some things that samples can't cover - and some of them could indeed be covered by a synth, just take glissandi as an example. I guess in a few years we'll end up using hybrid synths/samplers for any realistic sounding stuff.

Anyway, for me right now it's most interesting to not have realistic sounding patches but patches that just play and behave as well as the real deal. And IMHO there's very little of these patches. I still haven't heard much synthesized electric pianos that can compete with a Rhodes. And no, it shouldn't sound like a Rhodes at all - but it should just give me a similar feel. You know, all the little quirks and what not.

- Sascha

[Fritze]

Wow! This is a beautiful soundtrack! Great sounds.

question chacka
Is your signature the u-he email support?
Why would you put that there sir?
No one puts email addresses on forums in their signatures unless they like spam.

Ah yes, the idea was to show that I'm not a kind of sock puppet when I express my personal opinion on u-he stuff. Then it's rather an official approved personal opinion. OK, more seriously: I'm working since the 17th of january at u-he. To make this clear I added the support thingy to my signature. So if anybody calls me a fanboi here's my official reason to do so! And in case anybody wants to find out that I really like u-he stuff you could check out my past posts. OK, end of this off topic disclaimer.

My way of sound design is seldom the search for realistic emulations. But I highly like such synth presets. Always when I hear such sounds like recently Howard's string emulation arp thingy in that video that was reposted I'm just wowed. Amazing. Or Elhardt's stuff. Wonderful.
When I listened to that short Angels & Demons video I heard lotsa cool synth sounds. I remember that the whole movie was one of the best ones I saw recently, including the music and sound design. I just found out in this thread that it's music is made by Hans Zimmer. And from the interview he seems to be a very cool guy.

[pdxindy]

But are some things about its GUI that I don't like which also didn't exactly pull me in, including having modules in two long columns that I'd have to keep scrolling around to adjust parameters. I wish one were free to lay out modules freely like in the Nord Modular editor... Knowing that the demo is fully functional, I might download it and give it a try.

You should really give it a try - even if it only was so you'd see that you don't have to scroll around much (if at all). You can adjust Zebra so it'd always bring the selected module to the top. just click on it in the module grid/mixer and it's right up there for you to tweak.


- Sascha

I'd still like to have a version of the gui that could be made longer so more modules showed at once. I have more than enough screen real estate...

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[pdxindy]

To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on [...] Zebra.

Tryhere, scroll down to "Chronospheres" and play the flash-player labelled "Semireal" - timpani towards the end (with taiko-ish drums before and not-so-realistic strings after).

Sounds pretty realistic to me.

The jazz guitar halfway through's none too shabby either.

There is a reason people are still making and playing guitars. The instrument has qualities that are appealing. I'm much more interested in capturing some of those qualities rather than a 100% perfect emulation of a specific guitar. There is a point where it becomes a pedantic exercise to make the emulation perfect.

Zebra is capable of realistically synthesizing just about any percussion instrument. What I like with Zebra is that it can cover the whole gamut from realistic to bizarre. I like sounds that are realistic enough that you cannot quite tell where they are from... that don't necessarily sound like an existing real instrument, but are also organic enough that they don't telegraph themselves as obviously synthesized. That is the area I like to explore.

A struck bell:
http://draigathar.org/zebra/sharp-bell.mp3

[Lotuzia]

Of course there's still quite some things that samples can't cover - and some of them could indeed be covered by a synth, just take glissandi as an example. I guess in a few years we'll end up using hybrid synths/samplers for any realistic sounding stuff.

Anyway, for me right now it's most interesting to not have realistic sounding patches but patches that just play and behave as well as the real deal. And IMHO there's very little of these patches. I still haven't heard much synthesized electric pianos that can compete with a Rhodes. And no, it shouldn't sound like a Rhodes at all - but it should just give me a similar feel. You know, all the little quirks and what not.

- Sascha

Would something like that do ?

Kind of EP with Le Masque

Made with NI FM8 ( cpu = 1% ) Fun to play, would probably need a bit of EQ but hey, naked truth demo

[hakey]

I like sounds that are realistic enough that you cannot quite tell where they are from... that don't necessarily sound like an existing real instrument, but are also organic enough that they don't telegraph themselves as obviously synthesized. That is the area I like to explore.

Pretty much what I said here.

[pdxindy]

I like sounds that are realistic enough that you cannot quite tell where they are from... that don't necessarily sound like an existing real instrument, but are also organic enough that they don't telegraph themselves as obviously synthesized. That is the area I like to explore.

Pretty much what I said here.

Yes, I was agreeing with you...

[Fritze]

Zebra is capable of realistically synthesizing just about any percussion instrument. What I like with Zebra is that it can cover the whole gamut from realistic to bizarre. I like sounds that are realistic enough that you cannot quite tell where they are from... that don't necessarily sound like an existing real instrument, but are also organic enough that they don't telegraph themselves as obviously synthesized. That is the area I like to explore.

A struck bell:
http://draigathar.org/zebra/sharp-bell.mp3

This! Makes sense to me and sounds good.

[Aroused by JarJar]

There have been a whole lot really nice and inspiring patches in this thread, thanks guys.

[eytanmich123]

That's an old argument.
Some, in fact many, see as learning to get what you need from one synth is the way to go. Mastering one synth might actually be less limiting than if your hacking about with many. That's a problem that's actually mentioned a lot in those "gas" threads. Having too many synths to choose, can undermine the making music part.

That's not only a problem with music making : it is a problem that defines modern
life (see Dan Arieli's "Predictably Irrational" - the jam test).

For sound designers, it's different though, if they want to sell sounds of course, making them for many synths.

I am not a sound designer. and I can assure you that nor are a LOT of
people (soft synths just make us - myself included - FEEL like we are... y'know..."synthesizing". we're not. we're just "knob twisters").

But musicians mostly want to play music, and not spend a lot of time learning many different synths...

There is a third breed - us who SEEK for sounds... whatever they come from.

I tend to mix two or three soft synths to make a unique sound without knowing
synthesis.

I could just ask you...have many synths do you have?

A LOT (ACE included. I think Zebra will come next at some point. I prefer it
to DIVA. don't ask me why)

How many have you mastered?
If the number is many, and many, then lets hear the mastery.

The magic number is : Zero. None. Nada.

As I said, I'm here to make music that speaks to my soul. learing synthesis
is just too much for me and I can't use it as means to express myself (I HAVE
tried it but could only come up with basic sounds. so I ditched it - at a very
early stage in my music making life).

[Sascha Franck]

As I said, I'm here to make music that speaks to my soul. learing synthesis
is just too much for me and I can't use it as means to express myself (I HAVE
tried it but could only come up with basic sounds. so I ditched it - at a very
early stage in my music making life).

Pretty much the same over here. But I kept trying for quite a while already. And while I still can't come up with an original synth patch worth anything, I did at least learn how to somewhat tweak patches so they'd suit my needs a bit better. Not all of them (that'd be way over my understanding) but at least some. And for me that's a great thing already, especially as I learned tons of other things during that process for - well - "free".

- Sascha

[AdmiralQuality]

...he wasn't that humble when he put down Danny Elfman's score for Batman...

Not a big fan of Danny Elfman here. He's a great musician and composer, it's just that he doesn't seem to be evolving much. All his soundtracks basically go:

Paaa-Paaa-Paaa-Paaa PaPaPaPaPa-Paaraaraa PaPaPaPaPa-Paaraadeeu Pei-Pei-Pei-PeiPepepepepepep.......peperepepepeperepe duuuum duuum duuum duuum.

Buddabuddabuddabuddabuddabuddabudda Paaarapapapapapa Paaaa Paaaa Paaaan...

Know which one i'm talking about?

Because I can read music, I recognize that as The Simpsons theme.