Hans Zimmer's Incredible Low End

[fmr]

I find the statements about using low velocities quite interesting! Do they refer to actual acoustic instruments or to virtual instruments?

I think that goes to both cases. Putting it simply: Play softly, and raise gain.

[Cimbasso]

From the man himself:

Anything Ken Macbeth does, Studio Electronics, the AJH modules for Eurorack... Those are all very solid - and current - favorites in the bass department. And, of course U-He "Diva". Urs destroyed my favorite Mini Moog to model those Oscilators and filters...

Well, I don't use a sub in my room, so the lows have to translate to my little quested speakers. We mix on those as well, but Alan has now gotten some PMC's that are just a bit louder without blowing up for the mix. Steve Lipson uses anything that's lying around - he doesn't care and can get used to any speakers.
But this guy helps a lot:

[fluffy_little_something]

Sometimes it simply depends on combining the right waveforms with the right phase and octave settings.
Is there some YT video of a HZ track that shows what is meant by incredible low end? I don't really know. What frequency range are we talking about?

[Tp3]

I think I know what plug he uses.

You may see a trend here :

Waves OneKnob Brighter
Waves OneKnob Driver
Waves OneKnob Filter
Waves OneKnob Louder
Waves OneKnob Phatter
Waves OneKnob Pressure
Waves OneKnob Pumper
Waves OneKnob Wetter


So, as of today - Low End = Zimme(h). and if one wants to make a MASSIVE low end, he uses OneKnob Zimmer

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Aloysius]

I read the article at gearslutz where someone posted Hans (Incredible Low End) Zimmer's comments.

It seems they design the sounds before composing. Most of us probably 'compose' and then think about the sounds later.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-pi ... e-him.html

"Re: Hans Zimmer Sound?
Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:52 am
...To answer the original question a little bit, with some random thoughts:

Start with a concept of your sonic world. Limit your palette to fit the sonic world you're trying to create - you can get lost and never write a note if you scroll through 1000 presets on average sounding synth. I got rid of most VstIs and just work with the ones who's audio engines have real depth and quality, like Zebra and Diva, or the Virus. And yes, I have a lot of great old analogue synth that I bought for next to nothing when everyone ran out to buy a DX7.
Before writing a single note, my team and I spend a lot of time programming new sounds, sampling new instruments.
If you want things to sound big, make sure you limit your upper dynamic range. All instruments - especially percussion - sound bigger when played relatively softly. You can always turn it up. When you hit drums too hard, or any instrument is played too loud, they tend to sound only bright and thin and pingy.

I write very strategically for the spaces I record in. For instance, the Hall at Air Studio has a gallery, so I put my horns up there above the orchestra in Batman. The space you have people perform in is as important as the quality of their instruments. Players respond to good accoustics and will give you a better, more committed performance. The same goes for sampling. A dead room gives an artificially surpressed performance. It's no fun playing in a dead room. Especially brass players like "using" the reverb in the room to give them time to catch their breath between notes, so they'll have the courage and strength to play the next note stronger. I like recording in churches and halls, not studios and artificial reverb. 2000 years of architects like Brunelleschi figuring out how to amplify a sound beats the 20 years we've had of fake reverb development. But if your budget is a bit tight, try a school auditorium. Or an empty warehouse. Use your imagination. You belong to the proud fraternity of poor, starving artists. People expect you to ask them for favors in the name of the great piece of art you are about to unleash upon the world

I got pretty good ears ( I just had them tested...I got the frequency response of a 20 year old. Just luck. I've been listening to music in my studio too loud every day for 30 years). But the biggest thing is to learn how to listen analytically. That takes time. I learned from really good producers and engineers. Two month with Trevor Horn on a bassdrum sound will either drive you crazy, or really make you understand the damn thing (I'm not sure which side I've ended up on...). I know how to engineer, I know what all those knobs do, but I know that Alan Meyerson has a gift and is better at it then me. But at least I can comunicate to him - very specifically - what and how I hear my piece. I think there is nothing worse for a composer to be at the mercy of technology, the players or a recording engineer. It's your piece of music. No one understands it better. (I always wonder...I grew up (?) working on Neves and Trident "A"s, Harrisons, etc. So I know why I pick a 1073 for certain sounds or a DBX 160 in my UAD plug-ins. If you never used the hardware, how do you know?).

I always have my monitors set to the same level. It's the only way I know I'm not kidding myself. I don't use very expensive speakers, I just use what I really know - and can get replaced easily.
Yes, we build our own sampler, because I can hear the difference, but the comercial stuff is getting better. And my career was just fine when I was only using Akai S 1000s with 8 megs of ram.

I'm a bad player, but a good programmer. I'm forever trying to explain to great players that want to become composers that they need to treat learning and practicing the computer as seriously as they practised their guitar or piano. The computer is a musical instrument and the more virtuouistic you get on that, the better you can express your ideas.

The moment I start writing, I start mixing. Since I don't write on paper, I spend a long time making each note and sound convey the right emotion. It helps later with the live musicians. I can be very specific in my language (and I use English, not Italian) to convey to them why I want a note or phrase played a certain way. I don't make changes on the scoring stage, I don't let directors make changes with the musicians there. The recording is about getting a performance, not re-writing the cue. Nothing sounds worse then a bunch of bored musicians that had to wait while someone's changed an arrangement.

Most of the stuff I use on a daily basis is off the shelf software - and not the really expensive stuff, either. The best DAW is the one you're used to.

I don't understand why people don't sample their own stuff. I've been (more then once) asked to judge "young composer" competitions. After a while you can't hear the music for the sameness of the sample libraries. I wonder how directors or producers can tell the difference.

And no, you can't sound like me. You are not me, you are you. Just like I can't sound like any other composer. Not with any degree of authenticity.

I hardly ever get a temp in the movies I work on (Chris Nolan will not temp with anything that's not written for the movie. That whole Francis Lai thing is bull. I'm a fan, but I had never heard that score before. And if the rude ignoramus who was trying to hide behind a question mark when he called me a thief had actually analysed the score a bit, he'd have noticed that the whole thing was based on the notes C and D. Not just that riff. It's a fairly straight forward musical tension device. Seconds, anyone? And the rhythmic figure was - on purpose - a cliche. People can take large chunks of dissonance if you put a groove with it...)

I can get obsessively lost in sound design and just spend 4 days making one pathetic little sound...But it helps me think the whole piece through...

...And i procrastinate from writing by answering this question...

Hz "

end quote

[fmr]

"Re: Hans Zimmer Sound?
Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:52 am
...To answer the original question a little bit, with some random thoughts:

.../... If you want things to sound big, make sure you limit your upper dynamic range. All instruments - especially percussion - sound bigger when played relatively softly. You can always turn it up. When you hit drums too hard, or any instrument is played too loud, they tend to sound only bright and thin and pingy..../...

Absolutely spot on, IMO. People tend to forget about the spectra. When you hit harder na instrument (this is mainly true for acoustic instruments, but also for electronic instruments, where filter cuttofs are modulated by velocity, for example, where many are, and especially in harmonically rich instruments, like percussion), you get a louder sound, but also a sound with much more high frequency partials (means - brighter). If you play the instruments softly, you get the same low partials., but the high partials are MUCH softer, and the highest are simply no longer there. Now, if you amplify the sound played like that, you get a sound that is simultaneously louder and deeper, because you get a louder sound that's richer in lower partials.

[MarlaPodolski]

It's Cubase and its fantastic low end.

Another thing is that Cubase sounds really good. And what I mean by that is that what you put into Cubase is what you get out. It’s not colored like other systems. I can tell straight away when somebody brings in a Logic track — I know exactly what it was recorded on. Part of why I like Cubase is that I don’t sound like everybody else. I mean we never use library sounds. You don’t really want to hear a sound you have in your 160-million-dollar movie in somebody else’s movie in the theater next door so everything we use is made from scratch. And so it’s very important to me that the quality of the software ensures that what ever work I put into it, it isn’t going to get colored. We already had this with the early digital recording where you can listen to a recording and you literally can put a time stamp onto it. And I think this will also happen with other DAWs. So you don’t really want to be able to identify the sound and that’s why the DAW has to be as transparent as possible so that it becomes timeless.

That always cracks me up. I want to mix the same song in cubase, logic, S1, Live, and PT.. and challenge him to pick the mixes LOL. They will all be using identical third party plugins and mixed as close as possible to complete infinity null. I will even use convolution verb's static impulses for any verb so the mixes can actually properly null and i will use clean compressors only, no analog signal path modelled stuff. Do you think he will take the challenge to pick the DAW's?

it really is hogwash, btw. he's wrong about that and someone with such experience loses a lot of credibility in my book making statements like that. Just in my opinion of course. I am sure there are others who believe him.

you DO realise he's being paid to say that, right? Can you say en-dors-ment? I had a brand nylons endorsement deal for a long while when we were performing live much. Nylons. Truly.

[Heartfeltdawn]

why do people do that? Why can't famous people be criticised by non famous people if they say something stupid and scientifically impossible?
How do you even know i am less skilled than Hans?

Because skilled musicians don't waste huge amounts of time online posting in forums like we do.

Do you realise that to make it in the music biz, 99% of it is luck. The reason being, there are millions of incredibly talented people out there right now who can barely put bread on the table. Sure, Hans is incredibly talented, but he got his lucky break - and i am sure there are ALOT of equally talented composers out there who simply *can't* get their break!

99%... is that a scientifically verified 99% or a hastily tossed off 99%?

In the modern world, every idiot with a DAW and some plugs is a composer. The problem is that most of them are shit.

In any case, i think I can mix as good as Hans these days, simple as that, and i am not afraid to say it.

If you say so. I can only retort by saying that I can hold my breath underwater for an hour and fly simply by flapping my arms. As neither of us have supplied any evidence to support our claims, we cancel each other out

In any case, the statement is wrong. He might like cubase's default pan laws better to logic's or the cubase fx or maybe the WORKFLOW simply inspires him to do HIS best work, therefore to him it "sounds" better. Or he might love, since cubase 7, the new saturation etc built inline with the mixer.. which of course you can't exactly duplicate with Logic cause logic doesn't have built in sat/tape! You would need third party plugs and even then you couldn't match cubase exactly. But he was commenting on the basic audio engine itself, and i have facts about that:
Fact : Cubase and Logic null to infinity. Not -100, not -200.. but to - nothing. There is no sound. No difference. They have the same 32 bit float summing engine.

But i am happy to challenge Hans to a blind test of picking cubase mixes out from logic's with exactly the same songs. And when he gets only half right, if that, (pure luck of course as an "up to 50%" result would prove), what would you say then?

I'd say the same thing I'm saying now. I don't disagree with the notion that Zimmer was wrong. It simply amuses me that his credibility slides so much in your eyes.

[stardustmedia]

First: A great room and great loudspeakers that can translate the low end
Second: Within that room: A lot of experience or just very gifted with golden ears

Or just get LoAir, it will replace both above mentioned points. Piece of cake

Just don't get me started by telling me, you can mix such low end on NS10s, okay?

[Mutant]

i use an EQ instead

Right.

My 2 ways to improve low end when it lacks (rarely): Use an equalizer and/or take any synth and sine or triangle wave oscillator and add low notes at the right volume and where i need them.

There is no black magic or rocket science involved at all.

[Aloysius]

^ Rocket Science would not be of much use in this situation.

[stardustmedia]

^ Rocket Science would not be of much use in this situation.

I guess the low end rumble of a starting rocket could be helpful if layered correctly

[Aloysius]

Very true. I stand corrected.

[Heartfeltdawn]

I guess the low end rumble of a starting rocket could be helpful if layered correctly

I'm up for a close mic on a rocket