I worked for Hans Zimmer for about 8 years, 5 of which were in a studio at Remote Control, his facility in Santa Monica. Since leaving Remote, many people have said to me, usually in a conspiratorial tone of voice, things like this: Hans doesn’t really write his own music. The studios only give him work because he’s famous. He’s not a real musician. He just gets his clients drunk and all the work is done by guys in the back room. And so forth.

The underlying implication is that this underhanded semi-musician has Hollywood in his thrall due to Svengali like powers and maybe, someday, they’ll wake up and hire a “real” composer – like whoever is whispering to me.

No other composer seems to stir up this kind of ire – I never hear people say, “Yeah, that John Williams only writes 12-line sketches and it’s up to his orchestrators to make it into real music!”

Well, I hate to break it to you, but Hans gets what he gets because…he deserves it.

Here is why:

1) HANS IS A VISIONARY.
In films there is a process called “spotting” in which the composer and director decide what kind of music is needed where. Hans is the best spotter I’ve ever observed. He has an extraordinary sense of what will work. But long before spotting, he will spend weeks writing a suite which is the source of the musical themes of the film. Oddly, this isn’t really about music – it’s about the essence of what the story and the characters are. Film composer great Elmer Bernstein (Magnificent Seven, To Kill A Mockingbird) once said to me, “The dirty little secret is that we’re not musicians – we’re dramatists.” Hans is an outstanding dramatist.

But he also fearlessly pushes himself, challenging the limits of what is acceptable in our medium. In Batman: Dark Knight, long before we had footage of the film, Hans asked Heitor Pereira (guitar), Martin Tillman (cello), and me (violin and tenor violin) to separately record some variations on a set of instructions involving 2 notes, C and D. This involved a fair amount of interpretation! For those who are familiar with classical music, it was John Cage meets Phil Glass. We each spent a week making hundreds of snippets. Then we had to listen to each other’s work and re-interpret that. The end result was a toolbox of sounds that provided Hans with the attitude of his score.

Later, he asked me to double every ostinato (repeating phrase) pattern the violins and violas played. There were a LOT. And a great studio orchestra had already played them all! I spent a week on what I considered an eccentric fool’s errand, providing score mixer, Alan Meyerson, with single, double, and triple pass versions of huge swaths of the score. Months later, I joked with him about how “useful” my efforts had been. Alan told me that, actually, they had turned out to be a crucial element of the score, that he often pulled out the orchestra and went to my performances when something needed to be edgy or raw.

The video below shows something from Man of Steel. Hans assembled a room full of great trap set drummers to play the same groove at the same time, each with tiny variations. Is it a stunt? Maybe. But does it deliver a sound you’ve never quite heard before? Definitely.

Read also: The 5 best ways to get and keep a job as a Hollywood Composer Assistant (or anything else)
2) HANS WORKS VERY, VERY HARD.
When working on a project – which is most of the time – Hans usually arrives at the studio at 11 am and then works until 3 or 4 in the morning. 7 days a week. For months. As the deadline approaches, everything else fades away. Harry Gregson-Williams once told me you could tell how far into a project Hans was by the length of his beard – at some point, he stops shaving.

His late-night hours provide welcome relief from badgering studios and the noise of running a business. They proved to be a challenge to my metabolism when I was getting up at 6 a.m. to go to yoga. Which leads me to a the title of another post, “Never Keep Different Hours Than Your Boss.” But I digress.

Hans is not as fast as his one-time assistant, Harry, or his current go-to arranger, Lorne Balfe, both of whom work at superhuman speed. Hans once suggested that I worked too fast. I was puzzled at the time, but what I think he was really saying was that I needed to pay better attention to the little details that, cumulatively, make all the difference.

3) HANS IS THE BEST FILM MUSIC PRODUCER IN THE BUSINESS.
We’re not talking about technical music skills. Hans is a so-so pianist and guitarist and his knowledge of academic theory is, by intention, limited. (I was once chastised while working on The Simpsons Movie for saying “lydian flat 7” instead of “the cartoon scale.”) He doesn’t read standard notation very well, either. But no one reads piano roll better than he does. [The piano roll is a page of a music computer program that displays the notes graphically.] Which gets to the heart of the matter: Hans knows what he needs to know to make it sound great.

Sometimes, that is the right musicians. Sometimes it is the right sample library. Sometimes it is the right room, or engineer, or recording technique, or mixing technique. All that counts is the end result. And it always sounds spectacular.

4) HANS WORKS WITH GREAT PEOPLE.
Take a look at the composers who have worked for Hans: John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Heitor Pereira, Henry Jackman, Steve Jablonsky, Lorne Balfe, Trevor Morris, Ramin Djawadi, Jeff Rona, Mark Mancina, Atli Örvarsson, Geoff Zanelli, Blake Neeley, Stephen Hilton, Tom “Junkie XL” Holkenborg and on and on. And Alan Meyerson, his mixer. And Bob Badami and Ken Karman, his music editors. (Bob’s credits alone dwarf about everybody in the business). His great percussionists, Satnam Ramgotra and Ryeland Allison. Sound designers, Howard Scarr and Mel Wesson. Not to mention Steve Kofsky, his business partner. And all the tech whizzes he’s had over the years: Mark Wherry, Sam Estes, Pete Snell, Tom Broderick. Even his personal assistants – Andrew Zack, and later, Czar Russell – are remarkable.

Of course, the really amazing talents are the ones he works for: Chris Nolan, Gore Verbinski, Jim Brooks, Ron Howard, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Jerry Bruckheimer. But he would never get the chance to work for them if he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

Read also: Hans Zimmer's Journey to the Line: Asymmetry and The Forbidden Cue
5) HANS IS A CHARMER.
The first time Jeffrey Katzenberg heard Hans’ love theme for Megamind he said, “It sounds like 1968 on the French Riviera.” It was not a compliment. And it wasn’t wrong. Actually, what Hans realized – and Jeffrey hadn’t – was that the heart of the love story in the movie was right out of A Man and A Woman and La Nouvelle Vague. Rather than point this out, Hans said, “Let me work on it some more.” Over the next two weeks he played revision after revision for Jeffrey, each time making small changes to the arrangement or structure, but keeping the same basic tune. A couple of weeks later, after Jeffrey tore apart the music for a different scene that we’d worked pretty hard on, he said, “Well, at least we have a great love theme!” The rest of us looked at each other. When did that happen!

Hans is acutely aware of the presentational aspect of our business. His capacious control room, rather than being the strictly functional wood and bland fabric of a typical studio, is a lurid red velvet – a 19th century Turkish bordello as Hans describes it. With a wall of rare analog modular synthesizers in the back. At dinner, he serves his guests fine wine, and gives others cleverly appropriate (more so than lavish) gifts. As one of his clients said to me, “Hans makes you feel like a great chef is inviting you into his kitchen.”

Not all of us can afford HZ-level dog and pony shows. But most of us can use what we do have better.

6) HANS DELIVERS.
Hans often gets hired for massive projects. The reason he uses an army of people is that he needs them to keep up with the demands of the directors and the studios. Halfway through Rango, Gore Verbinski suddenly changed direction, threw almost everything out, and we started over. Without a team to carry out the new directions, we’d have been dead.

Look at what happened to Howard Shore on King Kong, Marc Shaiman on Team America, Maurice Jarre on River Wild, Gabriel Yared on Troy, or the great Bernard Herrmann on Torn Curtain. In each case they were fired because the studio or director lost faith that they could shift direction quickly enough once their original approach was rejected. In 150+ films this has never happened to Hans.

BTW, he is also very aware of what the power structure is – who really makes decisions. I was fired – or more accurately not hired after a trial period – from a film because I jumped through hoops for the director who brought me in while not spending enough time figuring out what the producer – the actual power – wanted. Rather than being sympathetic, Hans told me I had failed in a fundamental task: determining who was my boss. He was right, and I haven’t made that mistake again.

So, is Hans my favorite film composer? No. He’s not even Hans’ favorite film composer! (I’m guessing that would be Nina Rota or Ennio Morricone, but you’d have to ask him.) And he can be dismissive, condescending, arrogant, exploitative, and just plain mean. Like me. And, I suspect, you.

But he is exceptionally smart, gifted, accomplished, and hard-working. And here is the hard truth: outside of a few rare exceptions, the people who are successful in the film business are successful because they deserve to be. They have earned it. Yes, they have been lucky. But everybody gets lucky eventually. The question is what do you do when good fortune arrives. If you want to be as successful as the people you admire, you need to be as smart, resourceful, and determined as they are. As Hans is.

You’ll find composer Michael A. Levine on Facebook and IMDb. His website is MichaelLevineMusic.com

 

Criticism is easier than making...

 

Why pitch people against each other at all? Why can’t you recognise they are different, have different styles and approaches, and all are good at their jobs? Why is there a constant need to try and pull people down? True, some soundtracks Zimmer made are instantly forgettable, such as Dunkirk. However, other have made the movie what they are, such as Inception, Dark Knight and Interstellar. Same is true of most film composers. That’s just reality. The sheer amount of films these composers score will cause this, if only in terms of scientific probability. I mean, outside of film music, which long lasting bands have only good to outstanding albums? I mean, even The Beatles had a bad album (Yellow Submarine)!

And how far back do you wanna go? Chopin, Liszt, Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart etc? Back to the chamber music accompanying Shakespeare plays? You’re being a little silly now and I think people need to start to learn to appreciate music in a grown up fashion instead of being like petulant children looking to put people down all the time. As the saying goes, putting other people down will not fill the void you clearly have nor make you any happier! Just be nice!

 

because hollywood einheits brei
you look just on a musician but he is much more you kno...

the one did let them all flee....most fictional movie ever
one of the many ? in written history

 

just compare him with enrico or richter..all you need to kno...

 

The funniest word here is "randomly", a bit naive in my opinion. It's not for those who want be, but for those who can.
And Hans has proven so... In a multi-million dollar business like movies, I can't imagine producers and directors picking
somebody randomly so many times...

The thing with Enrico IMHO, is that he has a more classical approach, Zimmer, a more contemporary one.

So, Giro Gearloose, I really don't understand your point, maybe you can clarify a little...show me some memorable works from them so I can relate to...

 

Last edited: Oct 30, 2019

Nothing random about it, unfortunately @The Dude.

XD His limitless approach seems to consist of writing in as many keys as D minor, is maybe memorable for repetition, plagiarism, being inoffensive background muzak and sometimes having gliss between as many as two notes. So there's variety, I guess. Sometimes he'll hit a home run and write something hilariously memorable like Driving Miss Daisy. The rest of his (production-line) output is forgotten instantly.

I do respect the fact that he does something strenuous, in short order. That his output is now a brand - McMuzak grown in a lab - less so. But it is Hollywood, I guess.

Compare and contrast - Blade Runner original score you can hear in your mind; and is more legit & contemporary now than when. The Zimmer version? Eyes and mind glazed over at whatev drone was playing, but I prolly know the preset in Omnisphere. I have no idea why they didn't hire Vangelis, or just recycle - it's good for the planet!

 

Are you sure you are not confusing Hans Zimmer with Jan Hammer?

Secondly, Kinetic music was done before the digital age. If you look at pre-digital in the early world of analog recordings, People from Henri Mancini, Nelson Riddle and Russell Garcia were conducting Orchestra's to film LIVE and being recorded in the exact same way in the 1940s (as in to the mood of each segment of the film like a tertiary actor). There are some cool documentaries on it if you google them.

 

Tee hee.

It's funny coz it's true.

 

Finkle Einhorn, Einhorn Finkle!!!!

 

I'm sure Hanz and his bank account can take the criticizm. Just ask his friend Franz.

 

The funniest part of all of this being that while there is some truth in what a lot of people have said at a comparative level, not only is it probable that Hans Zimmer is seeing none of these posts, if he was, he be thinking 'I have made 100 million dollars out of it and all of you didn't'.

I do not disagree with most of the constructive criticisms, but what I just said above is pretty close to the truth.

 

1. There is no accounting for taste.
2. Hans Zimmer is better than everyone on this board and is a highly skilled composer
3. Zimmer ain't no Alfred Newman and is not big enough to touch the
cuffs of of Newman's trousers
He wrote the 20th Century Fox Fanfare and the list of films I have pasted below. There is highly skilled and then there is godlike.

• 1930 - Whoopee!
• 1931 - City Lights (musical director) (music by Charlie Chaplin)
• 1931 - Indiscreet (musical director)
• 1931 - Street Scene
• 1933 - The Masquerader
• 1936 - Dodsworth
• 1936 - Born to Dance (musical director; Cole Porter wrote the songs)
• 1937 - You Only Live Once
• 1937 - The Hurricane (Academy Award)
• 1937 - The Prisoner of Zenda (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1938 - Alexander's Ragtime Band (Academy Award) (adaptation, the songs were by Irving Berlin)
• 1939 - The Rains Came
• 1939 - Gunga Din
• 1939 - Wuthering Heights (Academy Award nomination for best musical score)
• 1939 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1940 - Vigil in the Night
• 1940 - Foreign Correspondent
• 1940 - Broadway Melody of 1940 (musical director; again, Cole Porter wrote the songs)
• 1940 - The Mark of Zorro (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1940 - Tin Pan Alley (Academy Award) (adaptation; the film used old popular songs such as The Sheik of Araby)
• 1941 - How Green Was My Valley
• 1942 - Roxie Hart
• 1942 - The Black Swan
• 1942 - The Pied Piper (1942 film)
• 1943 - The Song of Bernadette (Academy Award)
• 1943 - My Friend Flicka
• 1944 - The Keys of the Kingdom (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1945 - State Fair (adaptation only; this was the musical version by Rodgers and Hammerstein) (Academy Award nomination for Best Adaptation of a Musical Score)
• 1947 - Captain from Castile (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1947 - Mother Wore Tights (adaptation) (Academy Award)
• 1947 - Gentleman's Agreement
• 1947 - The Shocking Miss Pilgrim
• 1947 - Miracle on 34th Street
• 1948 - Cry of the City
• 1948 - The Snake Pit
• 1948 - That Lady in Ermine
• 1948 - The Iron Curtain
• 1949 - Twelve O'Clock High
• 1949 - Chicken Every Sunday
• 1950 - All About Eve
• 1950 - Panic in the Streets
• 1950 - The Big Lift
• 1952 - The Prisoner of Zenda
• 1952 - The Snows of Kilimanjaro
• 1952 - With a Song in My Heart (adaptation only; this musical contained songs by several composers, but Newman was not one of them) (Academy Award)
• 1953 - How to Marry a Millionaire (Alfred Newman appears conducting an orchestra in the prologue. The music is from Street Scene.)
• 1953 - The Robe
• 1953 - Call Me Madam (adaptation; the songs were by Irving Berlin) (Academy Award)
• 1954 - Demetrius and the Gladiators
• 1955 - A Man Called Peter
• 1955 - Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (Academy Award)
• 1955 - The Seven Year Itch
• 1956 - Anastasia
• 1956 - Carousel (adaptation, the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
• 1956 - The King and I (adaptation; the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein) (Academy Award)
• 1957 - April Love (adaptation)
• 1958 - South Pacific (Conductor; the songs were by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
• 1958 - A Certain Smile
• 1959 - The Diary of Anne Frank (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1961 - Flower Drum Song (adaptation; the songs were again by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
• 1962 - The Counterfeit Traitor
• 1962 - State Fair (remake of musical version) (adaptation only; the songs were again by Rodgers and Hammerstein, with additional songs by Richard Rodgers only)
• 1962 - How the West Was Won (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1965 - The Greatest Story Ever Told (Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score)
• 1966 - Nevada Smith
• 1967 - Camelot (adaptation; the songs were by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe) (Academy Award)
• 1968 - Firecreek
• 1970 - Airport

 

Last edited: Oct 31, 2019

I don't recall Hans Zimmer ever being a part of John McLaughlin's collective known as The Mahavishnu Orchestra. You probably meant Jan Hammer (a name similarity perhaps?) that played in Mahavishnu. After all, Mahavishnu started in '71 and at the time Zimmer was about 14 y.o lol. Even the last years of Mahavishnu around the mid 80s, Zimmer was playing with Mecano, a Spanish synthpop band, nothing close to jazz or improvisational. And lastly Zimmer was never considered a virtuoso musician. He could never play in a fully improvisational band like the Mahavishnu.
Hey, for what it's worth i love "Video killed the radio star" but don't forget it's Trevor Horn there. AFAIK Zimmer hasn't wrote one single note of the particular song, just appears in the video clip. Nuff said

@famouslut
I agree with almost any of your critics here musically and most of the times too i love your sharp wits and ballsy intellect. But, knowing no boundaries meant his music crosses over to various or all kinds of music and so it does, so a minor misconception here.
Where we disagree is you keep criticizing his music, whereas every other OST with very few exceptions is more or less a "grey" area, a blatant mediocrity. I can name the soundtrack composers of all times that had a musically significant body of work like Newman and they won't be more than 25-30 perhaps, in a much larger populace.
As you saw i didn't analyze/criticize his musical output, i started with saying that many times i don't like it. Personally i consider Zimmer's achievements everything but musical, nevertheless in more than one way they should weigh a lot for any struggling musician. I will not sit around and explain how and why, i consider it obvious, and yes music biz and how it's conducted is something all musicians should try and learn.
And i agree Vangelis is one of a kind and Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire are unsurpassed in the electronic OST and not only imho. For this very same reason though -if you look closely- he is also a guy who tries to avoid sequels, with everything this may mean.
Cheers
PS: Vangelis and Zimmer are both self taught for the most part. Where they differ is Zimmer is as corporate as anyone in his place could be and Vangelis (even after all his success) is still pretty much an artist with no ties or affiliates in the industry.

 

Last edited: Oct 31, 2019

Hans' stuff is the product of bad training.

 

We live in strange times ... Everyone thinks that is better than the everyone else. Or maybe everyone tries really hard to prove that to themselves. Complicity does not compile with quallity neither simplicity. Its about "when", "what" and "why". Sometimes you need 2 - 3 chords and sometimes you need a f*cking orchestra to accomplice the right theme in order to support a movie/character/scene ... Hans is able to do this thing and without any inspirational limitations ... Thats right ! Ever thought about inspiration beeing a problem ? It is if you compose music for many years ... An other factor that is considered really hard to overcome is the originallity of the theme. If a tune already exists you are facing a problem once more. And with so many musicians and composers , originalllity is REALLY hard to accomplice ! You can composse a song that is simmilar to another one even if you never heard of it ...

sorry for bad english buddys... Cheers!

 

Metaller, you are very smug and condescending for someone who plays a detuned balalaika for hugs.

 

Don't we all play detuned balalaikas for hugs tho, @Von_Steyredent? Why the hell else would you :D

Well, if you followed the drama on such highbrow sites as VI forums, you'll know that Rctec (as Franz / Janz is known online) is prolly writing most of the posts in this topic.

Well, his assembly-line output is nearly up there with (the volume) of the lovely @spyfx. I'm not sure, if pressed, anyone could sing any of Hanz/Janz/Franz' muzak off the top of their heads. Or likely recognise anything distinct, a "style". Something that you can say generally about musicians and producers if generalising, generally.

 

i'll just leave this here, then each can better decide on whats what and what is imporant to one self in the end.

Round Table with Hans Zimmer, Dave Fleming, Ben Wallfisch and Steve Mazzaro

 

As far as music or composers go, the listeners will decide for themselves if they like it or not--despite the hype or not.

The most useless argument is to state that because we are not the ones holding the conductor baton, we cannot possibly understand orchestral music, or the poor conductor....I don't care what he does with his "baton", if I like it, I like it, if I don't, I don't.

Conductors and composers aren't the ones who decide if their music is being appreciated, but ask enthusiastic movie goers who never lifted a "baton" why some movie soundtracks, themes are still an unforgettable classic and some are not..

Here's another useless one: our opinion on such matters is seriously flawed because here on Audioz, we are mostly noobs and the like....
While I have no doubt many here are learning to use a new software, or others are good at using theirs and bring out beats, songs and sounds, the
truth is, Audioz is about music, no matter what your level of sophistication is or experience with music, instruments or studio equipment, an opinion is an opinion and if you do not like Hans Zimmer, you are certainly correct, well allowed to do so, and it has nothing to do with you missing the mark or with Audioz having too many ''unqualified" comment makers, unless that means not having a niche in "Hollywood" or having many scores to your name, (I believe most of us don't) but if you have ears and are able to formulate an opinion, that makes you as good a critic as any other. it is your right if you are not a musician or producer to critic, after all, most of what is composed, recorded or produced, is intended for a listening or dancing public anyways.

My 2 cents, your 2 cents. With any luck, such discussion will spark someone's interest and they will check it out for themselves.

Same goes for food, art and fashion: I'll decide for myself despite what the hype is...if I don't like it, I could get insulted, told I don't see the point, that I lack experience etc..but those comments have never succeeded in shaming me to change my mind.