SON ZINE

Boutique Sampling Magazine

SPECIAL EDITION WINTER 2014 | #003

Features

Reviews

Tutorials

Hans Zimmer Interview

Interstellar Score Review

Kontakt Time Machine Pro

Ivan Torrent Q&A

Sci-Fi Movie Composers

Track Techniques:

Production Music Libraries

Capriccio Production Notes

'Creating a Hybrid Score'

2014
#03

TRACK TECHNIQUES
mono (and turn off one of your monitors)
to check for phase cancellation. In the
same way that synths can be used to
double low instruments, the sounds can
also be used to add purpose and drive
to faster ostinati. This works especially
well with repeated string figures. Try
doubling up your violin figures by adding
a synth sound, based on a saw or square
wave. Start with the volume high in
comparison to the strings and steadily
decrease it until you can no longer
discern it above the violins. Routing both
tracks to the same reverb and FX chain
will also help the sounds gel together.
Its subtle, but adds bite. At the other
end of the spectrum you can soften and
thicken legato string lines and sections by
doubling with synth pad sounds.

WRITING HYBRID ORCHESTRAL TRACKS

USING SAMPLES
by Reuben Cornell

his issue of Sonozine has adistinctly

Zimmer-centric flavour,
I thought it a good time to focus on
some tips and techniques surrounding
hybrid orchestral tracks. You cant have
failed to notice electronic elements
muscling their way into your favourite
soundtracks, every score from Avatar to
World War Z.
The earliest roots of hybrid film scoring
are difficult to pin down. Indeed, I could
even argue that silent films with played
piano accompaniment included hybrid
elements as sometimes whistles and
rattles were used to enhance the onscreen action. However, here Im going to
be looking specifically at hybrid scoring
which combines orchestral, electronic
instruments and sound design.
Firstly lets look at the bass.

Its one of the most common uses of

electronic embellishment in orchestral
music yet often you may not even realise
that its there at all. Hans Zimmers
scores for Interstellar and Inception
are good examples. The traditional
contrabass orchestral instruments
(double bass etc) are often doubled
with a simple synth bass sound to add
weight and power to a cinemas sub
woofers. When composing your own
tracks this is easy to program but watch
out that the frequency ranges of your
low orchestral instruments and your
synths dont interfere with one another.
Use high / low pass filters if necessary
or a notch filter to scoop out a range
of your synth sound for the contrabass
instruments to sit. Collapse your track to

Lets look at percussion. This is one area

where hybrid scoring really becomes
useful as chopped and glitched elements embellish and replace what would
normally be written as orchestral snare
and smaller percussion parts. These
type of hybrid elements can be very time
consuming to program yourself using
individual samples. However, there are
many libraries which do the job extremely
well. Almost any product from Sample
Logic includes hundreds of tempo-synced
hybrid percussion elements. Personally,
Id also recommend the CamelSpace and
CamelPhat plugins. You can run almost
any sound through them and it will be
transformed into evolving, gated percussion, perfect for adding top-end interest.

"If you want to go really bold

with your hybrid sounds then
its certainly possible to twist the
sound of orchestral instruments
themselves"
In this issues interview with Hans Zimmer
he explains how he used traditional
synth processes on orchestral sounds
and you can do the same by resampling
your orchestral parts, chopping them
up and applying filters, distortion and

other effects. For an extreme example

take a listen to the score from video
game Remember Me. Composer Olivier
Derivire mangles the Philharmonia
Orchestra beyond recognition using glitch
effects such as iZotope Stutter Edit
Its hard to recommend one synth over
another for hybrid scoring as many
products do essentially the same task but
in different ways. For cinematic sounds
Spectrasonics Omnisphere, NI Massive
and Absynth are popular workhorses.

If youre not confident in creating your

own patches or are simply short on
time, preset soundpacks available are
helpful. Check out www.theunfinished.
co.uk for some reasonably priced options
for all the synths listed and more. For a
quintessentially Zimmer vibe theres even
a 400 preset bank for u-he Zebra 2 called
Dark Zebra where youll find many of his
favourite sounds programmed by Howard
Scarr.

A quick note on those now famous

Zimmer-style BRAAAM! horn blasts:
Apparently the sound was developed
by several individuals over the course of
months, using pitch shifted brass and
synth elements. Composer Mike Zarin
spills the beans here if youre interested.

Although synth sounds are the backbone of hybrid scoring, its important
to remember not just to write a normal
orchestral piece and then dump a load of
synth presets on top. The most successful
hybrid composers dont think of orchestra
and electronic elements as two separate
entities but use the two types of sounds
to complement one another. They also
use real-world sound effects and foley
and incorporate them into their cues.
There are really no boundaries to your
creativity with hybrid scoring so use that
to your advantage and really play with the
conventions. Until next time...