Happy Birthday, Hans Zimmer: A deep dive into the sonic world of an era-defining composer
A herzlichen Glückwunsch to the German maestro as we take a closer look at the sounds, techniques, and setups that have characterized his career to date
Since the inception (no pun intended) of cinema, there have only been a small handful of composers who can be said to have defined the sound of the eras they lived and worked in. Max Steiner arguably shaped the sound of Hollywood’s early years before passing the torch to Bernard Hermann for its Golden Age. In the ‘60s, John Williams began to revitalize the art of symphonic scoring, laying the sonic blueprints for nearly three decades of cinema.
Looking back on the ‘90s and 2000s, there’s again only really one composer worthy of consideration for the top spot. As a child, Hans Zimmer may have been an unlikely candidate, having been thrown out of his piano lessons after just two weeks, as well as eight different schools. Today though, on his 68th birthday, we’re looking back on a career than includes two academy awards, 3 Golden Globes, 5 Grammy Awards, and a filmography that takes in some of the best-loved and top grossing movies and franchises of the past 30 years — from The Lion King to The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, Dune, Inception, and more.
How does he do it? Only Hans knows for sure, but over the years, he has been generous enough with his time and knowledge to drop many clues and helpful hints for aspiring composers to piece together. With this article, we’ve set out to break down what we know about Zimmer’s approach to music, sound, and the industry itself, plus collate some of the best advice out there from the man himself.
Read on to see what we’ve learned.
From rising star…
As we’ve established, Hans was never the best student, but clearly, he had an innate musical talent. Growing up, his family didn’t own a TV, so his exposure to film music was limited. Upon seeing Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, with its iconic Ennio Morricone score at around age 12, however, he knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
As a young adult, he played keyboard in bands, most notably The Buggles — you can catch a glimpse of him in the video for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first ever music video shown on MTV in 1981. Around this time, he met and began assisting English composer Stanley Myers. After cutting his teeth programming synths and occasionally fixing coffee machines, he went on to learn how to work with the orchestra under Myers’s mentorship.
Towards the end of the ‘80s, Zimmer began to work independently on his own scores. His work on the 1988 anti-apartheid drama A World Apart caught the attention of director Barry Levinson, who was looking for someone to score the upcoming film, Rain Man.
The resulting score — one which foreshadowed Zimmer’s eventual reputation for refusing to follow fashion or convention — earned him his first Academy Award nomination and opened the door to the rest of Hollywood.
“He might as well be on Mars,” Zimmer has said of Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond. “So why don't we just invent our own world music for a world that doesn't really exist?"
… to Hollywood go-to
The rest of Zimmer’s career almost reads like a list of the top-grossing films from each year. Since Rain Man, he has been credited on The Lion King (and then the musical and the 2019 remake); Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, as well as Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk; the Pirates of the Caribbean series; Gladiator; Man of Steel; the two recent Dune movies, and many more.
Zimmer's thirty-plus-year involvement in blockbuster franchises and critically acclaimed films has made him not only one of the most awarded film composers of all time, but also the most commercially successful in cinematic history by some accounts. SlashFilm’s analysis puts the total gross of his projects at $36 billion, more than $7 billion ahead of John Williams in the number two spot. It’s worth noting that this calculation doesn’t account for inflation. Visiting the cinema was substantially cheaper for much of Williams’s career.
It’s worth noting here, with no shade intended, that Zimmer didn’t achieve all of this success by himself. Even accounting for the fact that it can take upwards of a thousand people to take a blockbuster movie from idea to reality, Zimmer’s innovative approach to collaboration has literally reshaped the field of film scoring.
Through his studio, Remote Control Productions, Zimmer has spearheaded a way of doing things that’s not only had a far-reaching impact on the way films are made today, but also spawned the careers of other composers who have gone on to great successes of their own — Klaus Badelt, Ramin Djawadi, Lorne Balfe, Harry Gregson-Williams and Junkie XL to name just a few.
These composers didn’t just make the coffee until they were ready to work on their own projects; they were brought into the fold and worked alongside Zimmer, and collaboratively with each other. There are many instances in Zimmer’s career where either he or another Remote Control composer was credited, but two, three, or more of the team contributed music to the score.
The downside to this approach is that a perceived uncertainty around who contributed resulted in several of Zimmer’s scores being ineligible for awards he may otherwise have won. It should be noted that the man himself is not shy about sharing credit and has long insisted that the full team behind a score should be listed and eligible for any accolades.
The Hans Zimmer sound
With a film career spanning more than four full decades, “the Hans Zimmer sound” is tricky to pin down. We can, however, dig into the way he approaches sound and sound design and hear how this has created some recognizable elements in his work that have endured waves of technological change.
Zimmer’s earlier solo scores incorporated heavy doses of electronics — an uncommon approach for the time — and drew heavily on his background as a rock and pop musician. His debut for the 1987 comedy Terminal Exposure seamlessly blended real saxophone, guitars, and percussion with synths and early samplers. The upbeat result offers few clues about the style he was to become known for, but it’s an early iteration of his hybrid approach to combining electronics with traditional instruments.
The score for Rain Man, released one year later, is stylistically closer to the sound we now associate with Zimmer, despite being an all-electronic affair. For it, he overlayed electronic textures from his Fairlight CMI sampler and various FM and analog synths with sampled strings and steel drums. He said of the effect the film’s success had on the industry, “It was the beginning of orchestras having to adapt. Like, ‘there’s this new guy in town and he works with weird electronic instruments, so we better have some stuff in the orchestra as well that can go and do that!’”
The first true blockbuster of Zimmer’s career is a film he initially didn’t want to work on, and also one whose studio had predicted only minor success. “I wasn’t keen on doing The Lion King,” he told Classic FM earlier this year. “I only agreed because my daughter Zoë was six years old at the time and, like any good father, I wanted to impress her and take her to a premiere.”
The Lion King, of course, exceeded all expectations, grossing nearly ten times as much as Disney expected during its initial theatrical run. It also laid the groundwork for much of the work Zimmer has done since. While Elton John’s contributions to the soundtrack bring an anthemic sing-along to the film, Zimmer’s compositions offer a different quality. The electronics here are subtle, and the overall impression is of an organic soundscape rather than an overtly synthesized one, which is a testament to his insistence on music — and by extension, sound design — serving the story and themes of a film rather than attempting to stand out as a separate element. The prominent percussion featured throughout is actually electronic and was tracked by Zimmer himself in his studio after the orchestra had already been recorded.
The Lion King’s blend of a large orchestra and often-disguised electronic elements has become a signature of Zimmer’s career. Take Gladiator’s electronic percussion loops that underpin epic orchestral motifs, for example; The Dark Knight’s 50-50 blend between live orchestra and electronic sound design; or The Last Samurai’s fusion of a Western orchestra with traditional Japanese instruments, much of it manipulated after the fact at Remote Control.
“Very often, I don’t want you to know what is score and sound design,” Zimmer once said of his work on Dunkirk with frequent collaborator, sound designer Richard King — appropriate enough for a film that used the ticking sound of director Christopher Nolan’s pocket watch to provide a rhythmic backbone to the score and amp up the tension at key moments. You’ll also find this specific trick in Zimmer’s scores for Interstellar and Sherlock Holmes, but the incorporation of conventionally non-musical elements is present throughout his back catalog.
When the perfect sound doesn’t exist, Zimmer creates it. As technology has evolved — or perhaps simply caught up to his sonic ambitions — he’s been quick to embrace the new possibilities on offer to create the right sounds, or even the right instruments, for the film world he’s depicting.
One of the best examples of this, and the aforementioned equivalence of score and sound design, is found in Zimmer’s work on Nolan’s Batman trilogy. The sound of Batman’s vehicle, the Batpod, was created with the use of Shepard Tones. In short, these are sounds that appear to always be rising (or falling) in pitch. The general principle is that at least two ascending scales, separated by an octave, are looped simultaneously. As one voice reaches the top of the scale, it fades out, replaced by the now-rising second voice fading in. The effect relies on the fact that we hear these octave-apart tones as similar enough to perceive one endlessly rising scale.
For the Batpod, the specific technique on display is a Shepard-Risset scale, meaning the scale comprises a single glissando, rather than discrete notes. This was achieved by blending pitch-bent synthesizers with real-world sound, Foley, and other electronic layers to give the impression that the Batpod is continuously accelerating. You can hear a more traditional example of Shepard tones at key moments in Dunkirk’s score, this time performed by sections of the film’s orchestra.
For 2021’s Dune and its 2024 sequel, Zimmer went even further, effectively creating his own orchestra from a combination of electronic and traditional sources. “Why would I have a romantic Northern European orchestra?” he said, in reference to the film’s sci-fi setting. “Let's go and invent instruments.”
For this score, he imagined musical traditions of the movies’ various societies, bringing them to life with the help of a world-class team of musicians, vocalists, and sound designers. Among them were Guthrie Govan, whose guitar lent E-Bowed samples to approximate a string section, Pedro Eustache, whose woodwinds were processed to sound like actual wind, and EaganMatrix developers Edmund Eagan and Christophe Duquesne, who contributed both performances and custom sound design to the process. Electronic sounds for both movies were re-amplified through various physical resonators to give them an authentic, organic sense of presence alongside the acoustic recordings.
Studio setup
Hans Zimmer’s personal studio at Remote Control is the stuff of synth-nerd legend. Its red velvet and dark woods provide the backdrop for countless drool-worthy photographs of new and vintage synths, guitars, and outboard effects.
Perhaps the best lesson we can take from a peek at Zimmer’s room is that it pays to make music in a space that works for you. The decor might not be your vibe, and almost nobody needs full walls of modular synths or an array of $50,000 mains, but it’s clear that the studio has been designed around his particular wants, needs, and tastes, not to mention budget.
That said, let’s dig into some highlights of the gear and software he swears by — the first couple are relatively affordable shortcuts to the authentic Zimmer sound, should you want to add a modern, cinematic edge to your own tracks:
u-he ZebraHZ: A shortcut to the Zimmer sound. German developer u-He has made this custom version of its fan-favorite Zebra soft synth available for anyone to use.
Synapse Audio The Legend HZ: Similarly to ZebraHZ, this is a soft synth that aims to capture some of what makes Zimmer’s sound so recognizable. It’s an impressively modelled Minimoog paired with emulations of additional filters from his expansive Moog Modular system.
Fairlight CMI: The digital sampling workstation that helped define Zimmer's early career.
Yamaha CS-80:The holy-grail analog polysynth that set a new benchmark for playability and expression. It would have been hard to imagine remaking Blade Runner without one, not to mention an insult to Vangelis.
Steinberg Cubase: Zimmer’s go-to DAW, often integrated with ProTools for mixing and video sync.
Roland 700 and 100M Modular systems: Two rare, massive modular setups that have featured on many of Zimmer’s scores, particularly throughout the 80s and 90s.
EMS VCS 3: Hans’s first ever synthesizer, purchased for £300, sold, and then tracked down and bought back.
Universal Audio UAD-2 Quad Systems: Multiple UAD sound cards network together to provide Remote Control with all the I/O and routing they need to power a pro studio complex
Roland RE-201 Space Echo: Originally using the hardware units, now relying on software emulations, also by UAD, this iconic tape echo has long been a go-to for adding instant ambience to Zimmer scores.
Doepfer LMK4+ The utilitarian-looking 88-key control Zimmer has had built into his imposing studio desk at Remote Control.
Quested HM415 and V2108: One of the most prominent and important features of Zimmer’s studio is the trio of enormous, soffit-mounted HM415 main monitors. These are paired with the comparatively smaller V2108 in the midfield, both by British brand Quested.
MPE Mastery
"Hi, this is Hans Zimmer. I heard about your Seaboard. I’m in London, I want to see it."
That’s the call ROLI founder Roland Lamb received back in 2013, shortly after announcing his innovative new instrument to the world. Zimmer did indeed get to see — and provide feedback on — the original Seaboard, and has been a fan of MPE’s expressive capabilities ever since.
“The Seaboard is really interesting,” he told CNN at the time. “Because you’re forever trying to figure out how to make music more expressive. I’ve always been involved in music and technology, and this is quite a relationship we’re developing here… we’re trying to figure out how to get beyond the boundaries of technology that was invented 600 years ago or so.”
It ought to be no surprise that a composer who has constantly been on the lookout for new methods of generating and manipulating sounds should also see the appeal of new ways to control them. Had Debussy or Ravel been given access to this technology, he continued, their music would have been “X-rated”.
Following along with Zimmer’s boundary-breaking spirit, we brought his expressive sonic world to our equally expressive Seaboard 2. In a performance from our resident Seaboard maestro, Heen, we give you an impression of what Zimmer’s cinematic universe might sound like in our Seaboard performance above.
Zimmer has also been known to have used the Osmose from our friends over at Expressive E for parts of his Dune score. “The one thing every keyboard player wants to do is what a violinist can do or a guitarist can do, is have vibrato,” he said of the MPE synth. “So you can go and wobble your keys left to right, and you literally can transform a sound completely… It let us play the music of an imaginary future.”
Advice for aspiring composers
Looking to follow in Zimmer’s footsteps? To finish, we’ve collected a few choice words of wisdom from the man himself. Here are his top tips for aspiring composers, straight from Hans himself.
“At the end of the day, I can tell you everything you need to know in one word. Story. Stick with the story like glue. Don't abandon the story, don't betray the story."
“Creating the impossible has always been my interest. I’ve never approached sampling with the idea of, ‘how do we fake an orchestra?’ It’s always been ‘how do we expand on an orchestra?’”
“Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it, and it becomes interesting.”
"I think one of the things which always is forgotten in music class is the first thing you have to do as a musician is you have to learn how to listen."
And perhaps most importantly of all, if you’ve read this far: "The seconds of your life are ticking away and they're better spent doing it than listening to me. And I wish you were already writing away at something."
Making "impossible sounds" possible with Seaboard
Seaboard, as approved by Hans himself, is our flagship expressive keyboard controller. Its seamless, silicone surface is designed to add new dimensions of expression to your playing, transforming natural gestures into musical moments and empowering you to emulate any instrument, real or imagined. Want to see how you can emulate Zimmer’s style on your own Seaboard? Take a look at our feature on how to recreate the Dune 2 soundtrack here.
Seaboard 2 also comes with Equator2, our do-it-all soft synth that offers up to six simultaneous sound sources — including a sampler and a granular sampler — making it incredibly powerful for MPE sound design. Best of all, it’s designed to work seamlessly with Seaboard, right out of the box.
