Interstellar OST
Written by Hans Zimmer for Christopher Nolan’s feature film ‘Interstellar’ produced by Alex Gibson 2014. The main theme of Interstellar is a journey in itself if you have ever had the time to listen to it, and the way this is portrayed is done using a variety of composition and instrumentation methods.
Some of the films Hans has worked on in creating an OST (original sound track) for have been Inception, Man of Steel, Black Hawk Down, Sherlock Holmes and Pearl Harbour just to name a few so needless to say his ability to be able to write music specific to a movies theme or genre makes him a sort after composer, however, when he was approached by Chris to score a theme for Interstellar he was only given very minimal information to the scope and genre of the project and only when he had a theme composed was then given specifics about the movie in regards to story and size.
Hans wanted to have an emphasis on the organ which at first glance there is not anymore significance in its use. Something quite mind blowing, is in why Zimmer chose to use the organ. Although the soundtrack is quieted down in various sections, the Organ always appears in the film when there is a question about gravity which can be seen as a symbolic reference to the essence of gravity that is the plot struggle of the whole film because the creation of sound by the organ is created by air vibrations in a pipe and is not limited by gravity but there are many other instruments which make up the scores throughout the movie including synthesisers and some electronic elements to give a darker, fuller feel to the score.
Instrumentation is as follows:
Ambient music
Pipe organ
Piano
Violin
Steel guitar
Tuned percussion
Harp
Synth programming
Choir
String quartet
Piano quartet
Flute
Flute / Piccolo
Flute / Alto
Oboes
Oboe / Cor anglais
Clarinet
Clarinet/Bass clarinet
Clarinet/Eb contrabass clarinet
Clarinet/Bb contrabass clarinet
Bassoon
Bassoon/Contrabassoon
Composed as an orchestral piece, the dynamics range in this song are much larger than that of an ordinary song which also helps to add an element of grandeur to the score, and even phrasing of elements are longer which if you did for contemporary music the regular listener would lose interest with in the first 10-15 seconds. In saying that thought the way the song has been mixed in terms of panning leads its way back to contemporary music with most of the focus of the sounds being in the middle with any other embellishments such as reverb are panned hard left right, this gives the overall mix a focused sound but raises its own challenges of making everything fit into the mix because giving every element in a large scale orchestra its space within the mix almost entirely depends on the musicians themselves which if you have ever recorded people that perhaps aren't as practised you find yourself panning things more because everyone is trying to play as loudly as they can. An aspect of orchestral music that helps this is that each instrument has its own frequency range and not everyone is playing at the same time.
If you listen to any of Hans' other works in movies like The Dark Knight trilogy, Gladiator, Inception and Blade Runner 2049 just to name a few, you will immediately recognise his style and how he uses large amounts of percussion to drive the score, lots of ostinatos with strings but rarely will he use woodwinds as part of his scores instead relying on his Moog System 55 to embellish parts of his scoring. Still even with the way that we are moving rapidly into the digital world with sample libraries and being able to orchestrate entire scores using nothing more than a MIDI keyboard and a few plug-ins, people like Hans will always find ways to incorporate live recorded sound with what are rapidly becoming digital only composers.
Hans Zimmer is A Film Music Composer. Take anybody, whether it be it Danny Elfman, Elmer Bernstein , AR Rahman, Elliot Goldenthal, Brian Tyler, Micheal Kamen,(to name a few) compose Music Specific for the film and The Music itself acts, like an actor, evolving and fitting into the Genre, Setting and Pace of the film. and usually they are not genre specific.His roots lie in Electronic music and in New Wave/Progressive Rock which makes use of Analog Synthesizers a lot,This is more obvious in earlier movies like Rain Man.
The Orchestra forms the backbone of Film Music Culture, Its an age old tradition, and since Film Music is about inducing emotions using a combination of Original melodies and Familiar styles of music.
Hans Zimmer Different from the rest of the Film Music Composer as his music Is characterised by
Blend of Organic and Synthetic Musical Elements.
Percussive,Aggressive choice of Arrangement.
Usage of Leitmotifs and Minimalist Ostinatos to build themes.
And recently marked by a tendency to create Epic/Huge music which sounds good, but usually impossible to play using a standard live orchestra.
https://youtu.be/L_8t2VlwK4w
https://youtu.be/UDVtMYqUAyw
https://www.musictech.net/2018/07/hans-zimmer-interview/
https://www.keyboardmag.com/artists/hans-zimmer-on-scoring-interstellar