Hans Zimmer on Scoring Interstellar

keyboardmag.com by Stephen Fortner March 5, 2015

I love how polarizing this whole project has been. People either hate what we
did or they love it. Theres nothing in the middle, which is great.
So says renowned film composer Hans Zimmer about the score to Interstellar,
Christopher Nolans blockbuster sci-fi epic about a farmer and former astronaut
who journeys out of our galaxy to find habitable planets beyond the ecologically
devastated earth. Zimmers music avoided both the traditional big-orchestra

Hollywood sound and more contemporary electronic tropes in favor of a

haunting, and largely acoustic keyboard-driven scoreincluding a huge amount
of pipe organ recorded in Londons Temple Church. The score also caused some
controversy, as some film-goers felt it was mixed too loudly relative to the
dialogue. There can be no question of its beauty and individuality, though. We
were privileged to talk at length with Mr. Zimmer about how he approached the
film, and to Roger Sayer, who played all of the organ you hear in what is
certainly the decades first great space opera.
SF: Id like to start by diving straight into the loudness issue some
viewers experienced. Personally I didnt hear it or have a problem
understanding any dialogue, but I know people who insist they did.
How loud is this score, in your opinion?
HZ: Well, we knew we were pushing the envelope. We wanted to be extreme, but
its not like we didnt check it back. I mean, every Friday for six weeks, wed go to
a different theater in the morning, at some ungodly hour, and listen to our
playback. We blew up a few speakers on the way. Isnt that the way its supposed
to be? [Laughs.]
We tried to be both the quietest movie and the loudest movie. And we tried to do
it in a way that it was interesting. But I think part of it is just that people are not
used to this. Imagine if a 17th-century person tried to have a conversation with
you in the middle of New York City right now. They just wouldnt be used to the
difference in ambient sound. Culturally, our sound world keeps changing. Thats
quite an interesting phenomenon.
Another part of it is, as a little kid, my mom used to take me to the operamy
first musical experiences were largely opera. I never understood a word, but I
was always ended up crying or otherwise being swept along by the emotional
experience. Musicians know this. There are so many great songs where were still
not entirely sure what the lyrics are, but they get under our skin. Another thing
to remember is that Chris Nolan isnt just the director, hes the writer. Hes very
aware of words, and he does treat a film like a songsometimes the words are
more important, sometimes the music is.

The plot arc of Interstellar has been compared to Kubricks 2001. Did
its score influence you, either positively or as something to distance
yourself from?
Youre thinking exactly what I was thinking. I was completely daunted for a
while by Kubrick and 2001 and his use of classical music. Then one day Chris
and I were having this conversation, which went something like,
When 2001 came out, the most familiar piece to people probably was
Strauss The Blue Danube.Everybody knew that one. Maybe a smaller percentage
knew about Also Spracht Zarathustra. But then, did anybody know the other
music? You know, all those eastern European composers? Penderecki?
Probably not. It was just interesting music.
So Chris and I just decided, number one, the job is to invent. Number two, just
try to write as well as you possibly can. Number three, dont get scared. Dont get
daunted by the precedent of what Stanley Kubrick had done.
How did the idea to make pipe organ so central to the score occur?
So, we wanted to start on the opposite end of the spectrum from where weve
been for the last ten years. Ever since we started doing the Batman movies, we
defined a certain style for us. That was very much driven by action drums,
kinetic ostinatos in the strings, et cetera. So we went, if we throw everything out
from our vocabulary before, where does that lead us?
Then one day Chris, in the middle of a paragraph, goes, Have you ever thought
of a pipe organ? As soon as he said it, I just saw the shape. Those big organ
pipeslook like the afterburners on rocket ship. So visually, that seemed to fit
right into the image that I was trying to create. For me, its vital that the score
involves some sort of metaphor for the story. The other part of that metaphor is
that a pipe organ cant make a sound without breath. In that regard, its
incredibly human.
Another thing is that we wanted to celebrate scientists in the film as opposed to
them being the nerdy sidekicksa bit like having the keyboard player at the

center of the stage as opposed to back behind the guitarist or singer! And by the
17th century, the pipe organ was the most complex machine people had created.
It kept that distinction until the telephone exchange was inventedand you cant
tell me Bob Moog didnt see a telephone exchange at some point before thinking
of the modular synth.
What other sonic elements found their way into the score? Any
synthesizers?
Well, wed been avoiding woodwinds in the scores for the last ten years, so we
just went, Time to unleash the woodwinds. I wanted to keep the electronics to
a minimum, but there were certain things I just had to get [U-he soft synth]
Zebra out to do. The only other synthesizer I really used was the Jonte
Knifonium, which is from this fantastic Finnish designer. Its a completely
vacuum tube-based synth. Theyre pretty rare, and incredible creations.
Once youd decided on pipe organ, did you begin writing with a
sampled or software version?
Yes. Because of the way Chris and I work, I just write in a sequencerSteinberg
Cubase. So I was trying to hunt down a great pipe organ sample collection, and I
came across this plug-in called Hauptwerk. Man, its really incredible. So I was
writing with its Salisbury Cathedral organ [sample set], which isnt a bad place to
start. First, I had to spend quite a bit of time learning the instrument. Isnt that
what its supposed to be like? Its not supposed to just come out of the box and
there it is.
One of the things I could do with the Hauptwerkorgan is, I could use MIDI CC 11
for putting all sort of super-duper expressions into every line. Which then
became a bit of a problem once we went off to record the real organ, because it
cant do that.
Not via the expression pedals a pipe organ has for each manual?

To some extent, but its not like you can go from pp to ff within a note and back
again. You cant go to silence or come from silence, which is what I wanted to do.
What I did at the end of the day, after wed recorded all the organ partsthe
writing is pretty intricate, so on a big cue we might have 12 or more different
oneswas to took put the audio tracks back in the sequencer and superimpose
expression maps onto them.
Speaking of which, how did you record the organ at Temple Church?
Abbey Road Mobile set up a remote studio in one of the side rooms of the
church. It wasnt just the organ; we had the orchestra in there as well. So we had
an enormous amount of microphones placed all throughout that church. But I
think the main mics really were a few Neumanns, about 20 feet away. More were
about 40 feet away from the main pipes.
It was great being able to really use the space. Because an organ doesnt exist
outside its acoustic space, so you have to find the right space. The great thing
about Temple Church is, its in the center of London but its completely isolated.
There are just the law courts all around it, and its basically a pedestrian zone, so
theres no traffic noise.
Why is Cubase your tool of choice for composing before taking things
to the orchestra?
I think the best software program is the one that you know, the one you feel
comfortable with. At the same time, I have to give Steinberg props for constantly
trying to innovate. Ive got to be careful here, but there arent that many
companies who you can rely on to update all the time and democratically listen
to their users. With some features, you go, Well, Id never use that, but then
you go, oh, wait a minute . . . It leads you to new creative possibilities. But you
have to invest the time to learn itor any program. Few people understand that
a computer these days is a legitimate musical instrument that you have to study
and get good at, just like practicing your scales on the piano.

Throughout the film, I was struck by cues that started off sounding
like some sort of synth, but as they evolved were clearly the pipe
organ.
Theres a lot of morphing going on between different things. And sometimes I
would use a choir as well. Id just go andI was trying to confuse a little bit. I
was trying to not just be a purist about using the organ. There are also the
woodwinds. Sometimes you get a clarinet playing something very soft, which is
then taken over by the pipes on the organ.
In cutting the movie, Chris Nolan was also very mindful that if a note finished,
we wouldnt cut off the reverb or fade it down. Hed let the shot hang there long
enough for you to hear the end of the decay.
I heard those. One exception is this scene where Cooper is on the
spaceship watching a video from his family. When the video ends, the
cue that had been swelling cuts abruptly to silence. It was jarring, but
very effective to convey that moment of his loneliness.
Yes, that cutoff was actually quite important. You think its a piece of score, but
its actually a piece of source music. Chris was describing the scene to me, all the
frames I had to hit . . . and in the end that hit every frame. We play with silence a
lot in this film, obviously. Sometimes, these days a score is just wall-to-wall. So
its weird that we got that controversy about the loudness on this score,
whichisnt wall to wall. There are large chunks of this movie where people just
talk without music in the background.
The organ is also offset by a lot of scrape and drone sounds, which
seem meant to be as unsettling as being in outer space. What was
your source?
Theres a wonderful inventor and musician here in Los Angeles called Chas
Smith. He creates these amazing musical sculptures out of titanium and other
metal. Hes forever up at the Boeing factory getting scraps of weird,
unpronounceable metals, and he builds these musical instruments out of them.

Theyre either scraped or scratched or bowed, or whatever other unspeakable

things he does to them. [Laughs.] I first met him when we were doing Man of
Steel.
In the 70s or 80s, everybody was forever saying that synthesizers are trying to
imitate and maybe replace real instruments. Well, what we were trying to do
withInterstellar is imitate synthesizers with acoustic instruments. Wed play
things to the orchestra and say, Heres an overtly electronic sound. How
would you go and do that? There must be something about your instrument that
no one ever let you do or that only you know. Lets hear it! I remember Richard
Harvey, who was conducting the woodwinds, saying, Theyve spent their whole
lives not sounding like this. That felt like a triumph.
What was the most challenging scene for you to write to?
I need to tell you how the whole project started, because that informs everything
that happened afterwards. A couple of years ago, Chris said, If I were to write
one page, and not tell you the context, would you write whatever [music] comes
to you? So a couple of weeks later I get this a beautiful typewritten letternot
done on a computer. It was just this very personal story between a father and
child, and Chris wrote about a son because I have a son who wants to be a
scientist. he came down to the studio, and I played it to him. And its this tiny,
very fragile, personal piece about myself and my son, really. And I get to the end
of it and I sort of look at him and I say, Hey, what do you think? And he goes,
Well, I suppose Id better make the movie now.
He then starts describing this huge canvas of science and space and quantum
mechanics and relativity theory and all this stuff. I finally break in and say,
Chris, but Ive just written this tiny, personal piece, and youre describing the
vastness of everything. And he goes, Yeah, but I now know where the heart of
the story is.
Which is Cooper and his daughter. Was this the simple four-note
melody based around A, B, and E that we hear early in their scenes
and that then forms the basis for grander cues later on?

Thats the one. And then the first thing you hear, when it cuts to black and the
end titles start, its literally that first-day demo. Its just me playing in the privacy
of my own neurosis, in my studio.
How did Roger Sayer wind up playing all the organ for the film?
Through [composer and conductor] Richard Harvey, really. We knew Temple
Church because Ron Howard had shot [scenes in] The Da Vinci Code there, and
Richard knew that the Harrison pipe organ had been restored the year before, so
it was in perfect condition. So, who were we going to get to play this thing? You
have to have the person who knows it play it, because each organ is different. Id
never met Roger nor heard him play, but I was hoping that a man who I
imagined just played hymns on Sundays could be persuaded to get into this
adventure.
We get there, meet Roger, and he says, I had a look at the music. You know
that great British understatement that happens when you present somebody
with unbelievable technical difficulties? They have a way of going, Well, lets
just have a go. He climbed up to the organ loft and just started to unleash the
thing. Ive never asked him, but I have a feeling Roger might have a bit of the
heart of a prog rocker in him!
You knew he was the guy right then?
So I said to him, I wrote [the score] using Hauptwerk and the Salisbury
Cathedral organ model, and he goes, Oh yeah, I have that at home. Im very
familiar with it. It was actually then that I instantly knew we were going to be all
right. Number one, I wasnt talking to a Luddite. Number two, it was reassuring
to just play him my demos in the headphones and hear him go, I know exactly
what stops youre using. I dont have the same pipes, but here it is. Because of
course each pipe organ is different.
You cant just pull up the same patch . . .

Right. Its not mass produced. In fact, I think thats the sort of thing that goes
through this whole movie. Everything was handmade. We hardly used any CG
[computer graphics]. There are a lot of miniature shots, we didnt use green
screen or blue screen. Wed just project the image, and let the actors inhabit that
world,which was great for them. They didnt have to imagine what was behind
them or what planet they were on. That was the sort of ethos of everything we
were doing. Thats why using valve synthesizers seemed to be perfect. Using
things which were custom-built by Chas Smith were perfect. The Temple Church
organ was a one-off. Everything was a one-off.
Another thing I loved about the organ was that there was a time when people
invested an enormous amount of effort and ingenuity in building these devices,
which were strictly there to make beautiful music. What a concept, right?
Somebody dedicating their life to serving artists, serving art, serving composers.
The money to do so would have had to come from the Church, or a
Medici-like patron.
Absolutely. Welcome to the Church of Hollywood. Our times have changed
dramatically, whereby you dont get the Church or royal houses to go and
commission art anymore. Everybody loves to go on about how Hollywood is
repeating itself, how its just some factory. But Im really happy that this factory
is one of the few placesto me the last place on earththat commissions
orchestral music and live musicians on a daily basis. I mean, there are so many
productions being done. And nobody bats an eyelid when you say I want to go
and write something for a symphony orchestraor a pipe organ.
Do you see any area of musical instruments today that might follow
the ethos of the pipe organ?
I think its happening more and more. I mean, if you look at the whole Eurorack
and modular scene, all these little companies, all these people being ingenious
and spending their time building incredible modules. I dont know if its true, but
I think theres more innovation and more people building modular systems than
ever before.

At the same time, I have all these beautiful modular systems I basically picked
up for nothing in the 80 and early 90s. Because everybody was going, forget
about all that stuff. Its all going to be digital. But its like the difference between
a violin and a trumpet. Theyre autonomous instruments in their own right. So
that sort of 80s thinking that we were going to exclude everything in favor of the
DX7 seemed crazy to me.
On the other hand, I look at a lot of the gear forums, and it just drives me crazy,
because there are all these amazing tools and instruments out there, and theyre
so much more affordable than they were in the 70s and 80s. When I bought my
first Minimoog, it was literally a choice between the Minimoog or a car. I picked
the right thing. Now, these things are so advanced, and wonderful, and
complicated, and almost nobody reads the manual. It drives me crazy.
Even as the tools have gotten better and more affordable, it has
become harder than ever to make a living as a musician. Any
thoughts on this problem?
Well, the whole idea that music is something you give away or download for free
is just ridiculous to me. Somehow, people dont understand that music has an
intrinsic value, that the seconds of a musicians life are ticking away just like
everybody elses. And he or she is creating something that he should be paid for
and be able to sustain a decent life with. The people who really should be
supporting musicthe record companiescant do it any more. So the only place
left really that supports any sort of grand-scale experimentation is Hollywood.
On that note, what would you say to someone who looks at your
career and aspires to make a living as a musician the way you do?
All I do is, first thing I think about in the morning is music, last thing I think
about at night is music. The part in between? Making music.
I actually did this experiment a few years ago. I said, Okay, were going to close
the studio down from the 20th of December until the second of January.
Everybody go on holiday. Christmas day, I was at home and hit speed dial, and

instantly the phone was answered in the studio, and everybody there was going,
Yeah, but we just had this idea, and we just wanted to try this thing out and
blah, blah, blah. It just made me laugh. Because their greatest Christmas gift was
to just go and make music. We do this because we love this. And to me, its a life
really well lived.
Piloting the Interstellar Organ
Roger Sayer is musical director and organist at Temple Church in London,
where Interstellars score was recorded. That may sound like an improbable
path to being the primary musician on the score of a major science fiction film,
but as Hans Zimmer told us, he was absolutely the right man for the job.
Describe the process of interpreting Hans cues for the Temple
Church pipe organ.
I didnt really see any music until the week before it was all to be recorded. He
was very specific on the score and the sounds that he wanted, which he had
obviously selected from [pipe organ plug-in] Hauptwerk. When he arrived, he
played some of his sampled music. He would play a section from the score and
say, Right, what can you do? and I would come up with something similar.
How much of your own sensibility as a classical organist were you
able to bring to the score?
[Hans] was very good at allowing creativity. Obviously within a framework,
because rhythmically, the music had to be put together with the other
instruments, so I was playing to a click. So the freedom of expression was really
with sound, but also within the beatallowing a bit more ebb and flow than you
can get from a computer. I mean, there seemed to be little point in playing it live
if they werent going to put the human emotion into it, and thats exactly what he
wanted
Tell us about the organ itself.

We have 3,828 pipes. It was built for a Scottish estate in 1927. But once the
Temple organ here got destroyed in the war, the organist at the time found this
organ in the Scottish residence and brought it here. With 382 stops, we have a
lot of choice. Some of the pipes are as short as that of a pencil, while some are 32
feet in length. The bass is one of the most exciting aspects of this organ. We have
not just one 32-foot rank of pipes, but three, which obviously gives it a lot of
welly. Other pipes are very quiet and just purr and shake the building gently. Of
course, you get to hear a lot of that in the filmthis sort of shuddering that
doesnt get very loud.
How do you feel about the unusual role the pipe organ plays
inInterstellar?
I think its such a breath of fresh air. It gets away from this idea that the organ is
something that just plays hymns and leads the congregation. Of course it does do
that, but as you and I know, the organ, particularly when its in a building with
fine acoustics, can capture almost every emotion possible. To put it bluntly, its
an orchestra in a box. It has all colors you need from an orchestra. And its the
sort of instrument that people have the wrong idea about. Here, were showing
that it can live and breathe in the 21st century. It can tell a story; you dont need
words.
Cameron Carpenter has a similar mission, but plays a digital touring
organ for consistency and reliability. Virgil Fox once did as well. Can
digital instruments help popularize the organ again?
Id be more inclined to say they can popularize the repertoire. If youre in a place
where you cant perform good repertoire simply because the organ just isnt good
enoughand organ repertoire is huge, second only to piano and songthen
youve got no choice. So theres a very good reason for doing what hes doing. But
I think theres a danger people start to accept that as what the organ is. Its not.
The organ is the pipes. You can play more musically, because its living and
breathing with air.

The point is taken up by Hans. Why did he come all the way from L.A. to
London, when he could have made it all digital himself? Because he wanted a
human being playing an instrument that actually breathed. Interstellar is a
wonderful thing to have been a part of, and Im proud to have been associated
with it.