Original subtitles

I hear a sound in my head,

and I never use presets on synth,

because I hear a sound, and if I play a preset, you know,

each preset that I play blunts the memory

of what I'm hearing in my head a little bit,

so, I just have to sort of start a patch and I have to make my own sound.

So it has to be the sound that I hear for that film.

I do the same with musicians, in a funny way.

I sort of... I pick the appropriate musicians for a project.

You asked me about "Black Hawk Down," and I mean,

these were absolutely the musicians

I felt were the people I wanted to work with that could make the sound

that I was hearing in my head.

The samples... the other thing that usually happens in the beginning of a project

once I have an idea of what I want to do, then it becomes a safari of sampling.

You know? It's like we're hunting down sounds, we're making sounds,

each movie has a load of custom sounds in it.

I work with the Spitfire guys,

which is very helpful because they can do things.

And there is a man in Germany, Claudius Brüse,

who really takes care of my samples,

and he can do things that other people can't quite seem to do.

I mean, he manages to phase-align things

and, you know, make samples sound amazing.

And I'm not trying to be arrogant or show off,

but it's like, our sampler still sounds better than other people's samplers.

And I don't know why, but it's, you know...

Just as I am surrounded by talented musicians,

I have talented guys in technology

who are absolutely our partners in making a piece of music.

I just found that the tools available at the time,

and of course, they're a lot better now,

weren't sufficient to what I was hearing in my head or what I wanted to do,

so I had to get somebody in to help me build some of these things,

or make my own samples.

Okay, you don't have to go out and sample a huge orchestra.

If you think that's what you need to do, that's going to be really expensive.

But if you have a rubber band and a cardboard box,

and you can think of a really cool way of using that,

and sampling that, and making a score out of that,

I don't understand why people don't make sounds more themselves,

why people don't really learn how their computers work,

why people keep buying...

and I'm guilty of that, of buying a library,

and then going, "Eh, it's a bit boring," and never actually exploring it.

That's why I'm not really going,

this is a good library or this is a bad library either.

It's always the guy who really knows these tools who can make amazing music with it.

You know? So, to answer your question, "What do you need to make great sounds?"

You need the thing that suits you and that you really learned.

All my samples are in Surround.

Years ago, Mark Wherry came to me and said,

"You know, you're never going to get the sampler that you really want,

so let's build our own."

And so we built our own sampler which was always in 5.1,

and I write in 5.1,

and I find it nearly impossible,

in fact, I find it impossible to ever listen to the CD of the soundtrack

because it's only in stereo and you've taken half of my world away.

So, what happens is we print a gazillion 5.1 or quad stems.

Sometimes not everything needs to have a center

and not everything needs a subwoofer.

So, poor Alan Meyerson will get multi...

certainly Surround stems,

and many things happen, and they're actually quite subtle.

I mean, because the piece of music, once it leaves me,

the way I programmed it is,

this is as good as I can make it, then we get the orchestra in.

For instance, with my orchestra sessions,

because the director has heard everything in one way or the other before,

I use the orchestra sessions strictly

and completely and utterly for a performance.

So, if there are questions about note changes, etc.,

I just take that music off the stand and we agree to do it another day.

I don't fix notes on the scoring stage.

I just try to really make this a performance and...

You know, sometimes, when we have a ludicrously good budget,

I mean, we've done this on the "Pirates" movies,

on the second and third "Pirates" movies,

whereby on the first day we wouldn't record at all,

we would just practice getting into the style of it, you know?

Because yesterday they played some romantic comedy

and today they're supposed to be pirates, you know?

And so I need to adjust my actors a little bit

because the orchestra really is the last actors that are going to be on this movie.

So I like spending time...

I know they can play the notes, but the attitude... you know?

So then, you know, there's attitude already in my programming of the cues

and so I'm trying to go and amplify that attitude.

Then it goes to Alan, and I think the first thing he does,

and you have to ask him about this, is he tries to understand

what the intention was in the piece of music.

And then the next thing he does is he not only refines what I've done,

but again, he amplifies that intention.

And one of the things he does is, he knows how to go and make things

sound more spatial.

Because the thing that I love is,

I like filling a big screen and I like filling a big room.

I mean, one of the reasons I got into film is because,

number one, I like big speakers,

number two, I like a big screen,

and number three, I like Surround, you know?

I like to be immersed, I like to be part of the experience.

And so the main guidelines I give to Alan,

and I stopped giving him these guidelines 30 years ago

because it's always the same thing.

If you understand the piece of music that I've given you,

make it more so, make it clearer,

clarify the intentions, you know?

Sometimes the two of us mix together

because I can engineer, you know?

If, God help us,

young Alan would suddenly drop dead on me,

I think I can probably finish the session.

But I'm not a great engineer, you know? It's a different talent.

It's a different set of ears, it's a different perspective,

it's a different way of looking at things.

So, you know, you guys are talking about Mix With The Masters,

what I like to do is I like to get the ears and the knowledge

of somebody who is extraordinarily talented in

to go and take this one step further.

Still the same direction, but just go and take it,

you know, 100%, 200%, 300% further.

But we're still trying to say the same thing, so that's important, you know?

And these days I think it's far less about me actually pushing faders

and far more about Alan pushing faders

because if I come in and push the faders,

it's just, you know, I'm a bit more outrageous.

Alan has a little bit more respect for my work,

and sometimes it's important that the artist comes in

and, you know, unleashes everything and says,

"No, go wild, go crazier."

I love dynamics, I love the dynamics in an orchestra.

I like players to get beyond how they can actually play quietness.

So, you know, I cheat all the dynamics all the time.

I ride all my dynamic arcs,

I over-emphasize.

I cheat all that stuff with the orchestra.

I'm not a purist. Obviously, I'm not a purist.

I use samples, I use synthesizers, I use fuzz boxes, etc.

I don't write concert music.

I write film music, and it's a different thing,

so we use whatever tools are available

to go and tell the story in the way that we can.

I mix samples with real orchestra,

sometimes it's just real orchestra, sometimes it's just samples.

One of the things about having good samples

and having programmed them well is,

it's like a safety blanket for the orchestra, a safety net.

They know if there's a wrong note I can fix it with the samples,

and they can just be a little bit more daring in their performance.

A custom touchscreen is an obvious one.

You know, there are certain errors that crept in when we started using computers

which were really designed for word processing and accountancy, you know?

So one of the things which stops the creative flow is,

if you have to disengage the creative side of your brain

to go and see where the cursor is,

and move the mouse around, and pull down some hidden menu...

So the touchscreen actually started off as...

Originally we had a cash register from a supermarket

which had 127 buttons,

and I can just have all my commands there.

And so the touchscreen is just a very efficient way

of setting up different commands

and interact with things because you always know they are there

and where they are.

I mean, one of the beauties of the 88-note keyboard is it's 88 switches,

and they're always in the same place,

and you can close your eyes and you know where the notes are going to be.

And the same with the touchscreen.

I don't have the touchscreen really change a lot,

it's just that I've got all my commands there.

And actually, we just managed to figure out how,

when I go to a certain track on Cubase,

the touchscreen will only display

what articulations, for instance, are in this instrument.

So it's not just an overwhelming bunch of redundant buttons.

I mean, it actually focuses you down to the relevant information

as opposed to the irrelevant information.

The reason I use Cubase is because...

I started out with a Roland Microcomposer,

MC-8, which was painful because you had to type in numbers for each note, you know?

And you had to type in three sets of numbers.

One was pitch, one was the length of the note,

and one was the length of the articulation.

So when I got to Notator, which was in the Atari,

which was a great sequencer.

I mean, that was revolutionary for me, and from there...

It was very simple, I went to Cubase because I used to know the guys at Logic,

and I used to know the guys at Steinberg.

Actually, in those days they were on the same street.

So, you know, Logic was just slightly further down the same street.

And the difference was that Logic was very much, for me, one man's vision.

And everything was about that, and so it was a very closed system,

while the Cubase guys... I remember having this conversation with the Cubase guys

and I said one of those pretentious things,

"You should really listen to me, I'm a professional composer,

and you should to this and this because I'm a professional."

And the guy I was talking to said,

"Bullshit. There's bound to be a kid in a garage in Arkansas

and he knows nothing about music,

but he's going to do something really revolutionary

because he isn't tied to all those rules."

And I thought that's actually a much more interesting attitude,

so I wanted to go and work with the company

that was constantly looking beyond the theory,

the limits, the borders that we "professional musicians" had created.

And sometimes it takes them forever to understand why we need something,

or why we want to do something in a certain way.

But, you know, they're receptive to our comments,

and, you know, sometimes after two years

you actually do get the little thing that you needed changing.

But it's not even that. It's, I know how it works, you know?

And I can either write music or read instruction manuals.

If you start now, you're going to be overwhelmed by the possibilities,

and you're going to be overwhelmed by the amount of technology

and it's going to take you a really long time

to figure out what it is within these systems,

and I don't care if it's Logic or if it's Cubase or Pro Tools or anybody else.

You're going to be overwhelmed by the possibilities

and it's going to take you a while to narrow down a system

that actually is your workflow,

that is about the music that you want to write,

and leave all those other things aside.

And I think at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter.

There is no such thing as a better sequencer.

I think it's the one you're used to, the one that you know.

The audio quality is phenomenal in all systems by now.

I mean, remember I used to make my demos

on a Tascam Cassette 4 Track, a Portastudio,

and I would still get the job, you know?

So it's not about the tech...

The technology is strictly for,

yes, you want things to sound as beautiful as possible,

but we are at an extraordinary point in musical technology.

I suppose one of the things I regret in my life

is how much time I spent waiting for tape to wind back

because I still come from that generation where it's like,

"I have an idea! I have an idea!"

but the tape is still winding back and I can't play it yet.

Do I like the sound of tape?

I like the sound of tape.

But it's only a nostalgia thing,

it doesn't sound better, it just sounds different

and it's appropriate for certain things,

and other things which are bright, and digital, and crystal-like,

are appropriate for other things.

You know, are you going to do a watercolor or are you going to do an oil painting?

We made a macro called 'Initialize Track',

and before I do anything, I go to Record and I hit 'Initialize Track'

and it resets everything, you know?

It resets modulation, it sets our volumes to 90,

Controller 7,

because this might be really boring,

but people are always confused about Controller 11, Expression,

and Controller 7, Volume,

because they think they do the same thing,

but it's just they don't listen to the words.

Volume is volume, volume is like on a mixing desk

where you go and ride things up and down and balance things.

Expression is exactly that, a musical expression,

it's a dynamic,

you know, like the bow digging in more

in combination with Controller 1 these days, Mod Wheel.

But leave your volume set at something,

and then, when you run out of...

when your track has gotten too big and you just can't quite get that flute through,

then just use it to bring it up a bit.

Or if you need to trim everything back a bit because everything is blowing up.

So 'Initialize Track' is an important shortcut.

I mean, you don't want to sit there and adjust every controller

every time you start recording, so, those sort of macros are important.

Music, on the whole, happens in a grid,

and, like, the Roland TR-808 drum machine is a perfect example of that.

You've got those 16 buttons

because you can divide the bar into 16 steps.

So, rather than fishing around for a note on my Edit page with the mouse,

I have a grid that selects the third note on the fourth beat,

the third sixteenth, poof, you know? Now I can go and modify that.

I don't have to go and fish around,

or if I want to go and do it for the whole song,

or change the velocity on the second sixteenths of the hi-hat,

it's easy to do.

You know, you just have to write little macros to do that sort of stuff.

So you have to...

And a lot of this I learned by working with other people

and just actually watching them work

and going, "This is crazy, what they're doing with the mouse,"

and then going, "Hang on, I do that all day long,"

so by observing other people do what you do,

you can come up with plans and figure out how to get around things

that stop you from actually moving on.

It was interesting recently.

Like, at the last moment, I had no time at all,

being thrown into this "Blade Runner" movie.

And sort of mentioning that somewhere I had an old CS-80,

a Yamaha CS-80 standing around,

which probably wasn't going to work,

and because it's so heavy it always, you know,

it's like I have to really be nice to my assistants and say,

"Can you guys get that thing out of storage?"

So they got it out of storage and we put it up and we switched it on,

and it worked, it was magical,

but you know, the other thing that was magical about it was,

there was no mouse.

And I hadn't used it in 10 years, but it was like riding a bicycle,

it's like, I knew what every button and everything did.

I was just totally... I could play it.

I could play it without ever disrupting my brain

by trying to find out where is the cursor now, and duh, duh, duh, you know?

Where is the note?

And so, the touchscreen and those buttons that I have

are very much in the service of that.

I try to make shortcuts...

Things should be in the same place.

Technology should work the way you expect it to work, you know?

It's like, as much as I love the iPhone or the iPad or anything like this,

but if you think about it, it's actually the wrong way around.

The screen is on top and you touch the thing on top, and as soon as you touch it,

you're actually covering up what you're manipulating.

You're not seeing it because you've got your fingers on top.

If it was the other way around, that the screen was visible all the time,

and the fingers underneath it were manipulating it, you know,

it would actually... It might be a more intuitive interface.

But we're not going to have that, so I'm always interested in interfaces

because I'm interested in musical instruments,

and isn't it slightly annoying

that a piece of wood with four strings on it

is still more expressive than all these computers

that we've got lying around, potentially.

So I'm just trying to figure out how I can be as expressive as a violinist,

with electronics.

I come from real hardware, so I learned on a Neve console,

then I worked in a studio that had a Harrison, and we had EMT Plates,

and then it had an AMS Reverb,

and of course, I had a Lexicon 224.

And so I like all the UAD plug-ins,

and I'll use a Trident A Series EQ

because I remember what it did

working on a real Trident A Series console at Trident,

but for other things I'll be picking a Neve 1073

because I remember exactly what it did and what it sounded like.

So the thing that confuses me is, if you never worked on the hardware,

how do you know you should pick a Neve as opposed to a Trident or a Harrison?

You know?

So you know, look, people are making great music with all that stuff,

even though they never worked on the hardware,

but I think I have just a slight advantage

of actually having worked on the hardware,

and sort of instinctively knowing what I like about the bottom end on the Neve

as opposed to what I like about...

the mids I like on the Trident,

and weirdly, what I like about the top end of a Harrison or something like that.

And it's like the same with reverbs, you know?

It's like, why would I use a plate as opposed to a Lexicon 224,

or, you know, I wish they would do a 480.