mosabri2

have you seen him play live? He tours live and has plenty of videos all over YT. He is much worse than I would have expected he plays exactly like someone who has never taken lessons and bothered to learn how to play scales, etc. This is how you would play most popular music as it's not needed. I'm not saying hans zimmer does not know scales as obviously he does to compose music, but his fundamental playing is exactly that of someone who has never had formal lessons or cared. I would bet zimmer would have trouble playing the most basic pieces from Clementi that you hear 1000x over by all the kindergardeners in the world due to the simple scales giving him trouble. And how do I know these things? Because I played piano since 5 years old with no lessons. I play clarinet and violin, but piano I only played on the side. My playing was pretty much like hans zimmer with no ability to play simple piano pieces until I bothered to practice scales and arpeggios as well as playing through simple classical piano repertoire. Your playing improves so much just by playing piano pieces that are not written by you in your playing style, and if I were a composer you would bet 1000% I would at least practice or take lessons to get better.

Saw this random video of a guy playing on top of interstellar. Look at the difference in the way it sounds with some decent piano playing on top

If you look at a famous theme, like say Forrest gump. This piece would never have been written by zimmer or djawadi, not because it's not their style, but because they would not be able to play such a theme. Now this piece is not difficult, but zimmer and djawadi play at such a low level that this would be beyond their abilities. if you look at the theme to Westworld, it sounds like it was written by someone who can barely play piano. It sounds limited by the player's abilities, whereas the feather theme sounds complete and intentional in the way it is played. To me "tennessee" from pearl harbor also somewhat sounds limited by Hans zimmer's playing abilities. Even if brian tyler has not written anything memorable, you can definitely sense a higher level of musical quality from his music and none of it is offensive.

You can input difficult parts with a mouse but you do not get the velocities that you get by playing it in. Especially for realistic mockups. And inputting piano music using midi is hard to visualize if you don't have any understanding of how to play it in the first place. The best you can do is slow it down and play it, or play it one hand at a time.

This is a big point. you can record 1 hour of film music in 2-4 hours if it is easy enough. If you compose 2 movies a year, that's only 4-8 hours of conducting. Not very much compared to someone who conducts many times a week. The only reason I bring up ramin djawadi being a bad pianist, or hans zimmer being a bad pianist is this is how they compose music. They play the music in with a midi keyboard and being bad at piano limits the music you can write. On top of that you would think if you are a composer of 30 years, playing the piano every single day that you would get somewhat good. I called it "kindergarden" level playing, because if you go to piano competitions, kindergardeners play better than that. In comparison, brian tyler, while no pianist, at least plays at the level I would expect someone to play to not be as limited with composition.

Well in the sense that I went to indiana university (same as my brother who is concert pianist) and it is considered the #1 music school in america. And at that level you would be surpised to learn that not everyone there is exceptionally good. I was just not being obvious because there is only one person that wins MTNA every year, and it's rare that someone makes it twice to national level in piano. But anyways the point is, music these days is more about the fusion of being a music producer and composer. Look at the conductor for the movie oppenheimer (Anthony Parnther) who works with Ludwig Göransson a lot. He is actually a studio musician himself and has played bassoon on many movies. You wouldn't know this as it is not obvious public info, but he composed at least 10 marching band shows himself. Marching band show composers are effectively full composers and orchestrators who compose in the more traditional way. Many of the shows he wrote the marching band drill as well. I know because in HS he wrote 3 of our shows and certainly he has written many more Actually come to think about it, if you heard the music from the greatest showman, you would think it was relatively uninspired music. But Justin hurwitz orchestrates his own music in notation software and then transfers it to a DAW to make mockups which are good enough to use on set or for editing purposes. So in that sense, John Williams should have at least learned to use a computer if he wanted to make film music, because even if he cares very little about music production, he should at least learn to notate in a computer software instead of doing everything hand written. it forces you to orchestrate your own music and the playback functions in notation software at least can produce a mockup that can be heard.

As someone who is a musician who plays piano and who grew up in a family member who got first and 2nd place at MTNA nationalss for piano, I know the world of high level musicians at least in the U.S. My brother is an excellent composer, and I wrote plenty of music since 10 years old using music notation software like finale. And I know plenty of top pianists who are mediocre composers at best. john williams is clearly at a different level where his music understanding and skill is in a different level. The playing seen in that video is not even kindergarten level beyond maybe the octaves being a big reach for someone at that age. if you watch live videos of hans zimmer playing piano, you would expect him to be better for someone who makes a living composing and probably plays keyboard every single day.

I know this is an old post but I think it needs to be brought up how composing works. Most composers make a mockup which is essentially the full music created in the computer using a DAW and various plugins to recreate whatever sounds are necessary. These mockups will vary in quality as these sample libraries often have "full strings" patches which represent the full string section, or they also have patches for the individual string sections and you can program first violins, 2nd violins, etc. to get a more realistic sound. If you use full strings, as you play chords the number of string players tends to vary which is why to our brains it does not sound realistic. If you keep the same voicing then sometimes it sounds alright at best. Technically in that sense, if a composer makes a realistic mockup with a patch for every string instrument, woodwind, brass, etc. they are doing more orchestration and writing a more complete score than john williams is, even if they are not notating anything. This is also likely why woodwinds are not prominent in modern film music. It's just easier to do strings and brass. Because we have "full strings" and "full brass" patches, but often not "full woodwinds." And modern composers don't know how to orchestrate woodwinds, so what they do if they use woodwindws at all is mostly for solo lines, rather than any ensemble uses. Composers are effectively music producers and are varying levels of tech savvy. Big composers have assistants which help with tasks too. They also have an orchestrator which translates it to be recorded. TV and video game composers who never record live music effectively never use sheet music at all. This has been done since the 90s and john williams is one of the few composers doing it the "wrong" way as no one can hear his music until it is recorded. Because of this I would not be surprised if plenty of famous composers are quite bad at reading music because they haven't done it for 30 years. Elton John, for example is a classically trained pianist but he said he is bad at reading music because it's been too long since he's done it. In the same vain, danny elfman likely cannot read or write music more than simply having an understanding of how to read music, but no technical practice to do it at a decent speed to be useful. In the same way my dad is a non-musician but knows how to read music only because he learned what the notes on the page are, what the rhythms represent, etc. Back in the old days, you would use multiple computers with each computer running one instrument since PC hardware was much slower. You can do multi-computer setups in a lot of Audio software, but these days computers are so fast that you can now load projects with all the instruments on one computer. As far as modern composers, I would not be surprised if many of them are not particularly good musicians and therefore do not read or write music very well, even if they have the knowledge. Hans zimmer as a pianist would not even be able to play that "Thinking out Loud" ed sheeran piece as it is beyond his playing abilities. If you look at some videos of Ramin Djawadi playing the westworld theme, he honestly wasn't very good. I would not be surprised if the multi-oscar winning Ludwig Goransson does not really read or write music at a high level despite having studied music and majoring in composing. just look at how many modern composers no longer conduct their music. But at the end of the day, none of this has any bearing on whether someone can write good film music or not. Danny elfman is gifted in his own way and writes music in his own style.