Whether you’re actually working on a movie or game score, or just looking to bring a touch of Hollywood drama to your latest music production, these amazing virtual instruments can help you imbue your music with a palpable sense of silver screen spectacle.
u-he Zebra 2
Launched in 2007, Urs Heckman’s timeless semi-modular was one of the original plugin ‘power synths’, and is particularly well suited to large-scale movie work, as most famously demonstrated by its pervasive presence in the soundtracks to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Indeed, all the patches used in those two classics are available in Hans Zimmer and Howard Scarr’s add-on sound pack, The Dark Zebra, which also includes a Zimmer-customised version of the synth itself, ZebraHZ.
So what makes Zebra 2 such an indispensable cinematic sound design tool? In a nutshell, supreme versatility and knockout sonics. The central grid/mixer lets you freely connect up a wide variety of modules, including wavetable and FM oscillators, noise generators, multimode and comb filters, ring modulators, distortions and mixers; while the modulation matrix affords access to a similarly broad array of mod sources. Modules are racked up in the left (Generators) and right (Modulators) panels as they’re added, while the bottom panel houses the oscillator wave editors (up to 16 per wavetable), multi-stage envelopes, arpeggiator controls and other editors. Also worth mentioning are the awesome Oscillator FX, bringing various forms of spectral processing to bear; and the effects grid, which enables flexible routing through 21 lively processors – EQ, delay, compression, reverb, chorus, etc.
Even after a decade and a half, Zebra 2’s stripes show no sign of fading. It’s still one of the finest synths around for generating ear-catching modular arps and percolations, widescreen pads, cone-rumbling basses, futuristic keys and retro-tinged sci-fi FX.
Native Instruments Massive X
While it may not have achieved anything like the acclaim or genre-defining historic significance of its seminal predecessor, NI’s quirky flagship synthesiser largely eschews the face-melting aggression of the original Massive for a more nuanced approach that actually makes it the more viable option for deep, filmic sound design.
Despite a reduction to two wavetable oscillators from Massive’s three, Massive X actually increases the overall scope of the instrument with many more wavetables than its forebear – over 170, including ‘remasters’ of the most popular originals – and a doubling of the number of signal-mangling oscillator modes to ten. The oscillators are joined by a pair of sample-based noise generators, and two Phase Modulation oscillators for FM-style treatments; and interestingly, you can also add up to three analogue-style and/or further PM oscillators via the effects section. There’s only one main filter (Massive had two), but it’s a beauty, with nine diverse modes, and, again, extra low- and high-pass filters are available among the effects, should more be required.
Massive X’s modulation scheme makes the lauded previous setup look positively quaint in comparison, boasting all manner of characterful LFO and envelope types, and a serious upgrade to the Performer sequencing module that played such a major role in defining Massive’s sound and vibe. And the Routing page opens up all sorts of signal flowing possibilities, including freely positionable feedback input and output points, and mod source inputs for audio rate modulation.
Add in a ton of quality insert and master effects, the ability to smoothly morph between up-to-six-voice unison and chords with single- or multi-note input, and the effortlessly transformative Voice Randomization modulator, and you have an empowering and uniquely specified synth that turns out a truly stunning line in epic soundscapes, animated beds, pulsating low-enders and everything else today’s movie or game soundtrack producer could ever ask for in the electronic instrumentation department.
iZotope Iris 2
With the original Iris having been packaged as a rather po-faced, overly techy sample manipulation application, the follow-up reworked the core concepts and functionality of iZotope’s innovative synthesiser into a far more user-friendly instrument. With up to four samples loaded and layered from the 11GB factory library or elsewhere, the main event in Iris 2 is the Photoshop-style spectral filtering editor, in which a palette of graphical tools are used to draw and ‘paint’ filters directly into the spectrogram, reshaping the frequency content of each sample over time. With that done, five LFOs, five envelopes and a handful of effects can be roped in to introduce further movement and texture, and turn even the most unlikely source material into an expressive playable instrument.
After a brief period of acclimatisation, the spectral filtering workflow proves surprisingly intuitive; and Iris 2 excels at cinematic sounds and FX at the weirder, more colourful end of the scale.
Spectrasonics Omnisphere
Arguably the most ambitious and comprehensive soft synth ever made, and certainly the most immediately cinematic, Omnisphere 2 serves as an endless repository of blockbuster soundtrack staples, from vast pads, evocative textures and adrenaline-pumping sequences, to lavish keys, punchy basses and hyper-real FX.
Despite being more than amply equipped when it comes to synthesis techniques – including analogue-style, FM, granular and wavetable (over 500 ’tables are included) – for many, Omnisphere 2’s most appealing features may well be the gigantic sampled soundbank that fuels its most dazzling and flamboyant noises, and its superb onboard effects. Drawing on the talents of sound design legend Eric Persing and team, the library weighs in at 64GB and presents an embarrassment of electric, acoustic, electronic, environmental and ‘designed’ sounds that would take a lifetime to fully explore; while the 58 full-spec effects modules span the gamut of processing and sound phenomenal in their own right.
Omnisphere is an incredibly inspiring instrument with which to build your own patches (up to 20 oscillators across four layers) and multis (up to eight patches/parts) from scratch, packing in a truckload of filters, a wealth of modulation generators (eight LFOs and 12 envelopes are just the tip of the iceberg) a magnificent arpeggiator, sample import and much, much more. Nonetheless, for the professional in a hurry, the library of 14,000+ presets provides instant and effective gratification with little or no input required. A scoring and sound design essential.
What’s your go-to synth for soundtrack work and media sound design? Let us know in the comments.