Chords for How To Make Hans Zimmer's Epic Inception Brass in 5 Minutes

The Inception score had one of the most mind-blowing brass sections in my opinion.
And when I'm curious about something in other people's tracks, what I do is I usually rewrite
the tracks trying to get as close to the original as possible to figure out the way the things were
made.
I did that with Inception last year, I wrote this dreamish collapsing cover which sounds
something like this.
_ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ [B] _ _ _ _ [Ebm] _
[Ab] This was the bit that I was curious about in the [Gb] Inception score.
How did
Anzimer manage to create this such a huge wall of brass?
I tried it with French horn and it didn't
work so well.
So there was something I was missing and I tried to rewrite this track.
Now,
I wrote this a year ago and I made a one hour analysis [G] on this track but today I want to
explain you in five minutes how this wall of brass was created.
The first thing you need to know is
that French horns are not the only things responsible for this.
So what we have here is
like double basses, cellos, [Bb] bass trombone, tubas, French horns, trumpets and male choir.
All those
things put together create this sort of wall of sound which is not made entirely of brass but
the brass is the main protagonist here.
So there's four parts to this.
So there's the first part
which is the low end, then there's the movement or main focus, then there's the razor sharpness,
and then there's the air.
Now let's start from the low end.
Low end is made starting from bass
trombone.
Oh sorry, from [C] tubas.
It sounds something like this.
They're just playing the bass note on
octave three.
The bass trombones are doing something similar but also harmonizing.
So
we have one patch of bass [Abm] trombone and these are from Metropolis Arc.
One patch is doing the same
bass lines as the tuba [G] but it's, you know, octave like playing those one octave higher as well as
to enforce this C and this B.
So these are the leading tones we want them to be enforced.
And
then there's another patch of bass trombone doing this notes instead.
So it's like harmonizing in
between. _ _
[Eb] _ These are triads like for example this one, it's a power chord, you know, you have the
root note and then you have the fifth.
Here we have the root note and then we have this note
instead.
It's like if we add another note it becomes a triad with an octave added on top.
But
he didn't [B] do that.
I think the reason why these chords have so much space in between them is the
fact that as I always tell my tutorials, when you play chords in your bass line you get a lot of
like cluttered sound and that's not very clear.
So Hans Zimmer here [Fm] just did octaves and a one
in between.
It's a beautiful way to like harmonize your bass.
So we have tubas doing that, bass
trombones doing that and then we also have basses [Eb] from Metropolis Arc One _ doing these sustains which
are actually octaved.
So this is [F] C3 and C4 on top and then we also have [Eb] cellos doing the G notes and
like, you know, the things.
[G] _
So when we put them all together they sound like this.
We also have
a sub bass on [C] synth _ _ _ _ and this alone is [Gb] responsible for the hugeness of the sound.
If you check out
my tutorial about orchestrating bass, you're gonna notice the difference it makes when you
have bass and when you don't.
So instead the second part as I said before is movement or
you know [C] spotlight or whatever and it's brought by the French horn.
_ _ _ Still here this is Metropolis
Arc.
Now we have three layers of it.
There is one layer that does this _ _ _ [C] and notice how it moves
around.
You know this is important because it's like the face of this part so you want to have
movement here.
That's what Hans Zimmer did.
Now we're still playing low notes here but here it
goes higher. _ _ _
[Fm] This is also playing marcatos as a way to stand out a bit more.
So it's going higher
on [G] octave five like the bass trombone and tubas don't dare to do and then he harmonizes as well
just like the rest.
[C] So this is like the face of the Aura track.
Again we hear it because the
French horn is more prominent in terms of like timbre.
It's also played on the highest octave
so far so that does it.
Now as the third part the razor sharpness we only have the trumpets doing
this.
They're just [B] enforcing really the French horn.
If you play them together you're gonna notice it
sharper now compared to this.
The trumpets are very useful because as is you know they are tiny but
they are also sharper.
Now the fourth part as I mentioned before is the air.
Now that's what our
[Gb] you know brass lacks so we added them male choir and this is something I added myself actually
[C] solving the original track. _
I decided to add this first because this was a bloodborne rendition of
Dream is Collapsing and second because I wanted the you know the brass to have more [F] air and when
you add fire like that even if it's low volume since it has that timbre that that's sort of
sound you add you know air to whatever you have going on.
So if we check out this wall of brass
taken alone it [C] sounds like this. _ _ _
_ [B] _ _ Everything is doing the same notes like [G] this is the beauty of
this soundtrack or this bit that the chords are very basic you know but you have movement like
these notes are the ones played by the French horn these are the harmonizations and these are
you know the bass notes [Gb] from the tubas and and the double basses or whatever.
When you have all of
that combined and also you have a [Eb] powerful library such as Miss Ropolis one [Gm] or Oceania which is
playing on the choir [Gb] you get this sound.
So that's how this wall of sound was made.
So the thing you
need to take away from this video is that French horn is amazing but it's the face you know of the
If we take away the French horn this still sounds freaking mind-blowing you know and
that's the goal you need to have something like that.
If you want to analyze the rest of the track
check out the one hour analysis which is going to live down below in the description and let me know
if you what you thought about this short tutorial.
I think there's going to be a longer one this
Friday on something else but I thought I'm making [F] like this sort of like five minute tutorial to
explain you guys about recipes of how I created certain sounds certain layerings or how to
synthesize some things and stuff like that and as usual subscribe to this channel if you're new
share this video with a friend and if you want to learn more you can hire me for a private lesson
get the stamps on Patreon or get the Evernote course from the description but that's all
I'll see you guys this Friday with