# Deconstructing a Hans Zimmer Synth Patch | Zebra Tutorial



## Kyle Preston (Apr 25, 2020)

They say you should transcribe your heroes' music. Likewise, I think if you're fascinated with timbre and tone color, you should transcribe your heroes' sound textures. In this video, I build a patch similar to the Hans Forlorn Dark Zebra patch.



Apologies for a few minor tech issues which led to some swearing, we're all adults here hopefully...​


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## CT (Apr 25, 2020)

Nice man. Good motivation to finally dig into actually programming Zebra a little deeper!


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## Kyle Preston (Apr 25, 2020)

Happy to motivate @miket  .

Zebra is such a beautiful beast!


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## Dr.Quest (Apr 25, 2020)

Zebra is one of the best synths out there. You could get by with just Zebra for so much. It got me interested in programming synths again. Can’t wait to dig into your tutorial. Thanks!


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## jcrosby (Apr 25, 2020)

Thanks. Zebra's one of the few synths that I have a hard time wrapping my head around. Definitely useful and fantastic results...

*For screen capture try this* - Loopback to capture audio. Much less fiddly than Screenflow's crappy driver... Also no need to set Loopback as a device in Logic as Loopback captures the audio stream directly from Logic, and you can merge any audio input(s) with DAW audio from Loopback to record your VO live...

You can actually just capture directly to Quicktime. The benefit to screen recording in Quicktime is that it's super low overhead, shouldn't cause any stability issues.. And you can still use Screenflow as an editor once recorded...

You open Quicktime and choose _New Screen Recording_ (Ctrl+CMD+N) from the file menu, and select your Loopback setup as the audio source. Done... (You can also do some basic down and dirty editing in QT by hitting CMD+Y where you want to split the video.)

If you prefer recording directly into Screenflow then just set using Loopback as your audio device in SF... If you like the QT screen capture method and don't need to edit but want to export to MP4 grab the latest Handbrake (which is free.)







Loopback - Cable-free audio routing for Mac


Get all the power of a high-end studio mixing board, right inside your Mac!




rogueamoeba.com










HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder


HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.



handbrake.fr


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## Kyle Preston (Apr 26, 2020)

O wow, thanks for this @jcrosby, much-appreciated my friend. Gonna download Loopback and give it a test drive immediately 

Hope you stick with Zebra, connecting the dots with it is a worthwhile thing -- I feel like it's finally starting to feel intuitive (to me) and I may venture out more into the hardware world because of it.


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## jcrosby (Apr 26, 2020)

Kyle Preston said:


> O wow, thanks for this @jcrosby, much-appreciated my friend. Gonna download Loopback and give it a test drive immediately
> 
> Hope you stick with Zebra, connecting the dots with it is a worthwhile thing -- I feel like it's finally starting to feel intuitive (to me) and I may venture out more into the hardware world because of it.


You bet! Hope you're having fun with Loopback. I use it at least a few times a week, super handy!

Absolutely will! I've love the sound of Zebra. I managed to get by with 3rd party presets and never took the time to get too far under the hood since programming it is quite different from anything else.. This took the mystique of programming it out of the equation... Looking forward to start designing my own stuff soon. Best!


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## DANIELE (Apr 27, 2020)

In the past I looked at some Zebra tutorials, but I didn't find anything groundbreaking that convinced me to buy it.
I'm interested anyway in this synth and I'm not a huge expert, may I ask what is so special about it?


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## ed buller (Apr 27, 2020)

DANIELE said:


> In the past I looked at some Zebra tutorials, but I didn't find anything groundbreaking that convinced me to buy it.
> I'm interested anyway in this synth and I'm not a huge expert, may I ask what is so special about it?



I has such a varied and useful set of modules. It covers so many different ways of generating sounds. The oscillators are fabulous. The bottom and top end are very clear and powerful. For me ( and I have a large moog modular ) it is the best Soft synth I have ever used. 

best

ed


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