# Music Producer Hans Zimmer



## Dave Connor (Mar 5, 2021)

I get such a kick out of HZ. Case in point:

I had been meaning to watch Hillbilly Elegy simply because Glenn Close is in it and she’s been one of the truly great actors in Cinema and on stage for decades. I didn’t know Hans scored it but when I found out it hurried me along to watch the film.

While listening to the opening title music, out comes this beautiful, subtle guitar lick (a sequence of a short motif.) Just drop dead perfection, dripping with authenticity. My first thought was, _That isn’t an LA session musician... that’s someone else. _(As great as the players are in town, they simply can’t lay things down the way certain players who have lived and breathed their own music, apart from the professional considerations of playing in numerous styles required by coastal session players.) So I went to IMDB to find Derek Trucks credited - to no surprise at all. Hans has been raving about him lately on social media as the embodiment of Blues playing and where it is as an art form currently. He‘s right of course. There’s no one out there who has absorbed that music and brought forward the ideas, execution, feel, tone - everything that has come before - in quite such a unique, personalized way. With unconscious, essentially virtuosic playing.

Seeking out that kind of player for a film score reminded me how much Hans is rooted in the world of record making. In the authentic. In the small gesture as opposed to the broad film canvas. It‘s one of the prime distinguishing features of his sound. Even if he’s doing a large orchestral score. It’s also part of his mass appeal and why after a concert at a purely Rock festival like Coachella, everyone was talking about his band. Not veteran Rock bands. If you see his band live with full orchestra, chorus and featured instrumentalists, you realize, he could send everyone home but the drummer, guitarist, bass player and a few others and still bring the house down. These are session players - not traditional film people. That approach is at the core of so much of what he does.

It’s a very interesting phenomenon to me because just as the film Easy Rider appealed to young people in it’s day due to the innovation of records used for the soundtrack, we have now had that sensibility of record production from this particular composer in scores for quite some time. Others have done it but I don’t think any have created a school or large body of work that fits that description. Hans Zimmer does a lot of things very well as a composer, and is far more versatile than people may realize. But whatever he starts with his composer hat on - he always seems to finish with his producer hat on. Right now that means Derek Trucks is front and center on Netflix - a very good musical choice, I think most would agree.


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## Technostica (Mar 5, 2021)

Trucks with his wife on vocals and Herbie on piano. 



I recall Clapton saying how talented Trucks is and I concur. 
Would love to hear him play.


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## Dave Connor (Mar 5, 2021)

That^^^ is a great track!!


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## Technostica (Mar 5, 2021)

Dave Connor said:


> That^^^ is a great track!!


Him and his wife are very soulful.



I love the album this is from by his earlier band.


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## Dave Connor (Mar 5, 2021)

I like their early stuff too. Such great roots. Some great song-writing too.


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 5, 2021)

I saw him open for Joe Satriani about 20 years ago in Atlanta. He was just a kid, but damn he was good (a bit insecure, but he was young) and they also had a badass drummer that blew my mind. 

TBH his show was better than Satriani with his sunglasses and endless riffs.

I researched him later and realized he was related to Butch Trucks. That started me down the path of the Allman Brothers... oh dear... soon after that I was playing in blues bars around town!


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## Andreas Moisa (Mar 6, 2021)

Thanks for sharing!


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## dgburns (Mar 6, 2021)

@Dave Connor Appreciated.


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## jonathanparham (Mar 6, 2021)

Didn't know. Now I know.


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