A sequel is only worth its weight in spice if it can best the original. For Dune 2, Hans Zimmer and his team went further with their electronic instrumentation to immerse us even deeper in otherworldly sounds. Now we get some insights into how they did it, and why the Expressive E Osmose was a starring player.
You lean back in your chair, transporting your imagination to Arrakis’ arid salt flats. The sound you hear needs to be something you haven’t heard before. But to be convincing, it has to seem as though it’s expertly played by an alien musician who’s known it all their life. It’s the kind of pursuit that drives many of us as electronic composers. So, sure, we can get very technical talking about MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) or sound design and controllers. But it’s not just gear fetish that motivates us. The real payoff is finding something new.
Dune has a legacy to live up to here, too. The score for the 1984 David Lynch adaptation of Dune is one of the few elements that actually holds up. Toto, tackling the first film score of their career, channeled nothing if not Miklós Rózsa’s iconic Ben Hur music, reimagined for the main theme as prog-rock epic. (That’s probably not an accident; you’ll notice the 1984 title cards also reference William Wyler’s 1959 film.) But that was acceptable in the 80s; vintage cinema music would seem deeply anachronistic amidst the immersive futurism of Denis Villeneuve’s remake.
The other standout from 1984’s Dune is Brian Eno’s “Prophecy Theme,” the cue that inspired 1000 synth pad presets. The pad is drenched in classic Eno/Daniel Lanois shimmer with a heavy helping of feedback; Valhalla DSP’s Sean Costello has written more about that technique and its influence on modern effects processing. The result perfectly fits the brief: give our 1984 ears a taste of something we hadn’t heard before (even if we’ve heard it a lot since).
For 2024, we need more than just a ton of feedback and a pad. And that means the ability to play the score and shape it in production. Enter Osmose.
Hans Zimmer interview on Osmose
We have a lot of artist videos and synthfluencers. But this feels like an important moment – it’s a time when one of the world’s leading film composers talks eloquently about how to combine synthesizers with film scores in a current idiom. (Kudos to Wendy Carlos for ground-breaking scores like Tron that led the way to this moment.)
Guillaume Bonneau, chief of product and sound design at Expressive E, Christophe Duquesne, instrument maker-developer and sound designer, and Edmund Eagan, inventor of the EaganMatrix from Haken Audio all worked on the project. I spoke with Guillaume and Christophe for this story.
Hans Zimmer immediately says what’s bothered so many of us: you’re out in space, and then you hear a classical symphony orchestra? (I love John Williams, but yeah, Star Wars is pretty much a Tannhäuser Overture with some Alfred Newman thrown in. It works perfectly, but the first Star Wars was a WWII film crossed with, well, Dune, actually. And once Williams and James Horner have mined the orchestra for films with “star” in the title, do you need more?)
“There will be new instruments, there will be new sonic textures – why can’t we go and invent new things?” asks Zimmer.
There was a fair danger of cultural appropriation or orientalism for the first Dune film; Herbert himself was pulling on Arabic culture and Islam for his vision of something other and far-off. But part of what characterizes the score is just an enormous group of virtuoso traditions from a mix of backgrounds. That really comes across in Dune 2, as these fuse together more comfortably – especially with Osmose as a mediating instrument that really doesn’t have to sound like existing, physical instruments.
“There will be new instruments, there will be new sonic textures – why can’t we go and invent new things?” asks Zimmer.
Christophe Duquesnse tells CDM that they worked with an enormous number of the sprawling studio musician corps for the movie. “Alejandro Moros, Omer Benjamin, Steven Doar, Steve Mazaaro, Dave Fleming, Jake Boring and Andrew Kawczynski are probably the ones we interacted the most with,” Christophe says. “The one who used the most the Osmose is probably Steven Doar.“
And Dune 2 pushes the sound world much further. I think it’s a deeply satisfying listen, far exceeding the previous outing’s sounds. “There is much more emphasis in Dune 2 on the use of ‘un-heard’ sounds,” Christophe tells us.
From the way Zimmer talks, you can see how his score succeeds where the 1984 adaptation did not. The music is able to become that internal dialogue. (Take that, Kyle McDonald whispering voiceover!)
Having an expressive instrument means the ability to connect sound design to physical expression, shortening the trip between the mind and the sonic outcome and making it kinetic — involving your body. Film scoring, with tight budgets and even tighter deadlines, makes that a matter of creative survival.
You’ll see not only the use of the ability to bend around pitch per note, with the unique mechanical feedback that right now only Osmose provides but also additional extras like Osmose’s internal ratchet feature for diving up notes in additional articulations – and their imagined sound counterparts. (They’re describing the ability to assign ratcheting to expression – polyphonic aftertouch being a common input source.)
When you hear the word “expressive,” many people immediately assume long melodic runs or something, but it’s also worth saying that this approach is just as essential for percussion. They use that extensively, too, and it’s a reminder that you don’t need to think of the keys like a piano.
There are the vocal elements, too – charting “our way back to humanity.” “I wanted to create something that was an intensely human score,” Zimmer explains.
We’ll be diving deeper into vocal resynthesis on CDM soon because Christophe’s resynthesis tool for the engine is nearing release. A playlist of tutorials is already available to give you an intro (with accompanying loris cuteness):
“I wanted to create something that was an intensely human score,” Zimmer explains.
Zimmer’s team has a unique approach to recording, too, as you’ll see. There’s a ton of use of resonators, like Eowave’s Metallik Resonator Speaker and others, all with extensive re-miking for expanded layers. They put those into Cubase and then mixed between the layers there, though you could easily apply your own setup. (I’ve written about the Hainbach / AudioThing Gong Amp and its connection back to 1930s compositions of Maurice Martenot previously; you could produce these results in software, too, though adding mics is naturally more fun.)
And yeah, you’ll even see the Haken Continuum line sitting atop an Osmose. That’s a nice nod to the device that helped bring about the current renaissance in expressive instruments. Christophe explains:
We had our configuration with Osmose + Slim Continuums + ContinuuMini + Eagan Matrix Module + Onde Resonator + Pyramid Resonator + Metallik resonators to craft such sounds… Every single sound had to be crafted for purpose (no existing presets where used, and that’s true for every single musician involved in the team … even Pedro had a modified Duduk).
My own setup was 1 Osmose + 1 Slim Continuum + 1 ContinuuMini + 1 Eagan Matrix Module (and we where sharing the resonators) and I used them all. All of them run the EaganMatrix [Haken Audio’s sound engine, available on the Osmose] and have continuous expression. Expression is key: the preset is 50% of the sound, the other 50% are the way you play it ! I use one instrument or the other depending on the kind of expression I want to achieve. (No real rules — just “I feel like playing this sound on this instrument!”)
Zimmer’s not kidding when he talks about wanting the Osmose 100 years ago; that’s a story for another time, but in fact there were notions to expand the piano keyboard mechanically.
How was it all put together? Christophe explains: “Their main tool is Cubase, but there is also Pro Tools. In our studio, we were also using Ableton Live … assembling everything was the work of Ryan Rubin and mixing was for Alan Meyerson! We didn’t influence their work process, but provided new types of inputs (typically with acoustic audio recordings from the resonators).”
There’s a lot more to say here about Osmose, how to use it, and even about that vocal synthesis topic. I’m really excited about the topic. We’ve watched MPE evolve from the very start of its evolution, and seen these instruments go from prototypes (used by the likes of Geert Bevin and Roger Linn) to finished products and now instruments in blockbuster films. And we’re just getting started, as we’re all learning what we can do.
So watch this space. And hopefully, enjoy some time to pop some popcorn and watch Dune 2 again while listening to that score.