Hans Zimmer

I am currently reading John Le Carre's A Delicate Truth, and it's fiction. What books have changed my life? Nothing my teachers ever made me read... I suppose going back to Dune by Frank Herbert, The Trial by Kafka...God, I'm so bleak and German. And a vast amount of comic books. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel...anything drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith.

1.) An intern started this and I never wanted to hurt their feelings but it tasted disgusting. Maybe now I can finally tell them the truth. Just a little spoonful.

2.) I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.

I am a YouTube junkie. Yes, really. I find you can discover incredible musicians all the time. I listen to anything; in the words of Duke Ellington, there are only 2 types of music, good and bad. I'm working on my psychedelic, country-western heavy metal album.

I agree, it was disgusting.

It's very simple - I find if you want a well-rounded musical education, just listen to composers whose names begin with "B." Bach, Beethoven, Beatles, BB King, Burt Bacharach, Berlioz... But not Bruckner. It's always amazing that my simplistic music seems to touch complete strangers, and somehow we have a connection and a conversation through that music. So thank you.

I use Cubase; all the UAD plugins; and Zebra, which is to me the greatest software synth ever built. We build a lot of our own technology at RCP, so our sampler and touchscreens are custom-built. One of my greatest ambitions is to keep orchestral music alive, so I try to use as many live musicians as I possibly can. For example, I just had the honor of employing 15 of the greatest drummers in the world for Man of Steel and using 8 pedal-steel players at the same time. I think it was a world first.

For tips, I'd say write a good piece... I spend forever getting the arrangement right. Find the best musicians you can, and leave it up to a really good recording engineer.

For "This Land" - the whole Lion King soundtrack is really me dealing with my father's death, which up to that point I had never really done, because children suppress things, and I was rather surprised that, in a cartoon with fuzzy animals, I was suddenly confronted with my past. The other thing is, because I wrote it for my daughter, it connected the generations over time through music.

My favorite composition that I wrote...I find fault with all of it, nothing is ever finished, that's why I carry on writing, and part of what I like is influenced by the people I am working with. So some of my favorites have more to do with process than the actual end result. So a Zack Snyder or a Chris Nolan seem to bring out some pretty good things in me.

For Man of Steel you can expect hope. Hope and no cynicism. The opposite of The Dark Knight. Trying to celebrate hard-working, simple, blue-collar people in the Midwest who never get celebrated.

Blade Runner. But I love what Vangelis did so much, so not really.

I wish more people would realize that to follow their dreams is the only way to live a life worth living. Nobody on their deathbed wonders if they've done enough work and should have had less fun and playtime. The magical ingredient in music is the word "play," so I think on my deathbed I will still wonder if I could just go and jam with a couple of musicians and just carry on playing. I wish you all the best.

1.) You have to fall in love with the characters, and at the same time, you always have to put a part of yourself into the character. I grew up with comic books, so I am a huge Superman fan, so that actually became very daunting because I didn't want to ruin one of my favorite characters for a whole generation. It was interesting working on Thelma and Louise and having to try to find a female voice or point of view in me.

2.) Anything from LCD Soundsystem to film scores - I'm a soundtrack nerd- to the music of my people, Kraftwerk.

3.) Unexpected place? One of the great guilty pleasures of working on movies is that you get to go to places that other people sometimes can't go to, so being alone at the Louvre at night, in front of the Mona Lisa for The Da Vinci Code made that one worthwhile.

4.) The sounds I hear in my head, my head is quite a good instrument.

Thank you, thank you- what else can you say to that? Thank you for the compliment.

Notes per minute? Probably the Clark Kent theme from Man of Steel because I was procrastinating for so long, trying to shake off the enormous shadow that John Williams' Superman theme cast.

AR is a good friend of mine; I just hope that one of these days we'll actually get to do something together.

That's a great question - it's actually more breaking out in sweat of fear of other people hating it.

But no, I can't listen to my own stuff without being critical all the time.

I did do Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I think that videogames are going to become the movies of the future; it's a very different way of writing. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the player the main character in the music. I will absolutely score more games in the future.

Because I will always tell you the truth, so I will always win! And I always pick truth over dare.

Both were hugely influential at different points of my life, but ultimately, Space Oddity is one of the song that just moves me more than I care to admit.

OK - I LOVE Kraftwerk!

I just tweak around until it sounds good to me. It never sounds as good as it sounds when I first think of it, so a lot of fiddling with synthesizers goes on to get it a little closer to my first sonic vision. The live orchestra gives it an energy and a humanity that you just can't get out of the electronics, so trying to strike a balance. All musical instruments are technological devices; it doesn't matter if it's electronic or if it's made from a tree with bits of dead cat attached.

Well, we have moved on...we now use silk and nylon as strings instead of catgut.

I on purpose didn't give Catwoman a violin theme in The Dark Knight Rises because I like cats.

I'm actually in a dedicated Nintendo room, but not at Nintendo. Although I'd be open to doing a project with them, nothing is in the works right now... although Batman, Superman, Super Mario...

It is impossible to establish a firm ground in the industry of film scoring. I still feel petrified that I live and die by whatever my last piece of music is. I like film scoring because I love stories, and it's my way of telling a story. I get my music from the stories and from looking at the images, so I think if you want to become a good film scorer, look at books, look at paintings.

In regards to managing so many instruments, with the help of a good conductor. But I'm a synthesizer geek, so I like making my own sounds, and I can get lost for days trying to make the perfect bass sound. I have heard that a photo of my studio by Trey Radcliffe has been very popular on reddit in the past; I actually assembled my collection of Moog synthesizers when everybody was embracing digital and throwing out the old analog stuff. God, were they wrong. The thing that pins you to your seat in Dark Knight or Man of Steel is Professor Moog's 40-year-old invention.

I found the post! Here is my humble little den. If you have to spend 98% of your life in a room without windows, you might as well have some fun with a decor. It was modeled on the interior of a turn-of-the-century Viennese brothel. But don't call me a musical whore.

Even though I never told him, it was really a thank you to my friend Chris Nolan for letting me work on this incredible movie. That made me think about time and our existence and dreams and love for a whole year - what a luxury to have.

Of course you want to be a Rhinoceros-sized Gerbil.

The third, because it brought everything together - after all, it was nine years of our lives, and I think we became a very good family in that time. It was hard to say goodbye to that character.

Peter Morgan's incredible script got us all fired up by this true story, and for me, it's probably some of the best work Ron Howard has ever done. Who would have thought that the coolest, edgiest young director is somebody with that many years of experience?

15 drummers, including Pharrell. And Sheila E. giving it a sense of elegance... kept those boys on their toes.

Beethoven, because those first 4 notes of the Fifth are so simple and how did he know that he could create such magic with them?

When I write the score, I only think about the characters and the story, but when I try to put the soundtrack album together, I try to actually make it a good listening experience. I actually work very hard to try to be responsible at delivering a decent soundtrack album, and not just make it an afterthought to the movie. I try to write music that can stand on its own two feet, apart from the picture.

Yes - i find that not knowing who the player of the final videogame is very difficult because I'm trying (and I still haven't figured it out) how to not generalize. In a movie I can always be specific about the character. Glad to hear you enjoy the music, thank you!

Rango was the parody of the western, which we did before we did the serious one, which is The Lone Ranger - so in a funny way, we got our parody out of the way first. But ultimately, Lone Ranger gave me the opportunity to go and write a wonderful, old-fashioned western score. I'd love to see your dissertation, because I always find that I can't be objective about my music and I'm always interested to see what other people read into it. And just so you know, there is a plan when I start writing - there is structure, and there is some intellectual framework.

I don't know! I'm not the God of Movie Soundtracks. What about John Williams and Ennio Morricone?

"Fucking awesome" works for me!

Because the record industry has gone into the toilet, and musicians need to earn a living, plus we're suddenly cool (*composers are).

Regarding epic - I don't know why my music is so epic, it's just how I hear things in my head. I use very simple devices and tunes. It's usually not the size of the orchestra or the production that makes things sound epic, it's usually the commitment of the players. A great string quartet can sound louder when they play with fire and heart, than a boring orchestra, and a single note by Jeff Beck can slice right through your heart.

For upcoming projects, I am really excited about Rush, which was just really fun to work on, and I think that it's the first race car movie that really got it right. And I was honored working with Steve McQueen on 12 Years A Slave, which is a phenomenal, daring movie with a story that needed to be told. And I'm starting to have a little fun with Chris Nolan on his next project, Interstellar.

My formal training was 2 week of piano lessons. I was thrown out of 8 schools. But I joined a band. I am self-taught. But I've always heard music in my head. And I'm a child of the 20th century; computers came in very handy.

So far, I'm glad to be here!

I'm far too close to it to judge. We had our premiere last night, and at the afterparty, I and some of my musician friends got to play the music live. And towards the end of it, I was actually thinking "This is fun to play." And that's always a good sign.

I work very closely with my friend Junkie XL on Man of Steel - I come from electronic music, and have always tried to bridge the divide between classical and electronics.

It makes me feel good that I am still relevant to 10 year olds. It means I'm not over the hill!

Michael and I were neighbors in London, and I used to program synthesizers for him. He taught me a thing or two about the orchestra in return.

I was an assistant to the great composer Stanley Myers, and I learned through his mentorship how to become a film composer. I try to do the same now with my studio, with young composers.

I read a book, or look at a Gerhard Richter painting. Have a heated discussion with my director. Talk to a great chef about great food. That's always inspiring.

I think organized noise becomes music; I try to be appropriate to the story that we are trying to tell, but I try to find new ways of telling it. There have been many Sherlock Holmes movies before I started writing for it, and it was just my way of finding a new take, but I think it's true to the intellectual curiosity that Conan Doyle gave his character.

Thank you for your kind words! But right now, I'm still far too worried about what people are going to say about this one - maybe i can just have a moment to enjoy this one before thinking about rolling up the sleeves again.

Don't crash!! And wait until Rush comes out - then you'll really have a driving soundtrack. On the other hand - you should try flying with Superman.

Italian food. I just don't think they can get it wrong.

User interface. We have so much CPU power at our fingertips now, and don't actually know how to have as expressive an interface as a simple bow on a string.

Who's changed the industry? The writers and directors giving us great stories to write to. Remember, we've been in 3-D forever, because we've had 5.1 - the visuals are only just now catching up! And it seems music is not the ugly stepsister of cinematography anymore.

Being the "new kid" in a family that's been together for 25 years was fairly daunting. But they needed somebody who was forever going "What if?..." and I love Danny Elfman's theme.

Eggs benedict.

If they had no idea who I was, I would ask that they listen to the score from The Thin Red Line.

And apology accepted!

I don't know how else to get through the day. I wouldn't know how to survive without music. In regards to your second question, there's always a deeper meaning, but sometimes I keep it hidden and keep it my own personal secret.

Curiously, both. Our 24-year-old cat died not too long ago, so I'm just left with a golden retriever called Happy. I will probably get another cat in time.

If you bought the soundtrack, go and download our free DTS app here. I write my music in surround, and I always feel a little cheated when I have to reduce it down to stereo, so we worked really hard at making this soundtrack actually be full surround on anybody's headphones. And the app is free so you can experience it the way I do. They measured my ears and how I hear it in my room, so it's as if you are actually listening through my ears, in my room.

I think I have answered about orchestras and synthesizers previously, but I love working with singers because I think it gives the music an unmistakable personality. And it becomes a very personal bit of storytelling then. I loved working with Lisa Gerrard, Ofra Haza, Pharrell Williams, and Dave Stewart from The Eurythmics.

I'm like a cat, I have 9 lives. After 9 complete viewings, I find it difficult to feel anything new, so I usually work from the first impressions and try to hang onto those for dear life.

I hand-pick every player; the individual contributions are really important to me. They're musicians not sheep. And I write specifically for the players. I usually have a mental image of who I write for as I'm writing the line.

OK!

The internet privacy ;)

One of the great things about my life is that I seem to become part of other people's lives without having to do the dishes. Happy Anniversary.

Anarchy - but seriously, I start every project off by trying to figure out what my color palette is, and I spend weeks programming sounds and going out and recording strange instruments. For The Lone Ranger, we just took a sledgehammer to a train recently - you don't get to do that every day. We're going to use that as a percussion element.

Alright - I owe my career to Diana Levinson, Barry Levinson's wife. She saw a small independent film I had done in England, and bought him the soundtrack CD. That led to him hiring me for Rain Man - some days, you just are lucky.

I found out about the Aurora shooting in the middle of an interview, and the journalist asked me to comment, and all I could come up with were the word "devastated and shocked." And I suddenly realized that my language was music. And I wanted to write a piece of music that would show the people in Aurora that the whole world was there with them. It was the only response I could have, to put beauty against violence, and that we are all alone in this together.

I wanted the music to bring everybody together. Because you can only set art against violence. Nothing else seems to have worked so far.

I want to continue to create art that makes people think, and talk to each other. Use your words, not your guns.

We have a different tuning in Continental Europe, and most instruments won't actually resonate properly at the wrong frequency. That's part of the secret of a good Stradivarius.

If I could travel back in time... I'd just like to hang out at the Bach house, and learn a thing or two from the man and all his talented children and the incredible wife who managed to raise I think 17 kids? And write music? But I'm actually quite happy in this time. I keep looking forward to the future, because I think technology is letting us get more and more adventurous in our music.

If I could compose a theme for any person - I love Elgar's Enigma Variations, where he wrote a set of symphonic pieces, each one depicting one of his friends, including a dog. I always loved that idea. I would write about the people I love, except I don't ever seem to have the time to write anything! But one day I'll get around to it.

Best dare I can come up with on the spot - for me, it was such a dare to even tackle Man of Steel because i didn't want to ruin it for a whole generation! I grew up with loving the John Williams' score to Superman and the greatest dare is always to get over my own paranoia, neuroses, and all other insecurities a composer suffers every moment of the day. It's a little bit like standing naked on a cold day on the beach in front of the most beautiful girl.

1) It's the story - the story and the people working with me. But curiously, very often it's the cinematography and the light that inform my colors that I will use in my music. So I try to always make a point to talk to the DP.

2) Don't take no for an answer. Never give up. Because everyone is going to tell you it's impossible, and I am some uneducated guy from in the middle of nowhere Germany, and if I can make it, anybody can. Just don't take no for an answer.

Of course I miss Germany - but Hollywood has taught me that we are one huge international creative community. At the same time, I think that we never support our own filmmakers strongly enough in Europe. There's nothing wrong with subtitles.

Mozart, The Rolling Stones, and Lightning Hopkins (*great American Bluesman).

... And Kraftwerk.