COMPOSER OF THE MONTH FOR MAY – HANS ZIMMER – “ Everyone tells you that there are rules and regulations there isn’t! Anything goes. If it makes you happy go an play it”
We have returned to Hans Zimmer this month as composer of the month as we have been having lots of fun exploring, improvising and composing.
In the month that David Attenburgh turns 97, it seems good to return to the composer of many of the Blue Planet / Planet Earth soundtracks for our composer of the month – Hans Zimmer. A living (age 66) composer, from Germany.
Hans Zimmer says:
“Music allows you to be playful and play and never stop playing”
“ Everyone tells you that there are rules and regulations there isn’t! Anything goes. If it makes you happy go an play it”
So all year groups have been having a go at both improvising and composing in music classes with Mrs Browning.
Year 6s have been learning 12 bar blues. Once we got the underlying chord pattern fixed, we’ve been having a go at improving solos over the top of these chords. ‘There is no right or wrong – just have a go’. Some find this easier than others!
Years 4 and 5 have been looking at clips of Planet Earth and Blue Planet films and then been experimenting with coming up with replacement soundtracks, and performing their compositions in teams to the class. These classes have also been working on chromemusiclab, coming up with some pentatonic melodies which could be used in their pieces.
Lower down the school, we have been exploring different repeated patterns (ostinatos) and rhythms to be played to accompany songs or as soundtracks. Finally, Year 2s have just started recorders – with recorders going home each week following our sessions. Not so much improvising on recorders yet (!), but lot of new skills building and we’re really looking forward to seeing how we progress!
A short biography of Hans Zimmer is below and a few clips to explore and play:
A German film composer (b 1957) who has composed more than 150 films scores and been nominated for ten Oscars.
Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios and works with other composers through the company that he founded, Remote Control Productions.
As a child, he had just 2 weeks of piano lessons (he didn’t particularly like the formality of lessons), he changed schools many times, left school and formed a band. He’s self taught and says he’s always heard music in his head. He’s a composer of the 20th century and says that, for him, computers have come in handy!
In a speech at the at a Film Festival in 1999 , Zimmer stated that he is Jewish, and talked about his mother surviving World War II thanks to her escape from Germany to England in 1939. He said of his parents: “My mother was very musical, basically a musician and my father was an engineer and an inventor. So I grew up modifying the piano, shall we say, which made my mother gasp in horror, and my father would think it was fantastic when I would attach chainsaws and stuff like that to the piano because he thought it was an evolution in technology.” In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: “My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend.
He is self-taught and loves using technology, synthesizers, samplers and computers as well as the orchestra. He uses all sorts of different techniques to create music. He has helped shape the sound of today’s film, tv and games music.
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