“It let us play the music of an imaginary future”: Why Hans Zimmer worked with the Expressive E Osmose on Dune 2Hans Zimmer has shared why he chose to work with Expressive E’s Osmose synth on the Dune: Part Two soundtrack in a mini documentary.
In Behind the Music of Dune 2 : Hans Zimmer x Osmose, shared to Expressive E’s YouTube channel, Zimmer explained his vision for the film’s score, and described how the synth helped to create a futuristic soundtrack that weaved together a mix of cultures.

READ MORE: Expressive E Osmose takes keyboards to “level nobody thought possible”, says Jordan Rudess

For those unfamiliar, the Osmose resembles a traditional digital keyboard, but is described as “a next-generation instrument” by Expressive E. Every gesture played on the Osmose – whether pressing or moving laterally – alters sound “with unmatched precision”, making it akin to a voice or acoustic instrument, allowing musicians to shape pitch, volume, intensity, and vibrato much more expressively.
Speaking in the documentary, Zimmer reveals that he wanted to go beyond a stereotypical orchestral score. He says, “Science fiction movies, other than I suppose Blade Runner, were always in a Galaxy far away, and then you hear the orchestra and you go, ‘Really? In the future we’re still going to be doing this? Why can’t we believe that there will be new instruments, there will be new sonic textures? Why can’t we go and invent new things that don’t remind us in a peculiar way of the past?’
“So rather than doing an orchestral score, ultimately what we did was we made a score of a band of virtuosos, a small group of the people who were the best in the world at what they do,” he states. “The other thing which I really do like about the band is that everybody brings a little bit of their culture to it, and because now it’s a mishmash of culture, when you write something which is futuristic it is like that’s what happened, you know? The cultures all got muddled up a little bit so it actually helps in the expressiveness of the music.”

As part of his quest for unique sounds, Zimmer started experimenting with the Osmose. Soon after, he said he wanted to track down five more to continue building the score. He goes on to add, “When you play a note on a piano, basically it goes ‘plonk’, and it dies out. What [Expressive E has] done is when you touch the keyboard, it knows you’re already touching the keyboard.
“Within that travel of that key, the sound can change completely, and then of course the one thing every keyboard player wants to do is what a violinist can do or guitarist can do, is have vibrato. So you can go and wobble your keys left to right, and you literally can transform a sound completely… It let us play the music of an imaginary future,” he says.
You can view the full documentary below:

Dune 2 is out now. Find out more about the Osmose via Expressive E.
The post “It let us play the music of an imaginary future”: Why Hans Zimmer worked with the Expressive E Osmose on Dune 2 appeared first on MusicTech.