Instrument question

Okay, so I'm a HUGE fan of Hans Zimmer, and I have a question about 'The Kraken' Soundtrack. (

And initially I here what I think is D0, very low organ kinda stuff.

But to me it sounds like a bowed instrument playing this, almost sounds like horn too, so I'm sitting here confused.

Is this an organ, effects, or am I just hallucinating? Because as far as I know there isn't a bowed or horn instrument that goes this low.

Although it would be cool, I haven't intensely searched what sort of instruments are out there, but it doesn't look there is any.

Very catchy rhythm, I love that low bass sound.

Thanks for replies.

It's almost certainly a synthesised sound. Hans Zimmer rarely uses a real orchestra these days, which has advantages besides saving money, namely that you can get sounds that are impossible on real instruments. The entire Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack is created on keyboards in a studio. This sound is probably a contrabass patch, but it may well be a hybrid pad he's created in the studio and then played into a sequencer with the other sounds in the orchestra. The reason it sounds brassy is that a synth can never quite hide the basic waveform that the patch is based on, so you get the 'smooth' tone of a pure sine or saw wave in the mixture. The closest thing to it in real life wound be the contrabass section doubled by a contrabassoon, or certain organ pedals. A bass serpent or orpheclide might not be far off, but don't expect any friends to own one.

Agreed. This is not real instrument sounds, but it does sound like some sort of a contrabass and tuba mix. Not uncommon, but it sounds very odd on this.

Hate to contradict you all, but the vast majority of Zimmer's current scores are recorded with mostly live recorded instruments. It's a common thing said about him, but it's a reflection of a much older period of his work where he was on the cutting edge of composers bringing synths and samples heavily into scores. Nowadays he works very organically and tends to relegate synths to more of a processing and support role than a primary instrument one. Only the first Pirates score was primarily samples. He *does*, however, have a particular love of processing his bass instruments to add some extra growl and punch and he has recently had some fun asking his orchestra to play like samples.

In this cue, depending on what part you're talking about, you're hearing primarily contrabasses with a gentle synth bass pulse underneath, and there are occasional low brass stabs (starting at 0:15 or so) that are likely a combo of tuba and cimbasso. They escalate into a sound not unlike the low fart so characteristic of the later Inception score.

By the way, I would recommend not listening to this stuff via YouTube's awful compression because you miss a lot of the nuance that helps make the real instruments evident.