Evocative Sounds
James Cameron’s groundbreaking blockbuster “AVATAR” features an epic score by James Horner. We were excited to learn that all three of Spectrasonics latest virtual instruments, Omnisphere, Stylus RMX and Trilian are an integral part of the soundtrack of this remarkable film. We caught up with longtime Spectrasonics users Simon Franglen and Ian Underwood for some inside info on the production of James Horner’s Avatar score, and how they created the evocative sounds for the film using our virtual instruments.

“We used Spectrasonics often throughout the score,” veteran session synthesist Ian Underwood told us. “I primarily use Omnisphere for creating particular colors that are not traditional orchestral sounds.” Simon Franglen adds, “We used Omnisphere throughout Avatar and I also used Stylus RMX extensively. We were even able to use the new Trilian instrument for the bass sound in the closing theme song.”

11 Months to Record
Most movie scores are produced in a 6 to 8 weeks period after a movie is completely edited. Unusually, the score for “Avatar” took 11 months to record starting in January 2009. Underwood explains, “The extended 11 months time was due to the ongoing back and forth process between composer James Horner and director Jim Cameron in which we would record each cue, electronics and mock-ups of the orchestral instruments, then Cameron would give his comments, James would make revisions which we would record, Cameron would hear the revised version and eventually give his approval, and then finally real orchestra would be recorded replacing our electronic orchestral sounds. In the end result, most cues are a combination of electronic and orchestral elements but there are also a number of purely electronic cues."

Director James Cameron on the set

"The electronic recording was done in a largish house Fox rented for us. Three of us lived there - Simon Rhodes, our mixing engineer from Abbey Road, Jim Henrikson, our main music editor, and myself. Simon Franglen and Aaron Martin were the other members of the electronic music team. Upstairs we set up the recording studio in the master bedroom, the various computers in the master bath, and downstairs had the piano in the living room."

"From January to April we recorded music for the first half of the film but during this time Jim Cameron did not hear any of it because he was still entirely occupied with shooting and editing. At the beginning of May, Jim finally listened to the music we had recorded and said he loved it. That was a relief, but there were still many comments and requests for changes and that pattern continued right to the last bit of recording."

Cameron & Horner discuss the score - photo by Gemma La Mana and scoringsessions.com

Describing how the musical score came together, Underwood says,  “Here’s the process: James Horner has two modes of recording a cue. When he is "painting" as he likes to call it, he'll play one part at a time himself, gradually building up the texture track by track. For each pass, he will describe the sound he wants to record next (whistle, strings, vocal sound, bendy men, synth pad, percussive element, etc.), we'll develop the sound and then he plays it from the keyboard. The other mode is when he writes out the score on paper as the real orchestra will eventually play it. In this case we mock up the orchestra to start with in the computer. After that is done, a number of electronic elements will then be added on top of the mock up."

"When James asks for a sound we have not used before, I might well build it using several layers of Omnisphere patches, always customized with envelope, filter and other STEAM Engine synthesis modifications, and often layered with other instruments as well. “If it’s a unique kind of sustain sound, or bass sound, or treble sound, or something that needs more activity in it, but needs to be not a traditional orchestral sound, Omnisphere would usually be my starting point.”

Eric Persing and Avatar Synthesist Ian Underwood

"We did the orchestra recording at the Fox Scoring Stage in several batches of sessions, two or three days each time. It was a total of approximately twelve orchestra recording sessions,” Underwood said.

Discussing the process of combining the real orchestra with the electronic parts, Underwood explains,  “Nearly every cue in Avatar is orchestra blended with electronics. The piece that the orchestra is recording is completely mocked up already in the computer. The orchestra hears all the electronic percussion and electronic sounds we’ve created while they are recording their parts.”

“Omnisphere is definitely one of the foundation sound sources for me. There’s quite a bit of Omnisphere in the AVATAR soundtrack. I used many areas of Omnisphere in combination to create the Multis we used,” added Underwood.

While working on a cue Underwood describes how James Horner would request sounds, and how Omnisphere played a part in creating the final sound choices, "The requests of the moment that Horner would make really could be from any area of what Omnisphere has. I didn't find myself looking in just one area."

Favorite Patches
Underwood revealed some of their favorite patches from Omnisphere that were used as starting points for creating the sounds of the AVATAR score, including:

Afterthought, Air Magic Carpet, Air Glass, Arctic Glass, Cryogenic Freeze,  Choir full-ooze, Lush Green Hybrid Strings, Greenhouse, Bending Glass, Emptyness, Choral FX, Women Legetti, Dark Horse, Adagio Singing Bell Harmonics, Afterthought Signs, Ambient Hum Whistle, Apparitions in the Piano, Astral Visions,  Electro Air Choir, Woody Pseudo Flute…and more!

“While these are mostly Pad type textures, they are each quite different in character. I would just pick and choose from any patches in Omnisphere that I thought could be interesting starting points and then modify and combine them.” Note that these patches were always extensively modified with Ian’s custom edits and sound design techniques to best match the music, “I always change and edit the patches to create a unique palette for the score with Omnisphere’s synthesis capabilities. There’s nothing that I use as is from the Factory library.”

“Eric and his team have done a really brilliant job providing three excellent instruments. I’m a big Spectrasonics fan,” concludes Underwood.

Eric Persing and Simon Franglen at NAMM

Production ace Simon Franglen also gave us a peek into some of the intricacies of his Avatar rhythmic work, “I had a lot of fun. There are some sounds that used 5 or 6 different elements crossfading. I also used the arpeggiator and custom ‘Groove Lock’ templates a lot so that I could link Omnisphere with what I was doing with other soft samplers. For example: we used a lot of 12/8 and 7/4 grooves and obviously a standard 4/4 setup wouldn’t work. Quite often I’d have multiple versions of the same patch with different groove lock templates.”

We were also thrilled to learn that our good friend Kuk Harrell, who’s one of the featured artists on our Vocal Planet sound library, co-wrote the Avatar theme song and is nominated with Simon and James for a Golden Globe award. Congrats Kuk...longtime coming! :-)

Kuk Harrell with Lorey Persing from Spectrasonics

Check out info on Omnisphere, Trilian and Stylus RMX.

Visit the "Avatar" website and be sure to see this amazing movie in IMAX 3D