Hans Zimmer & Linkin Park - What is the difference?

 

B. Seroto, (8 Sep, 2020), Call for entries: "Hans Zimmer music video contest", <https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/call-entries-hans-zimmer-music-video-contest>

 M. Milekic, (May 22, 2017), IS THE NEW Linkin Park RECORD REALLY THAT BAD, OR ARE THEY NEW BAND "EVERYONE LOVES TO HATE"?, EDM, <https://edm.com/.amp/features/linkin-park-one-more-light-review>

"Critically discuss work of Hans Zimmer and Linkin Park, minimum 3 pieces of each artist. How does this inform your own work?"

You do not necessarily have to become musician to recognise your own self-expression. Many artists in the world never thought about becoming artist at all. Some of them creating art of pop music, another ones  feel more comfortable within more horrific sounds like Metal Music or Rock, yet some of them feel more "creative" in classical music. Music in general is a beautiful thing to experience, music can have absolute impact on each of individual. Music is worth every little sound and with connection of video, can tell you a story. The idea of this article however, is to compare two different artists: Hans Zimmer and Linkin Park,  their style and what influence on each of individual. Finally I will try to express my work concept and why I am so inspired of their work. 

Firstly, Hans Zimmer is known film score composer, who has dedicated his great work to many film industries, who have chosen his work for their own productions. Hans is officially recognised as most innovative musical talent in Hollywood, but his roadmap to his career has started in London. Later on, started to work on his own little projects, in which Hans has combined old and new musical technologies. 

It eventually has opened him gate to celebrity, and today Zimmer is known as "father" of new style of music, which has been created with two different styles, electronic music and classical arrangements. Hans has connected these two and created a principle of building up his music capabilities. That is how he is expressing his type of music, by connection of two different styles. One of his work we can "adore" in a well known movie, "Inception". One of his tracks we can hear there, is "Time", it is very slow and melancholic song on the beginning, and as far as song goes, the flow is more dynamic, but still not as much as listener could imagine. The style still is quite slow but the instruments used in the song, which are mostly Violin and Piano matched in perfectly to express the feelings and the atmosphere of the song, yet still carried the style. The other soundtrack which is worth mentioning, is the - Main Theme - of movie: "Interstellar", song starts with kind of reverb piano notes, followed by Violin in the background, yet we can also catch out the sounds of kind of Church Organs added up, the song itself is also not too dynamic. This song is another "baby" of Zimmer. The last piece of music comes from "The Dark Knight", this soundtrack is named as same as the movie. In the song tempo is much more dynamic than in the last two mentioned. The dominant instrument in this piece of music is mainly Cello, with a little help of violins and listeners will definitely notice huge difference from the other two soundtracks in sound, in volume, in tempo, in atmosphere and in expression. Later in the song there has been added some synths to build the intensity of the track. Most of Zimmer creations are built on tempo between 69 - 144 BPM. 

Secondly, as opposition to classical music style of Hans Zimmer let's grab the attention of more "youth" style of music, rock and band Linkin Park. The group of six members excluding unfortunately one of the members, who in 2017 has passed away. In fact the band has stopped playing for a while due to huge loss of the talent in their group - Chester Bennington, however their music still inspires a lot of people, according to Quora (2017) the band had 2.7 billion fans worldwide. Their music has in fact very mixed construction of style of the music they play. In the first place it meant to be Rock/ Punk genre of the music they were making, but ahead of times the band has expanded their style of music and they sort of abandoned their old construction and started to build new environment. Band has decided to change their style completely, from very hard rock style, were creating more electronic sounds. In all this musical "Vertigo", audience still find their kind of music moving and inspirational. Band has refused to make any rules over the music they will make, they were happy with their new ideology. However their style of sounds has changed diametrically and new form of music has been introduced, their music is still dynamic but band knows how to inject into their audience ears strong emotions. Some of the songs they created are calming down and emotional, some of them still dynamic and heavy. As example, "The Messenger" from their album, is being emotional and slow, the only instrument used in this song was just only guitar and used Chester's pure voice without any special effects added to it. Chester sang about loneliness and how to  avoid it. Has reassured audience, that there is always someone who can support you if you feel alone. The other example of their production is, "One More Light" when Chester Bennington wanted to express his pain due to loss of his best friend, also musician and his name is Chris Cornell. Chester has written a song about him passing away, how bad he feels about it and what kind of pain he experiences. The tempo of the song is only 84 BPM, which is slow and melancholic, express dissatisfaction and extreme loss to the audience. As the last example I would like to mention is more dynamic song of Linkin Park, "Burning in the skies" is built on 120 BPM and is more energetic. We can hear some mixture of sounds of synths, electric guitar, piano and bass. Chester is singing about self - chastising for the mistakes of the past, as Chester sings: "I'm swimming in the smoke, of bridges I have burnt. So don't apologise, I am loosing what I don't deserve". 

Finally. As we can see in music does not matter whether certain song contains any words or not, this still can have huge impact on each of individual. Narrative does not necessarily mean that music has to be using words, but sound itself can also spread the positive as well as negative vibes. That is why I wanted people to notice it. In fact Hans Zimmer does not use lyrics in his songs, however it stills gives us some goosebumps on our skins when we can hear his tracks and to be amazed of it. It brings for audience positive reactions and positive feelings. Each of the listener can experience their feelings in very different way. As a second example of influential reactions listening to the music is mentioned rock band Linkin Park, their production was slightly different from Hans Zimmer but they were able to have huge influence on the audience. In Linkin Park songs, the words as well as sounds are speaking to the audience. It is huge difference from Hans Zimmer, as he does not have lyrics in his songs. I am huge fan of Hans Zimmer as well as Linkin Park, as these two have two different ways of expression and that is what I like. They both were doing amazing experiments with music. Hans Zimmer has mixed electronic music with classical music and Linkin Park has switched from metal music to more electronic, but still kept the same resistance line to not loosing their narrative. That is my own reason why I am so inspired of their work, in my future productions I will focus more on spreading a good vibes rather than adding cachy words in the lyrics to keep my audience with me. I hope this article will help you understand the idea behind it. Thank you. 

REFERENCE

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IMBd, (n.d), "Hans Zimmer - Biography", <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001877/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm>

frontiers, (13 November, 2018), "Effects of musical tempo on Musicians, and Non- Musicians, Emotional Experience when listening to music", https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02118/full

Quora, (n.d), "How many Linkin Parks fans are there in the world", <https://www.quora.com/How-many-Linkin-park-fans-are-there-in-the-world>

NoteDiscover, (n.d), "One more light. Linkin Park", <https://www.notediscover.com/song/linkin-park-one-more-light>

YouTube, Linkin Park, (6 April, 2015), "Linkin Park - The Messenger", <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec2RlGgNIUs>

YouTube, Linkin Park, (19 May, 2017), "Linkin Park - One More Light", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaUvGSLMew>

YouTube, Linkin Park, (22 February, 2011), "Linkin Park - Burning in the skies", <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh_YCSW5lPc>

YouTube, Crisyta, (31 December, 2010), "Hans Zimmer - Time", <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k>

YouTube, Skydawn, (6 October, 2014), "Interstellar - Main Theme- Hans Zimmer", <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDsCtDRV2uA>

YouTube, xman77c, (23 March, 2012), "Hans Zimmer - The Dark Knight OST - A Dark Knight",  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94TAFSMdkvk>