Alexandre Desplat and the Renewal of the Timbre of Hollywood Symphonies: Programmed Sounds as a Form of Casting the Orchestra into Relief with Magical Effect - Text 7
In Desplat’s work the sub-bass, when it can be identified on its own, most often appears in the form of a sinusoidal beat made with the subtractive synthesis software program Massive[8] or a modular synthesizer. Far from being a form of sensorial stimulation (a sound design effect which hits the viewer in the stomach), as found in some music by Hans Zimmer (or Remote Control), most often this sub-bass is connected to the orchestra to symbolize, discreetly, the dark inflections of a female character. In Birth, it can be heard every time Sean, Anna’s husband reincarnated as a child, makes an appointment with the young woman in order to impose on her like an obsessive certainty (interval of a fifth in the sub-bass). In Twilight, the same kind of muffled undulating bass frequency, like a heart beating from afar, reinforces Bella’s irreversible attraction to darkness (“Bella Dreams”) and appears to signify that all her actions are driven by her ambition to become immortal. At the same time, the Fender (or electric piano), when it is not acting like a ghost-like double of an instrument or a mark of modernity,[9] is most often superimposed on the rhythmic movement of double or triplet arpeggios on a harp, celesta or piano in order to symbolize a quest – that of Bella, who wants to become a vampire in order to remain by the side of Edward in Twilight, or that of Einar, who is trying to become a woman in The Danish Girl.
