RECORDING September 2022 - 36

Ramin
Djawadi
Two
Decades
in the
Game
of Scoring
Do you use notation software
to generate the scores for the
orchestra?
No, I work with my longtime orchestrator,
Stephen Coleman. I'll give him
my MIDI, and he will still do some cleanup
work, put the dynamics in, and make
further arrangement suggestions. I think
he uses Finale. From there it goes to the
copyist and then it goes to the stage.
Do you ever " farm out " your
original guitar or piano parts to
other musicians?
It depends on the project. On many of
my scores, I'll play my own guitar parts.
The piano parts on Westworld are all
me, but in some of the movies, I'll bring
in a piano player or guitarist. Every
player has a different style and tone, so
it's good to mix it up a bit, and I love
collaborating with other musicians.
Are the pianos that we hear
sampled pianos or acoustic
instruments?
It's a bit of both. Sampling has gotten
so good that sometimes after I rerecord
my part on acoustic piano, I actually go
back and like what I did earlier with the
sampled piano, so I stick with that.
What sampled pianos are you
liking right now?
The Native Instruments ones come to
mind--THE MAVERICK, THE GRANDEUR
and there are some great ones
from Vienna Symphonic Library and
Spectrasonics too.
How involved are you in the
final mixes?
There are two typical scenarios. One,
I'll do my demo. I'll do my pre-recording
of solo instruments and mix that in Logic.
Then we record the orchestra, and from
there, it goes to an engineer like Alan
Meyerson, Dave Way, or Chris Fogel,
and they mix it. I'm always heavily involved.
I listen to every cue, I go to their
studios, and we tweak.
36 RECORDING September 2022
I'm not a trained engineer, but I've
learned so much about miking and mixing
through working with high-level engineers
over the years.
In scenario number two, I do a lot of it
myself. The orchestral recordings come
back to me, and I mix it all in Logic. I
prep it, and from there it goes to the
dubbing stage, where they put it in with
the dialogue and the sound effects.
AH: Do you ever have to go back
after the orchestra is recorded
and edit those parts if the
picture changes?
It happens all the time. Unlike in the
past, a picture is never locked. Everything
happens in parallel. Sometimes
we can compensate just through editing,
but sometimes I have had to go back
and rerecord parts.
Have you made the leap to Dolby
Atmos or spatial audio yet?
The first project I did mixed in Atmos
was Pacific Rim. I remember coming to
the dub stage, and it was amazing. Because
it was a big action movie, it was
great to hear things surrounding you
on the sides, but then all of a sudden,
the voice in the robot head is coming
from above, while the score pulls to the
sides. It just opened up everything, and
it keeps the dialogue very clear.
I have not worked in it too much in
my studio yet, because I usually prepare
and deliver my stems to the dubbing
stage, and there they get the Atmos
treatment. But the fact that spatial audio
tools are now available in Logic makes
me pretty pumped to explore that.
What's it like being a Logic
guy in a Pro Tools-dominated
industry?
Pro Tools is still very much the standard,
especially on the dub stage. But I have
been using Logic for more than 20 years,
and that's where I write all my music and
record my parts. I love the audio engine
and the time stretching and pitch capabilities.
I am blessed to work with the Apple
team, like David Earl and Jeff Cross. Sometimes,
I'll write things down like I wish Logic
could do this or it could do that, and they
listen, not only to me but also to their user
base. It's really great when they say, " oh
yeah, we are working on your suggestion. "
Any examples that you can
share?
One that I can think of is retrospective
MIDI recording. Typically, the only time
when I actually hit the record button is when
I record audio. When I work with MIDI,
and I am programming or sketching ideas,
I don't hit the record button. I'll be tinkering
on the keyboard and then realize there
was a great idea in there, but because it
wasn't recording, I didn't capture it.
I shared this with the team at Apple,
and in the next update, they actually put
it in. I am not sure how it works, but you
can just play on the keyboard, and it records
the MIDI in the background. It has
helped me save quite a few ideas.
RECORDING September 2022

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