
Walkthrough

Spitfire Audio joins forces with the biggest name in film scoring to produce the ultimate drum sample library for cinematic percussion. Featuring the ensembles and solo instruments used by Oscar-winning Hans Zimmer in his blockbuster scores, we've drawn on his years of creativity and studio experimentation to give you all you need to create epic drum composition. From tombeks to taikos, playing from whisperingly quiet to thunderously loud, we’ve worked with Hans' Grammy award-winning team to capture the highest quality recordings, featuring the same players in Lyndhurst Hall at AIR Studios, London, where Hans records his biggest scores, all mixed and produced by the man himself.
The Professional edition also includes additional mixes by producer royalty Junkie XL, Geoff Foster, Alan Meyerson and Steve Lipson, including CPU-friendly stereo mixes and 10 individual microphone positions.
Circumstance Demands - Homay Schmitz
Timeless - Paul Thomson
Come Closer - Christian Henson
Gods Of Woar - Blake Robinson
Dawn Z (Alt Edit) - Christian Henson
Hans Zimmer is one of the most successful, influential and prolific film composers of his generation. Having won countless awards including Oscars, his scores for films including Gladiator, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight and Dunkirk he is considered one of the greatest living film composers. Hans has defined not only a compositional style, but also a production approach and sonic innovation that has influenced a generation of composers.
Made in close collaboration with Hans Zimmer and his team of Grammy-winning engineers, musicians and technicians, we present Hans Zimmer's expert, authorised take on cinematic percussion production. Herein lies not an emulation or synthesis of his approach, but a recreation; the same world class studio, musicians, instruments, signal chain and engineers, overseen in every detail by Hans himself with the same attention to detail and perfection, coupled with Spitfire's pioneering technology designed to offer you ultimate creative customisation.
Hans Zimmer Percussion combines the output from two extraordinary recording blocks. Material from the “London Ensembles” block features four of Hans’ go-to percussionists - Frank Ricotti, Gary Kettel, Stephen Henderson, Paul Clarvis - performing a variety of instruments and styles, in what is essentially a distillation of over a decade's worth of musical experimentation and innovation.
This includes his classic selection of drum ensembles and key solo instruments:
Low Booms, Low Boom Gallery, Taiko Ensemble, Tamtam Ensemble, Boobams Ensemble, Hi Taiko Solo, Low Taiko Solo, Large Taiko Solo, Bass Drum Gallery, Gong Drum Gallery Solo, Surdu Ensemble, Dohl Ensemble, Tombek Ensemble
Bombo Ensemble, Buckets & Snares Ensemble, Buckets & Crushers Ensemble, Bucket Top & Darbuka, Paper Djun, Piatti, Anvils, Timpani Ensemble. Instruments played by Paul Clarvis include: Bucket, Snare, Crusher, Paper Djun, Tombek, Dohl, Darbuka, Surdu.
The remainder of the library features long term Hans collaborator and percussion legend, Paul Clarvis (Spectre, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Star Wars) who plays a beautiful selection of solo instruments that offer added bite, detail, focus, clarity and nuance to this epic series. Hans loves the quiet layers more than any other so as well as the bitey thunder you'd expect, there are lower layers that offer up the potential for engaging delicate drum programming to help tick your cues along.
As per many of Hans’ scores, this library is recorded in Lyndhurst Hall at AIR Studios, London, via an impressive signal chain: 96 rarefied microphones into Neve Montserrat preamps, into the world's biggest Neve 88R desk (which was exhaustively re-gained at every dynamic layer for optimum signal quality), via a dual chain to HDX and Prism converters running at 192k. We have recorded the drums and articulations each with up to 9 round robins and 6 dynamic layers per hit; there’s well over 30 TB of raw material from these sessions alone.
This library includes mixes by the following A-List composers, producers and engineers:
Hans Zimmer* -Dunkirk, The Lion King, Interstellar, Inception, Dark Knight
Junkie XL - Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Batman v Superman
Geoff Foster - Bjork, Life Of Pi, Dunkirk, Nocturnal Animals, Gone Girl
Alan Meyerson - Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, Interstellar
Steve Lipson - Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Annie Lennox, Pharrell Williams - (5 Grammy wins and multiple nominations)
*Hans Zimmer: Artist Elements: Close Perspective, Room Perspective, Surround (Far) Perspective
Alan Meyerson: Artist Elements: Close Perspective, Room Perspective, Surround (Far) Perspective
Geoff Foster: Artist Elements: Close Mics, Tree Mics, Outrigger (Wide) Mics, Surround (Far) Mics; Additional Mics: Bottle Mics, Mid Mics, Gallery Mics, Overheads Cardioid, Mid PZM, Ambient Pair
We are also excited to announce that the library is now NKS ready, with multi-outputs added to the mixer, a technique editor for customizing presets, various optimisations to RAM and CPU usage, and finally, improvements to the legato patches. For information on how to update, read our FAQs here.
Stereo mixes by Hans Zimmer, Alan Meyerson, Geoff Foster, Junkie XL and Steve Lipson
Junkie XL: Artist Elements: Close Perspective, Room Perspective, Surround (Far) Perspective
*These mixes are included in the standard edition of Hans Zimmer Percussion
This interface is built especially for our percussive libraries to make it easy to map sounds to any connected MIDI interface. It also includes the microphone mixer and available feature controllers.
An additional kickstart interface for the timpani allowing you to play the full range of these instruments in a separate patch.
If you already own HZ01 and HZ03, you will receive Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional completely free of charge on the day of release!
Hans Zimmer Percussion is a consolidation of Hans Zimmer’s mixes from HZ01 and HZ03, plus additional features (see next question).
Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional contains additional microphones and mixes from Hans Zimmer, Junkie XL, Alan Meyerson, Steve Lipson and Geoff Foster.
Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional does use the same content as HZ01 and HZ03 but they are distinct and separate libraries. That means that if you already have HZ01 and/or HZ03 and choose to download Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional, you will effectively be downloading the content again.
If you own Hans Zimmer Percussion Professional and do not need to keep HZ01 and HZ03 for compatibility with old sessions, you may wish to delete the HZ01 and HZ03 libraries in order to free up space on your drives.