Legendary Hollywood film-score composer Hans Zimmer has teamed up with BMW to create a new sound signature that will accompany the automaker into its electric future. But don’t think Zimmer – who’s working along side Renzo Vitale, acoustic engineer and sound designer at the BMW Group – is conjuring up traditional engine sounds to pipe through the EV’s audio system. That’s something BMW does quite well already.
BMW IconicSounds Electric is altogether more esoteric and forward-thinking. The pallet of sounds that will debut in the 2022 i4 and iX electric span from a short “start-up” sound to more lengthy audio signatures for acceleration, deceleration, etc, along with soundscapes tailored to the new My Modes.
With names like Sport, Personal, Expressive, and Relax, these modes coordinate drive and chassis control, lighting mood, and sound colours, as well as the colour scheme and graphics of the BMW Curved Display. These sounds also extend to low-speed warning alert for pedestrians.
Fresh from snagging the Golden Globe award for his Dune soundtrack, Zimmer speaks from his recording studio in Santa Monica, California. “The possibilities of what we can do are endless. We are expressing emotions through sounds, and it’s a way of making the future a more sonically refined place.”
The BMW IconicSounds Electric initiative started mid-2019, and the first result was a 1.8-second snippet drivers hear when pressing the Start button on their electric vehicle. Although brief, it is indeed a cinematic composition that starts with a percussive hit, sonically escalating to a climax via broadening layers of analogue synth sounds, orchestral timbres, and a female voice that was recorded specifically for this application.
I asked Zimmer if he and Vitale are incorporating “natural” elements in these sound designs. “Yes, I’m casting musicians like you might cast an actor,” he explains. “There’s a cellist I use because I know her sound. And of course vocalists. For Expressive Mode, we used real strings and horns from an orchestra.” He goes on to say, “When I write for a film, I write for a protagonist. When I write for a car, I imagine the driver, the kind of car, and the experience of driving.” BMWs from the M performance division get their own aural signatures.
,’autonav’:true}&autoplay=0&playsinline=1&enablejsapi=1″]
Zimmer wants the accelerator pedal to be a performance element — where the driver moves through a series of gradually morphing sound textures. For this, he uses an audio “illusion” called the Shepard Tone, a series of rising tones layered upon one another that, when looped, trick the ear into hearing the sound as constantly rising, creating tension. Owners will have the option of muting these sonic creations if they wish to enjoy the peaceful environment electric vehicles can provide.
“One of the things that hit me when BMW came to me was the idea of getting rid of the combustion engine… doing the leap in my mind of what the world was like before we had the combustion engine, before the industrial revolution,” Zimmer explains. “When we had silence. And silence is sort of an expensive commodity to get to these days. And then I started thinking, here’s a revolutionary opportunity to go and make the sound of our world more beautiful.”
Keyword: How Hans Zimmer treats BMW EV sounds like a movie score