Ostinatos - How some of the top composers use them in film
Ostinatos are repeating patterns of notes and are used by many Film and TV composers to help create movement and a sense of urgency in their music. Hans Zimmer frequently makes use of Ostinatos in his music, so I thought I would dive into a couple of examples of how he constructs and uses them.
Basic example of an Ostinato
One of my favourite pieces by Hans Zimmer is a piece called 'Chevaliers De Sangreal' from the ending of The Da Vinci Code:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpHkMZxNLV0
The foundation of the piece is this triplet-based Ostinato played in the Violins, which is mostly just made of up notes found in a D minor chord - D, F and A. More specifically, you can see Zimmer always returns to the root note of D after every other note, which acts like an anchor:
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To add some variation, he includes a Bb, the sixth degree of a D (natural) minor scale, towards the end of the bar.
The 1 bar Ostinato is then repeated for a 2nd time, with another slight variation towards the end - a high D instead of Bb:
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You can see the Ostinato is mostly made up of just notes found in the underlying chord/harmony - in this case, D minor.
Varying an Ostinato to fit with a chord progression
'Chevalier De Sangreal' is built upon a 4 chord progression which repeats - D minor, F major, Csus4 - C Major followed by A minor.
Zimmer continues using the ostinato throughout, but tweaks the notes in the subsequent repetitions, to reflect the changing chords.
When the underlying chord changes to F major, Zimmer tweaks his Ostinato to fit. The Ostinato has kept the same shape (including the higher pitch towards the end of the bar), but the 'D's on the bottom have now been replaced with 'C's. The result is that the Ostinato is made up of the notes of F, A and C, which of course form the chord of F major:
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Ostinatos which stay the same despite chords changing underneath
As well as varying the notes of an Ostinato to fit the accompanying chord, another technique Zimmer uses is to repeat an Ostinato exactly, whilst the chords change underneath.
A good example of this is from the cue called 'Dream is Collapsing' from Inception: https://youtu.be/OzLhXesNkCI?t=33
At around 33 Seconds into the piece, Zimmer introduces the Ostinato, again played in the Violins and 4 bars in length:
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The underlying chord for the 1st two bars is G minor, with the Ostinato mainly consisting of a single note - 'Bb'. At the beginning of Bar 2, a single 'A' is used, helping to add some brief dissonance.
During the 3rd bar, the ostinato carries on, while the underlying harmony changes to Gb major (in first inversion). The 'A' continues to create dissonance.
The chords then continue to change, moving to Eb major, before ending up on B major. Throughout this, the 4 bar Ostinato stays exactly the same.
The constant 'A' going to 'Bb' in the Ostinato helps to create tension, as well as adding the feeling of momentum and movement through the repetitive rhythm.
Below is a video I put together on YouTube of popular ostinatos written by James Newton Howard & Hans Zimmer that goes into more detail,
