 Over 100 minutes of score are present in Speed 2, more than Mancina wrote for Speed and Twister combined. After the score was written, Mancina created a demo of the entire score on a synthesizer to play for de Bont. While the score for Speed only used strings, French horns, and percussion, Speed 2 used a wider variety of instruments including trombones, large woodwinds, bass clarinets, and contrabassoons. Mancina, himself, played a nylon string guitar on several cues. The reggae music featured a band with steel drums, in addition to Cuban drums and Latin percussion. De Bont wanted 16 steel drum players, but due to the lack of players available, Mancina used eight drums which were double-tracked. The orchestra had 96 players, which was significantly larger than the orchestra of 63 players that performed the score for Speed. Music was recorded on an Electro-Voice microphone that allowed the music to be recorded directly to a computer without the need for equalization or compression, due to the microphone's high clarity.
