Music Creation Software: Recommendations?

wywso0 · Post by **wywso0** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:11 am

Apologies if this is a bit off-topic.

I have been looking into music creation software and have looked at demos of both SonicFire Pro from Smartsound and Sony's Cinescore.

SonicFire seems an excellent product but it isn't cheap (about $199). Also, as I understand it , you don't get many Smartsound tracks to work with in the basic package - extra tracks have to be bought separately at a price of up to $99 per CD (of 10 to 12 tracks typically). Cinescore doesn't seem quite so good but is also pricey.

I think these products are aimed at the professional or semi-professional market and priced accordingly. As an amateur, these costs are beyond what I am prepared to pay for music for what are - ultimately - home movies.

Does anyone know of any cheaper options?

(I realise that I could use tracks from ordinary CDs which I could copy into VS10+ as .mp3 files. Passing over the copyright issues for a moment - I doubt there's much chance that I would be caught, one of the features that impressed me about SonicFire was its ability to adapt the music to any length of time and to change its "mood" setting to match the video track. Can anything else do this?)

regards,
Bill S

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:23 pm

Have you used the music creation software that comes with VS10 Plus

It's a Smartsound product, and has a nice variety of music styles (imho)

Regards,
George

Post by **Ron P.** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:55 pm

I think you named the two that are able to do that. As far as I know there's not alot of programs available that can do what SonicFire or SmartSound can do.

However I'm not willing to pay the steep price for those just for home movies. They are geared for the pros or those with more cash then they can spend...

So what I do is use GeorgeW's suggestion, however get creative. You can use small segements of the audio clips to create moods. Unless you are making a slideshow of images, then I don't think you would want music playing during the entire video. Pay attention to movies and TV shows, they use the music to set the mood, or enhance the scene, but it doesn't play continually throughout. Most of the time the audio segments are short.