by Kevin P McAuliffe

Music is a big part of any production, and picking or having someone compose the right piece of music for you can be essential in getting across a specific mood in your show or film. To hire a composer, in many cases, can cost you a lot of money, and taking music from stock libraries has you run the risk of hearing the same piece of music in someone else's production.

So what do you do? Well, why not create your own music? These days there are many companies on the market that have designed music creation programs to (try to) make your life and music creation much easier, but in many cases, these programs have had varied results. I thought for the first review on Reel Clever, we would take a look at Smart Sound's SonicFire Pro 5 for OS X.

INSTALLATION

Much like many applications, SonicFire Pro 5 (SFP5) installs quickly and easily, and you should be up and running in no time. My best suggestion would be to make sure you have an internet connection on the computer you will be using SFP5 on, as you will need to not only register your copy, but SFP5 will also update your libraries automatically once you launch the application.

Smart Sound has also made the process of installing new music libraries very, very easy. Simply launch the application, and once it's open, pop your new CD into your computer, and SFP5 automatically imports (or references from the CD) the tracks and gets your new music ready for you to use.

This was probably one of the more user friendly programs I have used in a very, very long time. It's great to see that Smart Sound is trying to make every step of the installation process as simple as possible for us, the user.

WHAT YOU GET AND HOW IT WORKS

At its core, SFP5 is a music creation program. It is designed so that you can score your corporate video, show or film with as much or little control as you want. When you launch SFP5, the first window you are greeted by is the "Express Track" window, which if you don't want it, can be disabled inside the preferences pane.

The "Express Track" window has become my new best friend. This window allows you to quickly navigate through the titles or tracks that you own to find the exact piece of music you are looking for. Simply check the "Owned Titles" check box, and you will now have a complete breakdown of all the tracks that you have purchased, their names, the album they are from, their "Intensity" and their tempo. I personally use the "Intensity" column all the time, as I cut a lot of high energy pieces, and I need to track down intense music quickly. To listen to a track, simply select it, and press the "Play" button in the lower right corner of the screen. As you can see right above the "Play" button is a "Length" parameter, a "Variation" drop down and a "Mood" drop down. This is where you can set the initial parameters for your music. Mood, for example, let's you choose between "Full", "Drums and Bass", "Background" as well as many other variations depending on the music track you choose.

Depending on how you like to source your music, you can have SFP5 sort by Album, Composer, Favorites and Notes, and even the Instrument. This application is so user friendly that it's an absolute breeze picking the music you want.

At this point, if you were happy with your music choice, you could simply enter the duration of your piece (assuming you know what it is), click "Insert" and you now have a track to work with.

One last thing I want to mention about "Express Track" is that you can use it to sample and purchase additional music tracks and albums directly from Smart Sound. To download a preview track takes seconds, and it is a great way to pinpoint the exact type of music track you want, before you buy it.

Now, let's see how easy it really is to make your soundtrack. First, we need a video clip to work with, and as luck would have it, I have one! I've called it "Our Wedding Day for Music Mix.mov", and to get it into SFP5 is simple. Navigate to FILE>CHOOSE VIDEO, or you can use the short cut of CMD+Y. The video will immediately load into your viewer.

Also, if you have your "Spotting" window open, you will notice that two keyframes have been added, one at the start and the other at the end or your piece, and you can now see that your video segment (or mine in this case) runs 1:45:06.

The "Spotting" window is a new feature of SFP5. This window is where you will manage your keyframes, and have SFP5 determine a perfect piece of music for your segments duration and the pacing of the markers located between the start and end markers. It sounds easy in theory, but let's take a closer look at the "Spotting" window, so you can see what I mean.

As you can see, I have input a bunch of markers that will signify important changes in my music. Once I have added all my markers, SFP5 will let me choose from a variety of tempos that work with my keyframes.

I can also tell SFP5 what type of music I want it to search for.

Once I select the tempo of music I want (we'll use 146 as an example), I click the "Express Track" button, and I now have a selection of music to choose from. This will obviously vary depending on what music you have purchased from Smart Sound.

If I am happy with the music choices SFP5 has given me, I can pick one and drop it into my timeline, and in most cases you could be done at this point, but wait.....there's more. Once the track is in my timeline, I can now click the drop down arrow below the track name, and now I have access to all the different instruments in the piece.

Now I can isolate different parts of each instrument and delete them, duplicate them, extend them, have them fade in or out wherever I choose. This is probably the most control I have ever seen in a music creation program. But wait.....there's even more!

If I didn't want that much control, and I wanted to just do a simple "artistic" change to the music, I can simply navigate to one of my locators on my timeline, click on the track of music, then press the "Add Mood" button on the tool bar at the top of the timeline.

You will immediately notice that an edit has been added to your music track. You will also now notice that the "Properties" window now displays all the instruments in your piece with faders. What we are going to do is an overall change, so I'm going to click on the "Full" drop down menu, and select "Drums Only".

You will now notice that your timeline has been updated to reflect your change in mood.

Now, if you play your timeline, you will hear that there is a very quick transition from the full mix to just the drums on their own. You can adjust the transition time to whatever you like in your properties window. You will also notice a button on the tool bar called "Insert Hit Files". You can use this feature to add cymbal hits or whooshes at a particular time in your timeline to get that extra "punch" to your track. SFP5 comes with a collection of cymbal hits and crashes, whooshes, and many other sounds to choose from.

One last thing that I want to mention is that you are not limited to one music track per video. With SFP5 you can essentially score a 90 minute show or movie right from within the interface using multiple music tracks molded into whatever sound and duration you need. When you are done with your music creation, you can export in a variety of formats for whatever end application you are going to use. For all the music creation programs I have worked with, SFP5 has not only the best choice in music, but it also has the easiest workflow with the best end result.

PROS

• Excellent music selection with free previews and the ability to purchase right inside SFP5.
• Extremely easy to use.
• SFP5 is your one stop shop for creating not just a music track, but a score for any production you are working on.

CONS

• Why haven't they made it into an audio post application with OMF import so you can mix your entire show?

 

Purchase Recommendation:

If you ever plan on creating music for your shows or films, this is the program to get!

SonicFire Pro 5 - Scoring edition from Smart Sound is hands down the easiest and best music creation program I have seen on the market today. It's not only easy to use, but there is music that you will actually want to have in your show. When you buy a music collection, the Express Track Edition of SonicFire Pro is free, and the Scoring Edition is only a $99 US upgrade. For more information on SonicFire Pro 5, or to download a 21 day free demo or to purchase the Scoring Edition, you can navigate to www.smartsound.com.