TECH TIPS
Get Smart Re-thinking the Music Library
by Scott Stambler
I’ll begin with the bottom line: SmartSound’s Sonicfire Pro is very, very smart. I had seen their ads in Editors Guild Magazine but didn’t really believe that a library could provide high-quality, royalty-free music that would fit the needs of a feature film music editor. However, I was recently introduced to the software through Marty Cohen, executive vice president of post-production at Paramount, who told SmartSound executives that I might be interested in their product since I do so many temps. After just a few minutes of using the Sonicfire Pro software, I was truly impressed.
In fact, three SmartSound music cues made their way into the final mix of Rob Reiner’s new film, The Bucket List. We were looking to replace some pricey source music and I had cut some options from the SmartSound library. When I played the SmartSound cues and Reiner asked how much money each cue cost, I told him they were essentially free. (Most of their tracks are about $20 a piece, which is as good as free in the movie business.)
I could see his producer, Alan Greisman, gleefully erasing numbers from the Excel music budget each time I said, “Free.” The ultimate compliment was when Rob told me on the dub stage that one of the SmartSound cues worked better then the pricey source cue we had had in the temp. Ultimately, SmartSound saved The Bucket List about $70,000 in licensing fees.
This is the most intuitive music software I have seen since Apple’s Garage Band. With SmartSound you can work without a manual and immediately get results. But there are several tips and tricks that I’ve learned which can make your experience easier.
Finding the Right Piece of Music
SmartSound gives almost limitless options for finding music with a level of
quality that you should hear for yourself. The most important tool is its
search engine, called the Maestro. Through the Maestro, you can instantly
listen to previews from SmartSound’s entire library of music cues that
are stored on the company’s servers, or music that you have purchased
and loaded onto your hard drive.
 Figure 1. |
Figure 1 shows how the Maestro works. You have several options. First, you can choose which music files you search. Searching “On My Computer” shows you everything you have loaded on your computer or attached hard drive. But if you want to search the entire SmartSound music library and you are connected to the Internet, just choose to search “All.” From there, you can search every track in the library and hear a preview. If you find a track you like, you can purchase it for $19.95 per track and have it downloaded to your hard drive for immediate use.
There are several options for searching, including musical styles, intensity, instruments and specific libraries. You can even search by keywords that reflect the mood of a particular track. One tip for maximizing your results is to combine your searches to be as precise as possible.
Figure 2 shows you how you might find a Latin track that works for you out of the dozens of Latin tracks in the library. By searching on the style Latin and the keyword “punchy,” I’ve now narrowed the search down from the thousands of total tracks available to the 13 that fit my criteria.
 Figure 2. |
Clicking on columns in the results can sort even further. For example, I can sort the results by most to least intense by clicking on the “Intensity” column. I can preview each track and find what’s right for me––even listening to the track while watching my visuals by clicking on the “Preview with Timeline” option on the bottom right corner. You often won’t know if a piece of music works with a scene until you watch them synced together. The “Preview with Timeline” function allows you to make quicker decisions.
You can also see that the Maestro lists critical information about each track, such as tempo and description. Composer and publishing information can be found by clicking on the “More Information” button near the “Preview with Timeline” box. Even though SmartSound’s music is royalty-free, you’ll need this if you want to include information in credits––or if you need to report the usage to ASCAP or BMI. And as you can see in Figure 3, it also gives you the ability to save user notes, which can be later searched to find frequently used tracks. For example, I can list which projects I used certain tracks on and, search the projects later, if I need to use the track again.
 Figure 3. |
Editing
Although Sonicfire Pro is not meant for intensive editing, with one
click you can automatically turn a two-minute cue into a cue of any
length you need––from a few seconds to much longer. Figure
4 shows you that in the Maestro, you can select the length of the
track, or “insert the track into the Timeline to automatically
fill the length of your clip.” Figure 5 shows you this track
inserted into the Timeline. Once you are working with the music in
your Timeline, everything is drag and drop. You can move a piece around,
or make it shorter or longer; the software automatically edits the
track to fit any length.
 Figure 4. |
Sometimes, you might like a piece of music, but not be thrilled with the final edit. In the Timeline is an option to choose different “Variations.” These are different arrangements, or ways that the song can be edited to fit the length needed. Try choosing different “Variations” before settling on a final piece; the same track can sound very different depending on how it is edited.
SmartSound uses a patented process that breaks each song into multiple phrases (called “Blocks”) and determines which blocks can flow seamlessly into each other (as well as which are proper beginning or ending blocks). All of this information is encoded into the music track and is used by the Sonicfire Pro software when a new score is created. You can see the Blocks for the song in the Timeline at the bottom of Figure 5. You can build your score manually by dragging individual blocks into the Timeline. The software will give you “suggestions” on which blocks flow well after other blocks.
Included in the Network Edition of Sonicfire Pro 4.5 (a paid option) is a feature called Express Track. Express Track contains a music search engine that allows you to select the exact length, arrangement and mix that you want for each track, and export the track for immediate use without bringing it into a Timeline. Television editors and music editorial companies could benefit from this feature.
Mood Mapping
With other libraries, if you like a certain track but you happen to
hate the guitar, you are out of luck. You either have to live with
the guitar part or scrap the piece and move to another track.
 Figure 5 and Figure 6. |
SmartSound’s Mood Mapping feature changes how you work with production music. Through Mood Mapping, you have control over the mix of individual instrument layers at any point in a track. Each track’s “Mood Map” is shown above it in the Timeline in Figure 6. You have several preset options to choose from if you want to adjust the “Mood” of your track. Each track starts with a “Full” mix (with all instrument layers at 100 percent volume). You can change this to a variety of different presets (which may have certain layers, such as percussion, brass or leads, eliminated or reduced in volume.)
You can take even more control by changing the level of each preset instrument layer by adjusting the level through a slider in the Mood Mapping window. For the track in Figure 7, I’ve made several adjustments, such as greatly lowering the drums and percussion. That guitar part you didn’t like can now be pushed back into the mix or even eliminated directly from the timeline––and without having to bring it into ProTools to do major work on it.
 Figure 7. |
If you need to have the mix change at multiple points during one scene (say, to duck for dialogue), you simply add Mood Markers at the relevant points in the Timeline. Figure 8 shows you that I’ve created points to represent transitions between Moods within the same piece of my score. You can change the length of the transitions within a Mood in its properties window (see Figure 9). Making slight changes to this can make a big difference in getting the music to sync up correctly.
 Figure 8. |
 Figure 9. |
Exporting Your Music
When you finish working with the music in Sonicfire Pro, you have several
options for exporting. You can directly export the finished score to several
editing suites (such as Final Cut Pro), or simply save the music as an uncompressed
audio file. You can even export each instrument track separately for further
work in ProTools. The multi-tracks created from Mood Mapping will be seen
by ProTools as separate stereo tracks.
One last thing about Sonicfire, which is bringing hi-tech to the music library world, is Smart Recall. It makes managing SmartSound’s customizable music dead simple. When you export a track to a .wav or .aiff file, it attaches the Sonicfire Pro project information to that file. So, you can open that file at any time in Sonicfire Pro and it will automatically remember exactly where it was when it was created.
The Results
SmartSound isn’t going to replace composers or licensing commercial
music for all productions, but it does bring a level of customization and
flexibility to production library music that has previously been unattainable.
Using SmartSound changed my expectations about library music.
Scott Stambler is a music editor and composer. He has also worked with composers Marc Shaiman, Jerry Goldsmith and Cliff Eidelman. He was profiled in the MAY-JUN 06 issue of Editors Guild Magazine. You can find him at www.scottydotcom.com.
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