I suppose this is one of the reasons I am becoming less and less impressed with some modern scores; the technology is such that anyone with money to buy the software and just a rudimentary knowledge of the way music works can produce something that sounds at least as good as your average temp-track copy. As time goes on and the technology progresses, I fear it's going to get harder and harder to tell the professional hacks from the people who actually know what they're doing. Although maybe this problem has always been with us, it's just that now instead of hiring ghostwriters to fill in the gaps the hacks will hire computers.

Mind you, I'm not saying the technology per se is a bad thing. For someone who actually does know what they're doing, it can be very helpful and save lots of time. Unfortunately, it can also be very good at covering up the mistakes of people who have no idea, or filling in the gaps for others who are simply lazy, and it has only a certain set of methods for correcting such mistakes and filling in such gaps. Ergo, more and more music is going to sound exactly alike.

I hope I don't know what I'm talking about.

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As time goes on and the technology progresses, I fear it's going to get harder and harder to tell the professional hacks from the people who actually know what they're doing.

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In the software's defense, it could be incredibly useful for film students that have a little knowledge of music and can't afford to have a composer score their films.

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Yes, I got the impression when I was reading the blurb about it that it was like a collection of different cues of varying lengths to suit different dramatic situations, and so is essentially a music library. I agree, this could be veru useful for young film makers. Initially I thought that this was just a sound sample pack so that you could 'harness the power' of a Hollywood 'sound' (ie, MV) in the comfort of your own home.

Something like this Cinemascape pack could also provide composers wishing to work in film with the opportunities for their music to be heard. I suppose the only problem with such a thing would be...

a.) being taken advantage of because its royalty free, and

b.) depending on how many people buy the software (or have composers sending them their own 'free' music sampler CDs), some people might start to notice a string of films all using the same music. Maybe this would be unlikely though, as any films getting enough exposure for people to notice the re-use of a score can probably afford to hire a composer and have a score 'tailor made'.

c.) Imho, it's a bit of a cop out. If it enhances a film then it's really only by chance as the music hasn't been written with a specific film in mind and I seriously doubt whether some film maker somewhere is producing/writing their next film with the music from this Cinemascape pack in mind. What's more is that it's probably won't hold up very well as stand-alone music either. Of course, I might be wrong, but that's just my suspicion.
It also seems to me that this is different to a director taking pre-exisiting popular or classical music, etc, and inserting it into their film. I'm not sure why exactly, but perhaps it has to do with that music already having a life outside of a film.

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Originally posted by Scorro:
Hans as progressed far beyond The Rock.

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Yeah, it's too bad you missed out on The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, and King Arthur ... to mention his recent and best efforts; Last Samurai presents a muted rehash of The Thin Red Line ("A Hard Teacher"), Gladiator ("A Way of Life" and "Specters In The Fog"), and Pearl Harbour ("The Final Charge"). And Zimmer only wrote the main theme for The Rock (he said that it's not very good, and only the best thing he could think of in the short period of time he had to boost that score), as all the rest of the music was done by Nick Glennie-Smith, Harry Gregson-Williams, and Don Harper.

To Sony, they seem to be out to do people a favor here, help them get scores for their low-budget productions with some neat score-providing software, but behind this is the implication that anyone with a few computer programs, some samples of instruments, and some generic free-to-use cues can come up with scores. It's like going on-line and downloading free clip art or fonts for the term paper you're writing. Besides that, it's old hat. There have already been albums like Music for Your Home Movies. The local Community Access TV station has a CD of copyright-free cues you can dub into your productions. The result: everything on the station sounds like the same elevator/70s TV show music. Ugh.

We who care about music and film music know that a film score should be more than some synth fakes and some droning. Not everyone has access to Maurice Jarre and the London Philharmonic. And, if you are scoring your own home video that you shot and are editing on your Mac, it might be better to noodle around with the Sony program and come up with your own original than just dub in music off cds you don't have copyright to, but there's still something culturally offensive about all of this.