Rah, marketing! I'm glad to see so many prominent sample libraries, including the East West/Quantum Leap series, positioned at movie, TV, AND game music composers. It suggests what demand there must be for game music, in addition to making game music sound more like their non-interactive counterparts.
I was watching Warehouse 13 and amidst the bom-shikka-bom and ch-ch-ch-sk! was reminded of Heavyocity's Evolve (that's one way to come up with a unique brand) — while I didn't recognize any of the loops for certain, a lot of current action/crime/drama/horror/suspense/etc. soundtracks use Evolve and have very rhythmic cues, which on one strand were popularized after Michael Giacomo worked on Alias. Even if you don't make computer music, go check out the Evolve page, or heck, the new Evolve Mutations I just got and expect to subvert… and you'll be like, "Whoa, this sounds like what I was watching last night!" (Unless it was romcom — romantic comedy… unless it happened to be a particularly creative take on the genre.)
To show and not just tell you — since the sounds speak (or at least, scream) for themselves — here are me banging away with True Strike Tension, which conjures up LaFontaine-ish-narrated trailers with, well, big bangs! It's incredible how world-class sounds like these are comparatively affordable for the hobbyist, or even "professional hobbyist" or "probbyist" such as meself:
What's also popular is supplementing, or toughening up your symphonic orchestra with… a rock band! True to Metallica S&M style, Sonokinetic has RockHard – Epic Rock Construction Kits, and would you guess, the blurb reads: "Produced and recorded for quick and efficient scoring for trailers and game scores." Then goes on to say "This library provides basic rock construction kits for complimenting symphonic Orchestral music." Yes, this is the evolution of classical music — bolstered by big beats and distortion for 2-min. teasers!
What cracks me up is the bit: "RockHard provides tracks in two keys. D minor and E minor." Hans Zimmer (who's used rock guitar with his bombastic scores) does D minor a loooot.
Sonokinetic also offers "Q's" which Rekkerd's Ronnie has a good review of, and these include what I term "transition sounds", which I'm an incredibly big fan of. What's funny is I've seen collections like this, and the just-noticed Razor FX from Prime Loops (just US$25!) strongly targeted at the modern music market, including dance music, while the sounds themselves often come from a "spice up my radio talk show!" background. You know, all those zips, zaps, swishity-do-dahs that aggro DJs use to introduce the next sponsor? While not a tremendous gap, it's curious to see how broadly-useful sounds get a more focused market by explicitly saying "This is ideal for fidget house producers…" or "Spice up your next Cuban dubstep production with…"
While I take note of that, a pure joy for me comes in recontextualizing sounds and moving them outside of their expected "homes". Given that some styles are defined almost exclusively by sound (acid without a TB-303 or clone is near-unthinkable), this, shall we say, keeps it fresh.
Anyhoo, transition sounds-wise, I'm well-stocked for the time being, including the force that is Wave Alchemy SFX Collection Vol. 1, but like there's always more room for dessert, there's always more room for lovely noises. In the meantime, time to bunker down and become intimately familiar with what I've got.
That SFX Collection video of course features none other than… "002 – The Watermelon Patch". #3 in my musical Dream Journal coming… to this blog… soon.