The premium score music that’s currently available are tasty and usable, although not quite as prolific as I would like to see. When Soundbooth first came out in the CS3 release, Adobe made a developer’s kit available for folks to create scores for Soundbooth, similar to the way developer’s kits have allowed numerous third-party companies to create plugins for other Adobe software, like After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc. Unfortunately, even though the developer’s kit was updated to be more powerful with the release of CS4, third-party support hasn’t grown at the rate that most people were hoping it would and most of the premium scores are still being generated exclusively by Adobe. In the future, as this ability is harnessed more powerfully, Soundbooth users could easily have a truly massive selection of scores to choose from and buy from, especially if third party offerings can also be purchased through Adobe’s Resource Central.
Because each piece of music can be tweaked decently, you get more life out of each score than you do out of static arrangements, but the amount of variations isn’t as radical as SonicFire’s options, so the need for a greater amount of music will be necessary to keep things fresh and innovative.
With that said, as you look through the current options, choose carefully and remember that just because you "like" a particular piece of music doesn't mean that it's the right piece of music for your film. You've got to "listen" to your film and find the piece that fits it best and aids your story.
Each bundle of premium scores is designed to revolve around a specific style, such as: rock, jazz, etc. Each track in each genre bundle I tried was delightfully unique. Some are so divergent, like the rock bundle, that you'd be hard pressed to try to use them all within one film. Other bundles, like the jazz one, use songs that are better able to dovetail into the feel of the others and be utilized within a single film. (Of course, you could easily make the statement that a similar separation is what differentiates rock music from jazz. Rock stands out more as a sort of sonic representation of earth, whereas jazz flows behind the scenes as a sonic representation of water.)
Of the different bundles I tried, I liked the rock bundle the best. A couple of the jazz scores have a bit of a Kenny G feel, which is good or bad depending on your perspective and preference. Again, it all comes back to the mood you're shooting for with your film.
The free scores offer you a plethora of music to choose from. What made me the happiest was that Adobe seems to have avoided the temptation of making their free scores substandard. From what I can tell, while the options for the free scores didn’t seem to be quite as robust as the premium scores, the quality is the same with the free scores as it is with the premium scores. I don't need to tell you how cool that is, since we can't always afford to purchase music, and it's nice to be able to obtain copyright free music for free without sacrificing quality.
Not only did I dig on the high quality of these free scores, but I loved that there were so many. (While we tested fifty, I believe they have a few more than that as of this printing.) While some of these are ambient sounds, most of these are actual scores. That's a lot of options! Now that I've praised the quality and the quantity, I must make a disclaimer: many of these free scores are of a digital/dance sound...not all, but many. There are some fantastic scores, but one or two that you may be hard pressed to find a place to use due to the similarity of their inspiration. For example, the "Magical School" piece is a very cool score, but the use of it in your film (regardless of the film's content) will leave viewers saying, "That sounded like Harry Potter." That could be good or bad, again, depending on your perspective. (Of course, if you can snag an advertisement campaign for a company who wants to do a greenscreen takeoff on Potter, then that score might be just the ticket for your production company!)
