Guns and Butter

I loved my high school economics class. I may not remember much of it now, but at the moment, I am faced with a 'real-world' application for something we actually covered in class. That problem was about two fictional countries, each is capable of making two products: 'guns' and 'butter', and they are capable of trading with each other. At the end of the exercise, we learned that each country made huge gains by specializing their industry and trading with the other, instead of doing everything on their own.

This is relevant to me, because despite my love of audio composition, I'm finding myself trying to juggle both guns and butter at the moment, and now my hands are getting all messy. I got about halfway through the song for the thesis when I realized that it was taking way too long. The solution? ROCK-OUT STOCK MUSIC!

It's not as pretty as I'd like, but I found a stock song that fits fairly well, and also that allows for a full sync license for a very reasonable price. So I put aside my keyboard and the 17 gigs of audio samples I was playing with, and wrapped up the music portion of the short film.

I will learn from this experience and avoid making the same mistake twice. Sure, I love tinkering with composition, but if I start down that path I will have to give up my other duties to the project, because there's only so many hours in the day. Especially when I have to share those hours with a full-time job. So for the next project, I will find myself a good composer and coordinate with him/her early on. That'll give them the time they need to work their magic.

And make no mistake, good music in any film/game project is worth its weight in gold. Magical gold.