sonic clip art
so, i’m playing Aion the other night and my audio cohort / coworker / codependent is looking over my shoulder. his ears perk up whilst i’m merrily grinding along, “hey, go back to that one spot. i recognize that music!” so i wander around a little bit until the music in question returns. “yeah…yeah! that’s an ACID loop! i thought i knew that thing! here…hold on a sec…” and with that he disappears into his office.
moments latter this link appears in my IM, and he comes running back in. “that’s it, right?” and sure enough, that’s it. an off-the-shelf music loop from a free-with-purchase CD has found its way into Aion.
most people would probably wonder what the big deal is, and unless you’ve achieved a certain level of snobbery in your musical outlook (a level of snobbery which i surpassed years ago, i’m forced to admit), it’s really *not* a big deal. i mean, whomever was responsible for putting together the score for that game had a Big Job to do, and they used whatever tools were at their disposal to do it. on the other hand, i can’t help feeling like we just discovered somebody’s dirty little secret…like finding out the artists used free clip art for a few of the inventory icons, or some other silly hypothetical like that.
i have a feeling from now on when i’m playing, my ears will be tuned into the music more than ever, but for the wrong reasons – i’ll be listening for more of that sonic clip art and hollering “gotcha!” when i find it. :)
