tabletopaudio

Carriage Journey: Alternate Track

Just in case some of you would prefer Carriage Journey as pure ambience (no music) I've included a version without music here. 

best,

Tim

New Ambience: Carriage Journey

Greetings Patrons,

It's so tempting in our games and stories to focus on set pieces; the action sequences, the iconic locations. While these are important, we sometimes forget that the transitional periods are equally valuable. How did the characters arrive? What happened during that time?

Writers like Jane Austen loved these moments. Entire chapters where the characters sat around a dinner table or in a drawing room, revealed hidden motives, subplots and backstory. In-between moments ar...

New Ambience: Halfling Festival

Greetings Patrons,

I needed to spend some time working on something joyous this week. Winter in NYC seems to get longer and longer, and with an impending snowstorm (in mid-march!) I had to find sunshine somewhere.

So I thought, what could be more joyous to the desultory adventurer than coming upon a halfing village in the throws of a raucous festival? It could be a wedding, it could be the celebration of a victory – or, it could just be a typical Monday.

As I say in the flavor te...

New Ambience: Open Ocean

Greetings Patrons,

I've been deep in code world this week, trying to wrangle some new features. This is always slow going for me, so I needed to clear my head and balance things out with some audio work. Open Ocean was just what I needed. Gentle rolling waves, some minimal music and subtle water movement sounds. 

Most Ocean sounds tend to be beach/surf/bird type affairs. I wanted to get far away from land for this one. I tried to imagine myself just floating, maybe paddling...

New Ambience: The Bog Standard

I get requests for 'more taverns' a lot, but this one had a specific requirement: no music. I thought that was a pretty good idea. After all, many of you want to add your own music on top, or just don't want the distraction, or - maybe your party has just suffered a crushing setback and a bard playing a jaunty tune in the corner is about the last thing you want to hear.  So, here's The Bog Standard.  This should fit the bill for a background in almost any situation yo...

Jungle Planet Sounds added to Custom SoundPad

Greetings Patrons,

Just a quick note to say that the 32 sounds from the latest SoundPad, Jungle Planet, have now been added to the Custom SoundPad tool and are ready for mixing.

Thanks as always for your support.

Best,

Tim

Custom SoundPad 

New SoundPad: Jungle Planet

Greetings Patrons,

I've been quiet for the last couple of weeks, I know. But I've been working  on this.

I got a request a few weeks ago for a waterfall sound. Just the sound, not a full ambience. And, while I've been known to drop in sounds to already existing SoundPads I started thinking about where a waterfall might be found. The answer, apparently, was on a Jungle Planet.

I already had a nature-centric SoundPad in Dark Forest, but I always felt that was m...

New SoundPad Preview: Monster Pack

Greetings patrons,

I've had this idea kicking around for awhile. An all monster SoundPad.

It's a bit of a departure. SoundPads were originally conceived as  environment simulators. Cohesive sets of background sounds, tones and music that described a place, with a few foreground events thrown in to describe time-specific actions. The Combat SoundPad first broke this mold by not describing a place, but by describing the background and foreground of a larger, action based tableau.

New Ambience: Russian Winter

Greetings Patrons,

I had a request from a Twitter follower a few weeks ago for something Slavic,  or as they said, "you know, something with balalaikas". They also mentioned the soundtrack to a game called "The Witcher", which I haven't played, but seemed interesting.  I was intrigued by the challenge. 

As it's winter in New York City, many of us don massive coats and hats, grow beards, grow ...

Update: Custom SoundPad

Greetings Dear Patrons,

Just a quick note to let you know that the Custom SoundPad tool has now been updated with all the sounds from the recently released 'Deep Six' SoundPad. There are now over 400 sounds available for mixing.

Additionally, I've increased the maximum number of sounds allowed from 32 to 36. 

Thanks you all for your continuing support,

best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio...

New SoundPad Deep Six is Live

Made a few tweaks over the last couple of days and finally decided that it was ready for the public at large, so feel free to share now!

Also, the music cross-fade feature is now available on all the individual SoundPads

best,

Tim

New SoundPad

Greetings and Happy New Year!

It's been so cold here in New York City I found myself retreating into my studio more than I usually do over the holidays. So much so, that I've managed to get a brand new SoundPad done in time for the New Year.

This new SoundPad, Deep Six, has been brewing in the back of my mind for some time. I've always been a big fan of undersea films and I always find the environments and sounds are perfect for eliciting a feeling of adventure as well as dread....

2017 End of Year Retrospective

2017 is coming to a close which means I’ve been working on Tabletop Audio for 4 years. I’ve done a few of these year end retrospectives now. I find they help me put things in perspective and motivate me to create new and better things in the new year.

Here’s a quick, back-of-the-envelope list of things we did together in 2017:

I created 24 new 10 minute ambience tracks and 2 new SoundPads, added text filtering and a keyword search to the homepage and title filtering to the Custom S...

Tech Update: New Track Looping Mode

Greetings Patrons,

I hope the holiday season has been good to you.

Thanks to a request from a supporter here on Patreon, I've added a new feature to the ambience player on the homepage. You can now loop individual tracks within a playlist.

The reason for this, as stated by the requester, is that many of you like to queue up a bunch of tracks ahead of time for play, but don't necessarily want them play one after the other. The workaround for this has been adding multiple instances o...

New Musical Track: Weirder Things 2

Greetings Patrons,

Guess which 2nd season of a show I recently finished watching?

As you know, I was a big fan of the first season of Stranger Things and composed the track "Weirder Things" as an homage to the vibe of the period and the show. I decided that I would give this season a similar treatment.

It's a music only 10 minute musical track that you can use any place you would use synthwave, or darkwave or just plain moody music. Modern or futuristic stories will defini...

"No new fees" - Patreon.

Dear Patrons,

If you haven't read my post from a few days ago on the new proposed fees being levied by Patreon on you, the supporters, then maybe it's for the best. Patreon has issued a mea culpa in the form of a blog post (a pretty well done apology actually) and announced that the new fees will not go into effect.

I could go on and on about how all this was mishandled and how they mad...

Custom SoundPad: fade in/out music tracks

Greetings Patrons,

Before I get into the tech update I'd like to take a moment to thank those of you who have commented or emailed me about my Patreon fees post. It was truly heartwarming to hear from so many of you and I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. 

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Tech Update: I recently pushed out an update which had the music tracks cancelling each other out so they don't play over each other as they do in the individual SoundPads. In this latest version, the tra...

Patreon's New Fees:

Update Dec. 13 2017: Patreon has issued an apology and the proposed fee structure will NOT be taking place. There are no new fees associated with being a supporter on Patreon. You can read the mea culpa post here. I’m keeping this blog post up for posterity and as a reminder that when voices are raised in unison, change happens. – Tim 

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My...

Tech Update: Custom SoundPad

Greetings Patrons,

 2 new features have been added to the Custom SoundPad.

First, music tracks no longer play over each other. They correctly cancel/replace each other the same way they do in the individual SoundPads.

When playing a music track, playing another music track, will stop the currently playing track and replace it so they don't play over each other.

The second update is that scenes are now included in the 'Get Link' feature.

This was a big one (well, fo...

New Ambience: Waiting Time

Not every story is all action, drama, or suspense. Sometimes you need a little lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek downtime. Maybe you need to think, or do research, or create a montage of events. For this we need a musical track that implies time - or more importantly, the passage of time. 

Waiting Time is a 10 minute musical track that works well as a humorous interlude, but it can also be a bit creepy - think Alice-in-Wonderland or The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I can ...

Car Chase: Alternate Tracks

As promised, here are the 2 alternate tracks from Car Chase.

One is the music only track (10 sec of silence at the beginning as it is taken from the master track) and one is the ambience only track for those of you who just want the vroom vroom and environmental sounds.

Thank you for being a supporter!

-Tim

New Ambience: Car Chase!

There must have been some kind of weird synergy happening in the rpg/game world last month. I received 4 separate requests for car chase ambiences. As I didn't really have one of these specifically, I thought I'd give it a try.

This was a tough one to get right.  Early on I decided that I wanted it to have a 70s/early 80s type vibe. I grew up on old cop shows that always featured car chase scenes: CHiPs, TJ Hooker, Magnum P.I., and Knight Rider. I tried to capture some of that spirit in t...

New Ambience: Endless Voyage

Greetings Patrons,

I was feeling a little earthbound last week. Not in a good way. What I needed was some floaty feeling, synthwavy style ambient music to take me far, far away. 

As often happens, I started messing around designing sounds on a couple of synthesizers and after a little while, I had something that felt good when played really slowly. The track grew from there. It was one of those times where I kept trying to add things but then took them away again. I finally decided ...

Happy (early) Halloween!

I started Tabletop Audio in early 2014. By the time October of that year came around, I knew I wanted to make a special Halloween ambience. When the following October arrived, I did it again, thus making it an official annual occurrence. 

It's hard to believe that this year marks the release of my 4th annual Halloween ambience.

Making these is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, it's so much fun coming up with wild and scary sounds. On the other, it kind of takes a toll!...

Two-fer Tuesday: Final Spire RPG tracks

Greetings Patrons,

I've decided to release both of the final Spire: RPG tracks today. The main reason for this is - Halloween. As in, it's coming, and I have to finish polishing my annual made-for-Halloween track and release it in time for the actual holiday. Or, in advance of the holiday anyway.

So here are the last 2 tracks I did for Grant Howitt and company's upcoming Spire: RPG. The first track is called "The Hatchery", and from the design brief:

The place whe...

2017-10-24 14:01:56 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience - Spire: The Ministry

Another in the Spire RPG series. This track is called “The Ministry”. In the game world, it’s a sanctuary of sorts for the player characters.  As always for these tracks, I like to include the design notes from the games’ creators:

Basic mood: Shadows, secrecy, whispers and inner circles upon inner circles. The closest thing our heroes have to sanctuary, but even then they can’t trust anyone. Piety, devotion and ritual.

I’m looking forward to a...

New Ambience: Spire: Derelictus

Greetings Patrons,

This is the 4th installment of the Spire: RPG tracks that I've been working on. It's called Derelictus and, as it's name implies, it's a gritty, seedy place, full of darkness. From Grant Howitt's design brief:

Destitute. A run-down sump of a place, riddled with poverty and black magic, undercity home to the downtrodden dark elves. Re-purposed buildings, rebuilt and re-imagined into other things. Run-down churches, dark elf fruit markets, a town ruled ...

2017-10-12 15:05:19 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience - Spire: New Heaven

 Here's the third installment of audio from Grant Howitt's upcoming RPG, "The Spire". For the previous tracks, I'd been working off Adrian Stone's  amazing Spire artwork as inspiration for the sounds, but for this one, "New Heaven", there wasn't anything ready, so I had to go with Grant's description:

"Impossibly high burial grounds, towers of silence, cackling hyenas prowling the streets, corvids picking a...

2017-10-05 14:48:56 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience: Spire RPG 'Amaranth'

I'm having such a great time working on these tracks for Grant Howitt's upcoming RPG, The Spire. 

Each location is a fascinating exploration in sound. This one features the domain of the cruel and haughty high elves, or aelfir as they are known. They have arrived from their frozen domain in north to exert dominion over the drow and have created their home away from home in The Spire.

Here are notes from the design brief:

The crystalline, frozen home of the ha...

2017-09-25 15:42:49 +0000 UTC View Post

Shirts

Ever since I updated the site logo I started getting t-shirt requests, not many, maybe one or two a week. But it started me thinking. I realized that I wanted a t-shirt. Maybe I'd wear it out and about, and maybe..someone would ask me about it! So I started researching what it takes to make t-shirts. Holy rabbit-hole Batman. It seems that the entire Internet is trying to convince you that you can be a t-shirt millionaire - "just buy my book on how to do it!!"

I even - oh so briefly - considere...