tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Brood Mother

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a sci-fi track, masquerading as a fantasy track, masquerading as a horror track. Wheels within wheels!

Brood Mother began its life as a sustained action sequence that would have been at home in a Mad Max film. As the work progressed though, various elements  (I'm not really sure which) started to lend themselves to a more claustrophobic escape-styled action sequence.

The Brood Mother herself came as I was playing around with some vocal processi...

SoundPad: Dark Forest (Remastered)

Greetings Patrons,

I'm continuing to remaster these early SoundPads, and making them available as Patreon exclusive downloads.

Please don't share these files. They are for you, dear patrons, and you alone!

The website versions will most likely stay as they are for the time being, but these re-mastered audio files are of higher quality than what appears online (bandwidth/cost issues) and have been tweaked to the standards of the later SoundPads.

The fo...

New Ambience: Vampyr

Greetings Patrons,

I sat down this week to write a piece in 5/4, mostly as a challenge. For non-musicians, that means there are 5 beats in a measure (quarter note getting 1 beat). It's not too far out, but considering that 90% of music is written in 4/4 it does have a bit of an unsettling vibe to it. 

As I continued to write, I found that the music had an elegant quality to it. Hmm..elegance, unsettling...what could this be?

Piano, harp, celeste, and chamber orchestra a...

New Ambience: Steel Foundry

Greetings Patrons,

Steel Foundry is a large reverberant chamber where blast furnaces, chain hoists, and strong arms all work to create raw material.

It's vaguely dwarven, by which I mean there are certainly echoes of Moria, but there's a slightly more sinister vibe at work.

Musically, this is piano, voice, and some live percussion courtesy of my new 'horror box', an amplified, acoustic percussion instrument for all manner of bowed, and struck sounds.  There are also som...

Quick 'Drowned Tower' Edit

Greetings Patrons,

Just a quick note to say that I listened to last week's track and noticed some weirdness that must have happened on export.  Naturally, I found some things that could have been better so I had another crack at it and this one is the one. I've attached the new files to the original post.

I called them the same name but the date on the new tracks is 12 Feb, 2024. Just scrap the old ones. 

Both the ambient tracks are the same and are unchanged.

Quick Dungeon SoundPad update:

It's been brought to my attention that I can't count! 

There should have been 36 sounds in the archives. Somehow 'net trap' and 'blade trap' were missing. I tracked them down and replaced the archives. 

The original post is here 

best,

Tim

SoundPad: The Dungeon (Remastered)

Edit#2: It was brought to my attention that I can't count. There were 2 missing sounds from the original upload - blade trap and net trap. These have been located and added to the .zip/.rar files. There should be 36 sounds plus 1 image in the archive.

Edit: Sorry Mac users! I forgot that .rar isn't the best format for you. I've added an identical .zip file.  If everyone is ok with that I'll use that format going forward. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

I'm fi...

New Ambience: The Drowned Tower

Edit: I updated the 3 tracks with music in them (neither of the AMB tracks) as I found some weird issues after listening to it a couple of days later. You can find the new tracks below. The date should be 12 Feb, 2024. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

The music was completed on this one before I knew what it was going to be. I'm sure you'll agree that it could have gone in many directions. There's a wistful, nostalgic quality here so I was thinking of a return to something. But I...

New Ambience: Feast of Crispian

Greetings Patrons,

This track started with a jaunty rhythmic melody shared between a mountain dulcimer and a harp. It was giving me tavern music vibes from the start. However, as I added various sections and instruments, it seemed somehow more 'important' than a simple tavern band bashing out the hits. Was it a wedding feast? I went down that path for a bit but there was something not quite about it.

Then I remembered the famous speech from Henry V, where Hen...

New Ambience: Whispering Caverns

Greetings Patrons,

Ever since I saw the 1959 classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth with James Mason, I've been a sucker for stories that take characters deep underground.  It's as if the plot writes itself. It's dark, it's dangerous and it's not a dungeon.  (Of course I love dungeons).

There's an almost sacred aspect to Whispering Caverns. I imagined it as a resting place (prison?) for lost souls. Perhaps it's your job to free them, or just listen to what ...

New Ambience: Whiteout

Greetings Patrons,

Is it a coincidence that during work on this track, New York City received its first decent snowfall in 701 days? (It was only 1.4")

Whiteout is a POV of a struggle against nature. Brutal headwinds, stinging sleet, deep drifts, and biting cold are your adversaries in this one. It was a challenge to create a chaotic feeling of blindness and disorientation. 

Musically, my plan was for driving rhythms with no real tonal center, and plenty of dis...

New Ambience: The Misty Marsh

Greeting Patrons,

I recently watched, and enjoyed the series "The Essex Serpent", but, if I'm being honest, mostly for the beautiful landscapes. I think I scrawled something like 'marsh/boat" in my notebook. I've done some similar natural environments before but they were either more of a wetland nature preserve with lots of wildlife, or featured a skulking monster. 

This is quite a peaceful ambience, with gentle breezes, lapping water, and the rhythmic sounds of oars dipping...

New Ambience: Homecoming

Greetings Patrons,

A happy 2024 to you all!

It is so good to be back in NYC after a short holiday away. I think I kid myself when I say I love what I do, and therefore downtime is unnecessary. It really is necessary, and 6 days seems to be the perfect amount of time away from the studio. Anything more and I'll have to figure out a mobile writing/recording solution!

When I saw the New York skyline on my return, the word 'homecoming' wouldn't leave my head. The way it feels to...

New Ambience: The Ansible

Greetings Patrons,

Back in 1966, writer Ursula K Le Guin created a device she called an "ansible" to enable instant communication over vast distances of space. It became a cornerstone of her world-building and has appeared in many of her sci-fi novels. 

As Le Guin was also a noted fantasy author, I thought it would be fun to combine these 2 genres and reimagine the ansible as an ancient earth-based communication device. Making use of the well-trodden 'ancient unknown device' ...

Surround Sound Experiment

TL;DR - I set up some extra speakers in a quad arrangement in the studio and mixed a test ambient-only track. If you have a surround setup like this in the place you game, please give this a test and let me know how it went!

Greeting Patrons,

I've been playing around with speaker configurations and I had this crazy idea. Last month, I purchased my first new studio monitors in 20 years and I've been loving them. But I found myself with ...

New Ambience: Launch Day

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a modern/sci-fi adjacent track that centers around a rocket on a gantry. The community is out to cheer on the brave souls aboard as preparations for launch are made. So many stories came to me while making this: A dying world makes a last-ditch effort to discover a new home? A new propulsion system is being tested that will bring the galaxy closer? A reclusive scientist prepares another crackpot scheme and his previous failures have been quite entertaining!

New Ambience: Demon Army

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a track that is somehow dark, yet upbeat at the same time. The ambience came first for this one. It all started with the distant rhythmic shouts and foot stomps of thousands of soldiers. I thought it sounded like a horde of demons and that's what I went with. A massive iron gate opens onto ranks of creatures as far as the eye can see. Siege machinery is rolled out, shields are bashed. It's definitely got D&D blood war vibes.

Musically this has a tone ...

New Ambience: Hellhound Alley

Edit: Uploaded non-amb files for amb. Fixed now!

Greetings Patrons,

I should start off by mentioning that this began as a gothic horror track and ended up squarely in cyberpunk territory. However, I think this could still work as dark fantasy or sci-fi. As always, I encourage you to ignore everything I say about a track and decide for yourself how you use it!

Hellhound Alley is a dark city backstreet that is home to a large pack of dogs. Like most packs, ...

New Ambience: Trireme

Greetings Patrons,

It's the day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. so as soon as I send this off, I'll be getting out of the studio chair and into the kitchen. (Don't worry, I'll be back at work on Friday)

Triremes, for those that don't know, are the ancient boats used by the Mediterranean civilizations. They had sails as well as three banks of oars. (Boats with 2 banks were called biremes.) But I didn't really want to do a warship ambience. Instead, what if it were a lovely day...

New Ambience: Train Job

Edit: A small glitch in the ambience-only exterior version resulted in a blank file. This has been replaced.

Greetings Patrons,

This track was, at one point, my nemesis.

I had the bones of it fairly in place a couple of months ago but it never really gelled for me. Every week or so I'd revisit it. I'd swap out instruments, try different articulations, add stuff, remove stuff, rinse, repeat.

I was going for a kind of '60s heist film vibe. Something that wouldn'...

New Ambience: Desert Devotional

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track grew organically out of a few tracks of vocals. I was enjoying the way they bent in and out of tune, especially when I added a long, evolving drone beneath them. Eventually, I determined that this would be some kind of monastic ritual. I didn't want to ground it in any particular practice, so I made a melange. It's very much the type of thing Frank Herbert did when creating religions for Dune. So, that became my inspiration. 

Musically thi...

New Ambience: Medieval Market

Greetings Patrons,

After some recent heavy, doom and gloom-type tracks I needed to lighten the mood a bit. 

Medieval Market should really be called 'fantasy market' as there's nothing gritty or dirty about it. The weather is lovely, the people are lovely and everyone is smiling. If you've just survived an encounter with the Lord of Bones, you may want to rest here for a while.

As temperate as the weather is, the same can be said of the music. It's very smiley a...

New Ambience: Lord of Bones

Greetings Patrons,

Well, this ended up being a boss encounter. 

Meet Mr. Bones, or Lord Bones as he'd prefer you call him. He (checks image..) wears a flaming gold crown embedded with a large jewel. Someone (rogue) in your party wants that jewel. This is not the first time they've endangered everyone's lives for loot, and it won't be the last. The truth is, you could easily have tip-toed past Boney's chamber and been back at the tavern with a turkey leg and ...

New Ambience: Docking Bay

Greetings Patrons,

I had this great plan for Docking Bay to be a set piece of various space-themed activities in a massive hangar. Mechs loading and unloading cargo and munitions, troops marching in formation, and general preparations for mobilization. 

That all went according to plan. I designed the ambience first and was pleased with it. But, when I started composing the music I felt pulled toward a dynamic orchestral action piece, rather than sci-fi ambient.

So, I we...

New Ambience: The Attic

Greetings Patrons,

Happy Halloween! I thought a classic 'what's in the attic' trope would be a fun thing to work on while I sipped pumpkin-spiced lattes in my studio. (ed: kidding!). 

This is a POV of an old, dark, dusty attic. Creaking floorboards, pattering raindrops on the thin roof above. Bats move in the rafters, mice skitter behind old paintings.

This is one of those things where I did so many passes, for both music and ambience. I kept coming up with new...

New Ambience: Infiltration

Edit: Mistakenly uploaded doubles of the mixed tracks (no drips/no infiltrator) instead of ambient only no drips/no infiltrator. This has been fixed! 

Greetings Patrons,

This is a hybrid track based around a stealth/action theme. The idea is that you're an operative/adventurer who needs to get in or out of someplace in a hurry.

Musically it is underscore that ebbs and flows in regular intervals. Pulsing synth lines, growling bass, and orchestral string ostinato...

Foundry VTT/Moulinette update:

Greetings Patrons,

If you are a Foundry/Moulinette user you've probably received an update from Moulinette about a few additions/changes in the Tabletop Audio content.

$5/month Foundry VTT Plus patrons (who are also Moulinette patrons) can now access alternate track content from within the Moulinette interface on Foundry.  You will see small dropdown arrows a...

New Ambience: Western Watchtower

Greetings Patrons,

On a desolate hill, overlooking a narrow pass in the mountains, stand the ruins of a once formidable defensive tower. When attacking hordes approached, archers and mages could dispatch them at great distances. The Western Watchtower was a crucial part of the defense of the realm. But that was many years ago.

Today, what is left of the tower still sits on top of that hill. A tattered banner clings resolutely above the entrance as a reminder of who it protected. 2023-09-27 15:30:25 +0000 UTC View Post

New Ambience: Banshee's Lair

Greetings Patrons,

This is a house, deep in the forest, occupied by a strange old crone. No one can remember her ever not being there. The legend is that she's a banshee in mortal form. She seems kind enough at first, but if you don't flatter her, or bring her gifts, she gets cranky. Most of the time she putters about, tending to the fire, brushing her long grey hair, and imagining a world she thinks she deserves.

This is a fairly quiet ambience. The house, despite the fire, is st...

New Ambience: Long Rest

Edit: I added an mp3 version of the loop file. You should only use this one if your player/device can't play .ogg files. Caveat: it may not loop as well. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

I know the title is fairly specific to D&D, but this is really just a peaceful, downtime ambience. You're not always slaying monsters or creeping around castles and dungeons. Long Rest is for the ends of those days. It's a respite from the dangerous world you're exploring.

It c...