tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Halfling Sneak

Greetings Patrons,

After designing the background sounds of a castle on high alert I couldn't get the idea of a thief darting among the shadows, avoiding detection, out of my head. After working on the music for a while and finding it leaning toward a more light-hearted vibe, I imagined the thief being a wry halfling. Once those two pieces were in place I followed what I perceived to be the natural path and added a dash of 60s heist film vibe.

As this track is in Patreon-only snea...

New Ambience: The Great Lift

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track started from a set-piece idea about a clifftop castle, market, civilization etc. that had only one point of access. Over millennia a massive system of platform lifts was built and added on to. This was essentially a vertical rail that ferried passengers to and from.

I seem to be focused on large machines lately (see last week's Terraforming). The Great Lift has a more dark-fantasy vibe. The constant churn of the winches, the creaking o...

New Ambience: Terraforming

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track features the classic sci-fi trope of terraforming, the process by which a lifeless planet is transformed into one that can sustain life. I have no idea how this works but it my head it requires a massive complex of hissing and clanking machines, belching great plumes of oxygen and nitrogen into the atmosphere.

I could have gone at this in a number of ways but it felt synth-y to me, so I went with that. One thing I avoided was Blade Runner CS-80...

New Ambience: Descent

Greetings Patrons,

I considered calling this track "50 feet of Rope". I also considered never telling anyone that. But, here we are!

Descent is an adventure/mystery/tension/what-have-you type of track. I tried to create something that was intriguing, rather than scary. Daring, rather than dangerous. These are subtle distinctions, I know. 

The scene is an intrepid climber, laden with adventuring gear, descending down a rope into the darkness below. There are cav...

New Ambience: Through the Woods

Greetings Patrons,

I've had this track on the back burner for several weeks. I'd bring it out and tinker with it, and then put it away again as it never seemed to click. The working title was "surdo_thing" (a large Brazilian bass drum). A few days ago, frustrated, I removed the surdo, and I finally figured out how to finish it. Apparently, I keep learning this lesson.

Through the woods is an action track. It's about speed and tension and the possibility of success. It's either abo...

New Ambience: Voyage Begins

Greetings Patrons,

Here is another one of my liminal spaces ambiences. This track centers around a busy dock where workers are loading a ship in preparation for a long voyage. The sounds are of ropes hoisting, carts arriving with produce, livestock, and fresh water. As the workers prepare the ship there is a sense of excitement and adventure in the air.

Musically this has a dash of excitement and even a bit of magic. I wanted to describe that slightly giddy feeling of anticipation...

New Ambience: Rise of the Golem

Edit: The attached files were missing their id3 tags so have been re-uploaded. If you downloaded these prior to 26 July, 2023 you should re-download. The files themselves are unchanged. - Tim

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a magical, supernatural-vibed track about the creation of a mythical clay golem by a wizard (or cleric?). It's got a dash of mystery, a dash of action, and two helpings of magic.

The scene as I imagined it takes place in a wizard/cleric's library, surr...

New Ambience: Hall of Angels

Greetings Patrons,

I have a notebook that I keep by my desk that had the word "statues" written on the open page. It was circled. I don't remember writing it, but - if I circle anything, that usually means something to future me.

From the idea of the statue, I started sketching out a room in a museum. Room tones, distant torches, a nice hollow wind. But then what? I thought about the excellent Dr. Who episode with the weeping angels (terrifying!). I didn't really want to do outrig...

New Ambience: Infernal Machine

Greetings Patrons,

Here's a steampunk setpiece that should be equally at home in fantasy, or gritty sci-fi. "Infernal Machine" is an impenetrable mass of gears, cogs, pistons, and whatsits all grinding away for some mysterious purpose. 

The ambience, as the name implies, is full of various flavors of mechanical sound. Groaning metal, grinding gears, precise ratchets, and massive clonks.

Musically I've mashed together a few different genres. It's mysterious without going...

New Ambience: Den of Iniquity

Greetings Patrons,

I should start by assuring everyone that this particular house of ill repute is quite tame on the baudiness scale. That being said, if your characters need a tavern that is a little seedier, a little looser, this might be the place for you. (There's a small bench outside for Paladins.)

Musically this was an interesting challenge. It had to be slightly lurid, with a hint of bacchanalia, possibly a bit non-western sounding. I hit on the idea of a harmonium drone b...

New Ambience: Whirlpool

Greetings Patrons,

Well, what started with a single low-strings ostinato somehow turned into a manic, slightly stressful extended action sequence. 

A ship at sea is being drawn, inexorably, into a massive whirling vortex. 

Musically this is quite dense. A lot of movement in the strings, brass have the accents, low growls, and occasional doomy melodic line. Sprinkled choirs, synths, and tubular bells add to this everything stew.

There's a bit of a reprieve in ...

New Ambience: Awakenings

Greetings Patrons,

I'm a big fan of scoring particular moments, just like I would do if I was writing to picture. The challenge for me in creating Tabletop Audio tracks is always to come up with the scene. I feel like I need to create the film, or at least a scene before I can start scoring it. This doesn't always happen at the beginning. Sometimes I'll start playing around with musical ideas and a scene will emerge. Other times I'll play with sound fx first. 

For this track,...

New Ambience: Troll Grotto

Greetings Patrons,

For this week's track, I imagined a massive Nordic troll nestled in his cave and surrounded by bones and trinkets. Settings like this a great for set pieces in which the story revolves around sneaking in or out, stealing an item, or perhaps something more dastardly.

About halfway through working on this, I named the troll 'Mog'. I toyed briefly with the idea of having Mog utter various phrases in Norwegian but then I reverted to the guttural grumbling you hear i...

New Ambience: Ghosts of Appalachia

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track evolved rather organically from a simple breathy vocal ambience to a derelict mountain shack in wintertime. As I played with the vocals - both melodic and non-melodic I created kind of a 'sound bath' - meaning there's nothing distinct in terms of melody, harmony or rhythm. Things just exist, and then don't. 

I planned that this was going to be ghost related  - or adjacent - because it seemed like a natural fit. But, it wasn't until I ...

New Ambience: Rope Bridge

Greetings Patrons,

A quick preface to say that I forgot to add id3 tags to last week's track, Roc's Nest. I've re-uploaded the files so you can download them again if that's important to you.

Now, for this week's track, I created a set piece of sorts. A rickety, wood and rope suspension bridge, high above the jungle. You can barely see the end of it through the mist so you have no idea how long it actua...

New Ambience: Roc's Nest

Edit 24, May 2023: I mistakenly left out the id3 tags on the attached mp3 files, I have re-uploaded them with the proper tags. The file contents is unchanged.

Greetings Patrons,

My thinking behind this was to do a kind of Bernard Herrmann-esque track, full of dissonance and strangeness and somehow maintain it over the course of 10 minutes. This isn't an action piece at all. It's more of a prelude to action, or possibly, the avoidance of action. I'm pretty pleased with the...

New SoundPad: Ancient Greece

Edit: May 19, 2023: This is live on the site now, so share away!

Greetings Patrons,

Here is the 32nd installment of the SoundPad series, "Ancient Greece".

This was an interesting project because classical antiquity, medieval Europe, and fantasy all share many similar themes and ideas. For each of these sounds, I attempted to bring in unique qualities that highlighted my notion of this time and place. As most of you know already, when given a choice between historica...

New Ambience: Trail of Ashes

Greetings Patrons,

As a fan of in-between moments in stories, I created this army in motion. These are foot soldiers, no fancy officers on horseback. Whatever country, whatever year this was, these were the grunts. 

The 'action' takes place on a blustery, gray landscape. The once-green grass has turned to dirt and mud. The soldiers are weary, having just survived one battle and probably on the way to another.

Musically this is Celtic-ish. Can you see my air quotes? Like...

New Ambience: River of Blood

Greetings Patrons,

Once again, I found myself in a position where the music for this was almost completely finished and I found myself asking; "cool, but what is it?" I'm not sure how I landed on the idea for a river of blood, but it could very likely be that as I was looking over my suggestions list the words River of Blood jumped out at me!

The challenge then, was to make something sound like blood. I tried several approaches and arrived at a combination of pit...

New Ambience: Starship Adrift

Greeting Patrons,

I'm back from my quick trip to the North Carolina mountains. I spent most of the time sitting on the porch watching birds and identifying them with my new favorite app, Merlin. I also dragged the family with me for a tour of the Moog synthesizer factory in Asheville, which even the teenagers enjoyed.

But honestly, I couldn't wait to get back to the studio. I always worry about stepping away, even for a week, but it really is worth it. 

This week's ambi...

New Ambience: Rolling Emporium

Greetings Patrons,

I had this idea for a set piece/drop-in scenario that was based somewhat on the Wandering Emporium from the D&D book, Descent into Avernus. The concept was that instead of a caravan of motorized vehicles, the entire market fit onto an enormous wagon, pulled by a massive Aurochs. Small catch: it never stops and never slows down.

While the idea of a constantly roaming market was interesting, i felt there was also an element of mystery and tragedy to it. I reme...

New Ambience: Ancient Beacon

Greetings Patrons,

I began this piece with the rising and falling glissando synth line and thought it sounded pretty grand on its own, but I kept adding parts to it: children's choir, regular choir, and another synth. Eventually, it became this cool undulating motif that made me think of rituals or ancient technology. 

Once I realized it was going to be set in the desert, I decided I'd avoid the more standard 'desert-music' style instrumentation and try to evoke the sense of ...

New Ambience: Pit Fighter

Greetings Patrons,

This is the story of a fighter, so confident in their ability that they decided to derail the entire plot of your story, just so they could enter a winner-take-all, one-on-one competition in the underground pit fighting circuit.

Or something like that...

This was an idea I got when I was trying to remember which Star Trek Voyager episode "The Rock" was on. (I debated whether or not to share this with you all!) 

Although this is an action-style s...

New Ambience: Skull Island

Edit: The music only track somehow contained ambience so it was replaced on 21 March, 2023.

Greetings Patrons,

I guess I was in the mood for old-school Hollywood adventure this week. I do love expository music in film, especially fantasy and sci-fi. I find it works particularly well as a storytelling vehicle in other mediums as well.

For Skull Island, I borrowed a small motif from James Newton Howard's 2005 King Kong film and used it as a jumping-off point ...

New Ambience: Egg Chamber

Greetings Patrons,

This week's ambience features all manner of slime, ooze, and gore. Or, to be precise, stewed tomatoes, eggshells, and mac & cheese. It's a standard sci-fi horror set piece but could easily be repurposed for fantasy.

For me, Egg Chamber was about finding the right degree of tension - and then just trying to hang on to it. There are no big builds so there was no need for release. I tried to make it feel like holding one's breath.

Musically this ...

New Ambience: Promontory

Greetings Patrons,

I was noodling around on the piano this week and this little melody came up that reminded me of a solitary figure looking out over the ocean from a rocky cliff. In my 'head movie', it was night, the sky was ominous, but it wasn't gloomy. It was more Jane Austen than Bram Stoker.

I developed the idea further - way too far actually - which removed all the cool vibes the early iterations had. I still do this a lot, unfortunately, but at least now I notice it when i...

New Ambience: Adventure Begins

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track is designed as an opening credits style piece. It's part 'title theme' and part expository.  In a film or tv opening, this would be accompanied by images to introduce the viewer to the world. Here, the setting is described by the ambient sound design.

Musically, this is very 'widescreen'. It's a bold and positive beginning to something heroic. From the opening french horn melody to the harp glissandi and eventual string ostinati, it should...

New Ambience: Hydroponics Bay

Greetings Patrons,

I've always loved the idea of greenhouses on spaceships. From the 1972 film "Silent Running", to "Sunshine" (2007), to "Passengers" (2016). Even if the film isn't about growing plants specifically, I love the idea of a space for growing food or cultivating alien botany. 

The title Hydroponics Bay is a nod to Star Trek, obviously, but this track isn't really Trek-themed as it's a bit more abstract. Possibly even sinister. In this greenhouse, many of...

New Ambience: Warlock's Whisper

Greetings Patrons,

The original save file for this track was called something like: Feb_2023_orch_magic_thing. I do this a lot. My working folder is full of snippets that I come back to, or not. Some of them warrant a "hey, this isn't terrible, why did I stop working on this?" Others get a "this will never see the light of day and must be killed with fire!". Often they do get finished and I simply resave the file with the new title.

Warlock's Whisper was one of t...

New Ambience: Spirit of the Plains

Greetings Patrons,

After last week's dark action track, I thought I'd do something a bit more atmospheric. Once again, I've chosen an image by one of my favorite fantasy artists Grandfailure as the basis for the score.

Spirit of the Plains is a bit of Miyazaki and maybe even a bit of Ridley Scott. There's a massive deer god/spirit and there are massive floating rocks and for some reason, there's a little girl. There's definitely a story here.

Musically this is quite...