Greetings Patrons,
I was thinking about a fun set-piece type ambience that I could do this week. Maybe something to inspire a scene or a challenge in your story or game. Here's a basic encounter for your party or hero. The treasure, or way out, or goal - what have you - is blocked by an enormous sleeping monster. An ogre in this case but I suppose it could be different types of creatures ...
2020-06-24 16:00:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
All the planning in the world can't prepare you for that moment when the sea turns against you. You rarely get much of a warning, and it's only the skill of every soul on board that gets you through.
This is a fitting track coming so soon after Space Battle. The ocean of the 18th century was very much the template for modern science fiction explorat...
2020-06-17 16:17:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
A relatively recent request which I thought was an excellent idea: A nighttime version of a larger fantasy / medieval city. I had already done the city of "Waterkeep", my not very subtle nod to the fabled D&D location, so I thought I'd think about how that place would sound at night.
Deserted streets seemed like the wrong way to go for this one. I alread...
2020-06-10 16:22:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Did I really not have a proper sci-fi space battle on the site? Don't answer that, I know the answer. Well, I've remedied that now I think.
For this track, creatively titled Space Battle, I definitely followed 'the rule of cool' - meaning that it doesn't matter if it's at all realistic, as long as it's cool. So, yes, in this scene, space is noisy. S...
2020-06-03 16:10:57 +0000 UTC View PostGreetings Patrons,
Sorry for this terribly dull post. As most of you know, Patreon is being mandated to collect sales tax from certain states and countries to comply with local laws. These changes will go into effect July 1st and will have very little impact.
The good news is, that I'm allowed to "tag" what, if anything, I offer as taxable. As the majority of what I produce is...
2020-05-31 16:48:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This ambience is a very recent request, but one of those that I felt I needed to do immediately. The medieval castle was a massive and complex ecosystem, and the kitchen was almost always at the center of it. From preparing feasts, to feeding the staff, to heating ordnance for siege engines. Ovens in some castles were as large as 14 feet in diameter and could roast 3 ox...
2020-05-27 16:02:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
One of the suggestions on my list was over 2 years old and all I had written down was flames everywhere. I started thinking about scenarios where this might fit into a story and a I found that it actually had a surprising number of plot possibilities in it. This ended up with a track I called Burning Village. Here's a just few that went through my head...
2020-05-20 16:18:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I started working on this track a couple of months ago and shelved it for some reason. Cut to a few weeks later and I was browsing through my work-in-progress folder and found a track called 'ostinato_idea_1a_march20'. Yeah, cryptic. So I opened it and thought, well maybe..
As I worked through the various parts I got this image in my head of a magical cer...
2020-05-13 14:49:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I feel like a broken record each time I mention that the thing I started working on isn't the thing I ended up with. But, I guess it happens to me a lot. A few iterations in to this piece, I started thinking about thieves, shadows and stealth. It was just a kernel of an idea and as I worked, it informed my choices.
One important realization I've made is that there...
2020-05-06 14:45:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had a request from a few months ago for an 'Asian themed' garden and thought this would be a good track to work on this week.
As I started to play around with some ideas I realized that the traditional, and frankly overused, koto and shakuhachi style arrangements were making my eyes roll a bit. After all, I didn't want to make a parody of a Temple Ga...
2020-04-29 16:45:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I wanted to do a fight track that wasn't EPICLY EPIC™. It's not about slaying dragons with flaming swords as much as it is about clearing out the rat infestation with rusty daggers. It's almost tounge-in-cheek, but not quite.
Rat Battle is a purely musical track that's perfect for lighter styles of action scenes. It d...
2020-04-22 15:36:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I know this may come across as too on-the-nose, but I can't ignore the fact that one of the busiest cities in the world, my home, New York City, seems to have become rather depopulated. Or rather, it appears that way with everyone indoors.
Nevertheless, on my daily dog walks or guerrilla trips to the grocery store, I find myself living out any number of film...
2020-04-16 13:53:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I hope you are all weathering things and doing as well as can be expected. It's tough going, I know, and I feel very (very) fortunate that I can lean on my work at this time.
As I started on this track I realized that, once again, I was injecting a bit of wishful thinking into my work. This is a musical piece that was supposed to imply a sense of peace and positiv...
2020-04-08 16:34:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I was asked several months ago to produce 10 ambient tracks for Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor's new RPG, Heart: The City Beneath. This is a sequel to Spire: The City Must Fall, a game I also produced tracks for.
In Spire we heard the story of the dark elves in a gleaming, towering city. Heart is all a...
2020-04-01 13:52:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons (and guests!),
I started working on this piece during the first week of lockdown here in New York City. I didn't think it was going to turn out to be something of use for Tabletop Audio at the time. I had a simple solo cello line in mind and I just wanted to get it down and move on. My hard drive is full of little sketches like this. As I worked on other things I k...
2020-03-27 15:53:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I just wanted to let you all know that all 40 sounds from the 25th SoundPad "Vampire" have been added to the Custom SoundPad tool and are now ready for mixing and matching.
I've got a few new ambiences in the works and I'll be sharing some of the work I did for Grant Howitt's new RPG "The Heart" soon.
Stay well and stay safe everyone, and thank you for...
2020-03-25 18:45:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Firstly, I just want to say that I hope everyone is safe and well in these surreal times. I am fortunate that my quarantined life, as far as work goes, remains mostly unchanged. To that end, as long as I am able, I'll continue to work in the studio producing content.
--
On to the new stuff: I got an email last week from a user who was playing a Vam...
2020-03-19 16:18:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I got a rather specific request for an ambience last week on Twitter and I thought that, in addition to being a decent Yester Hill track (from Curse of Strahd) it would actually make a fairly good generic, occult / druidic / shamanic summoning type of scenario.
The basic idea i...
2020-03-11 16:11:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
As many of you know, I love creating sounds for the in-between portions of games and stories. These are the places and times that connect plot points or major scenes. Often this is a journey from A to B, or a conversation in neutral area. Sometimes it's just downtime in front of a campfire.
The track Carriage Journey did this but it set the scene in...
2020-03-04 16:44:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've been meaning to do a Shadowfell ambience ever since The Feywild came out. Apparently I got sidetracked. Thankfully, a few of you reminded me of this oversight recently.
I had to dig into the lore a bit to make sure I was starting off on the right track. This interview with Mike Mearls helped put it in perspective:
Greetings Patrons,
I was watching the film "Wonder Woman" last week with my son and I just loved the training scene in which the young Diana watches the warriors drilling from her perch on a hilltop. I thought that this would make a cool setting, so I started working on sword sounds, bows and arrows, horses, shouts etc. But the more I worked on it, the more I realized that maybe what I ha...
2020-02-12 16:09:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Just a quick note to let you know that I've added all the sounds from the latest SoundPad, Desert Planet, to the Custom SoundPad tool. This means there are now over 800 sounds available for mixing.
Regarding the Custom SoundPad, I've gotten a couple of emails about finding a better way to search and filter these sounds on the page and I'm going to think a...
2020-02-05 17:20:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've completed the 24th SoundPad and the first of 2020, Desert Planet. This is a sneak peak for Patreon patrons and will be released to the public later this week. Please feel free to just share with gaming groups and family until then.
As with many of these biome SoundPads, I add the word 'planet' after them to give me freedom from being slavishly realistic. Henc...
2020-01-29 16:10:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've always loved the Greek Myths, so when I was looking through an old book I used to read to my kids and came upon a picture of Charon the ferryman of the dead, I knew I had to create that scene in sound. Crossing the Styx is a dark, foreboding ambience that is actually strangely relaxing!
I've included a music-only (no boat) version of this track...
2020-01-22 18:05:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Happy 2020 everyone! I've decided to start the year off by creating an ambience that I've had several requests for lately.
The shopping mall was an integral part of my adolescence, as I'm sure it was many of yours. It was a safe space to congregate with friends, to people watch, to eat junk food and basically get away from family for a while. So many stories happe...
2020-01-15 15:05:22 +0000 UTC View Post
As a special gift over this holiday season, it was my great pleasure to team up with 20 battlemap makers, 2 miniature makers, another composer, 1 magic item creator, 1 monster maker and 1 adventure writer to bring you a giant, terrifying, fully formed Tarrasque for your party to take on.
<...
2019-12-26 17:32:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
"More drums!" is a frequent line in many request emails. Well, I started working on this "more drums" track and, as I added Erhu, Guzheng and a bit of throat singing, I found myself on the steppes of Mongolia . I wanted to conjure up a vibe of vast plains, rolling hills and terrifying warriors doing acrobatic things on horses. Hopefully some of that vibe comes acr...
2019-12-18 15:17:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I started playing around with a strange, meandering musical idea this week and the further I got, I couldn't get the idea of a swamp out of my head. So that's where it ended up. I was actually picturing Yoda's home, Dagobah if you must know! I thought maybe Disney wouldn't appreciate my calling the track that so I went with the very on-the-nose title of Swamp Planet...
2019-12-04 18:38:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This ambience started out very differently. In fact, I created a cool glassy sounding patch with Omnisphere and my first pass of this track was titled "Crystal City". So, yeah. What happened?
Well actually this kind of thing happens all the time. I set out on one path and end up on another. One of my favorite things about working on Tabletop Audio is that I ...
2019-11-27 19:12:57 +0000 UTC View PostGreetings Patrons,
Just a quick note to say that the Tabletop Audio Alexa skill is back online after being down for awhile. My apologies for not noticing this sooner, but it was only recently brought to my attention. Apparently Amazon had changed some of their back-end code which broke a number of audio skills in the process.
Best,
Tim
2019-11-26 16:50:11 +0000 UTC View Post