Greetings Patrons,
I've been working on a new SoundPad feature that's almost finished, so I made a test page for you to play around with it before it gets rolled out on the site. The feature is time frequency/intervals for one shot sounds, allowing for more complex, nuanced scenes without having to manually click a bunch events.
As always, my main challenge is balancing between increased c...
2018-11-01 14:09:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I'm possibly committing an October faux pas by releasing a non-Halloween themed ambience. However, I must be honest - after finishing the Castle Raven SoundPad and Nostromo before that, I was a bit grim-darked out. So, shifting gears, I went with something of a tranquil nature/fantasy vibe.
Secret Garden is a magical place in the woods. A gentle breeze blows...
2018-10-24 15:42:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I know a lot of you were eager to get this before your weekend of Halloween themed gaming, so this is just a quick post to let you know that all the sounds from the latest SoundPad, Castle Raven, are now available for mixing in the Custom SoundPad tool. (You may need to refresh the page to see the new menu item in the sounds list). Also, I noticed that the total number o...
2018-10-19 18:55:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Happy early Halloween!
Today I'm releasing a patron-only sneak peak of the latest SoundPad, Castle Raven.
I've had a blast doing Gothic horror ambiences and I felt like I wanted to expand those ideas into something a bit more complex. From the title, most of you will know that this is another one of my not-so-subtle references. This time, it's a nod to a c...
2018-10-15 19:00:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I sometimes forget the silly things that go on here in pursuit of audio, so I figured I'd take a procrasti-break and make this quick video to show you how eyeglass cleaner cloths and surgical clamps can make some cool bat wing sounds.
Back to work now!
Tim
Greetings Patrons,
I thought I'd get an early jump on this year's Halloween ambience. A bit of a departure this time as it's definitely sci-fi flavored. This was one of those tracks that took form as I was working on something else. To be honest, I can't even remember what it started out as. But, as often happens, some sound will trigger a memory and I'll just chase it. In this case, I was...
2018-10-03 16:28:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had a request from a patron recently for something in the vein of Sky Captain and as I listened to selections from the soundtrack I couldn't get the idea of a fanfare out of my head. I loved the idea of a piece with lots of brass and soaring strings. Something grandiose, but not 'epic'. It should be a heroic sounding, an introduction to adventure. I could have t...
2018-09-28 15:08:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I'm sure I'm not alone in being enthralled by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag's illustrations in the excellent "Tales from the Loop". There is certainly something of an 80s zeitgeist happening in popular culture. His illustrations of quotidian suburban life juxtaposed with a cold (dare I say Scandinavian?) futurism have certainly struck a chord.
Maybe it's ...
2018-09-19 16:20:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I'm fully back from vacation and in studio mode. I've been hard at work scoring and sound designing an audio book which I've never done and is proving to be a fun challenge. I did however have some time in-between revisions to work on some new music and ambiences for the site. Here's one that's a peaceful respite from adventure and travel. A quiet lakeside encampm...
2018-09-14 13:57:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Just a quick note to say that I'm back from my family beach vacation. I spent some time doing field recording among other things so I'll be going through that audio to see what's what in the coming weeks.
I recently did a small custom job for an escape room where one of the things they requested was an edit of the original Age of Steam track to reduce the number...
2018-09-05 14:39:36 +0000 UTC View Post
While working on the previous track, Graveyard, I started thinking of it as a garden of sorts. Something that might be found outside a gloomy Gothic castle. I felt like I wanted to stay in that world for a bit and explore it further, but from a musical angle.
Taking the famous Ravenloft setting from D&D, which is in itself a version of Dracula's Transylvania, I focused ...
2018-08-23 15:20:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I hope your August is going well. I've been working on a pretty wide variety of things lately - some coming out well, some - not so much. Don't worry, I try to spare you the bad things.
I've returned to the classics for this one. Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves - I don't recall ever seeing an old horror movie without at least one graveyard scene. But this could easil...
2018-08-15 16:26:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I feel like I often start these posts with a New York City weather complaint. Today is no different!
August in Brooklyn is tropical and humid in the not good way. So much so, that I've been dreaming about all manner of cool things. Ice cream, arctic winds, snow drifts, you get the picture. As my work is of the escapist variety, I decided that I would venture off in...
2018-08-08 16:45:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've been enthralled lately by the excellent RPG book Harlem Unbound by Darker Hue Studios. It's a Call of Cthulhu/Gumshoe source and setting book that invites players into the world of upper New York City in the 1920s.
I've spent a few evenings with this book, whiskey in hand, Duke a...
2018-08-01 14:47:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
As many of you know, Tabletop Audio has had an Alexa skill for a little over a year. The one (major) drawback was, that it was only available in the U.S. markets. As of today, the skill has been completely re-written (thank you Jim Young!) to include the following markets: US, UK, Canada, Aus...
2018-07-25 14:11:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had a recent request for a music only version of the track River Town that I decided to revisit over the weekend. When doing ambience-only versions of tracks, it's fairly simple - I usually just remove the music. However, when I removed the ambience from this one - it...well..let's just say that having water, birds, wind and other sound effects covered up a few rough edges.<...
2018-07-23 15:18:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I wanted to do another urban combat ambience that was from a more removed vantage point than City Under Siege, which was very street-level. I imagined standing on a rooftop somewhere, watching a city being shelled from a distance.
If you follow me on Twitter (@tabletopaudio) you may remember that I attended a rooftop 4th of July party in an industri...
2018-07-18 16:08:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Hope everyone is having a great July. I'm in the midst of my yearly 2 week stint as a violin/viola coach at a chamber music camp here in Brooklyn. It's a 6 hour day helping kids with quartet parts and chamber orchestra music but it's always great fun. And - I'm usually home by 4pm so I still get some time to be in the studio for a few hours in the evenings.
I was ...
2018-07-04 18:25:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've finally finished adding all 40 of the latest Steampunk SoundPad sounds to the Custom SoundPad tool. This new addition is going to make it possible for you to steampunkify - anything!
Clockwork dungeons, flying machines over Old Towne, switches and servos in Age of Sail - the possibilities are endless. I can't wait to hear what you come up with.
...
2018-06-26 14:03:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Greeting Patrons,
I had a request for an Egyptian tomb style ambience last month, and then another one last week, so I figured it was in the cards. Or, hieroglyphs? (ouch).
I watched a couple of mummy movies (for research!) but honestly I didn't hear anything I really loved so I started googling images of tombs and reading about discoveries and imagined the sounds from there.
I tagge...
2018-06-20 14:46:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've been working on this new SoundPad on and off for a month. This was a tough one. Do I say that every time? I think I do. Steampunk, like Film Noir, is an extremely visual genre. Everyone has some idea of what it looks like, but sounds, as it turns out, are a different story.
I started with the basics. I decided that I needed a toolkit with which to build machines. So...
2018-06-14 15:38:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had a request recently for a cabin in the woods type ambience and, as often happens when someone suggests such obvious and iconic locations, I was surprised I didn't have one. So thank you! I can see this being a frequently used backdrop for a variety of scenarios and genres.
As I was working on it, I decided that this particular house needed an o...
2018-06-07 17:25:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had every intention of creating a space-based, sci-fi ambience this week, but sometimes, the thing you start with, isn't the thing you end up with.
I had this idea for a kind of gritty hard sci-fi vibe, something you might hear on 'The Expanse', which I've been watching lately. I wanted dirty booster sounds, and old, twisting metal. The sounds of soon-to-be-retired tec...
2018-05-30 15:42:51 +0000 UTC View Post
I had been working on the last ambience, Desert Winds for a few hours, when I remembered I had gotten an email from the author of a popular adventure module about making more underwater themes. I started thinking how similar the desert biome and the underwater biome were in terms of sound quality, tonality and direction. It all made sense and I actually stopped working on the desert to...
2018-05-23 17:10:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
A different take on the desert biome this week. The other ones I've done were a bit more musical or more abstract. This one aims for a much more nature focused feel.
Desert Winds is another one of those sounds that I thought was going to be easy, but wasn't. At all. I had some cool wind recordings from a storm at the beach a few years ...
2018-05-16 14:41:57 +0000 UTC View Post
I get ideas for ambiences from lots of different places. Movies, books, games, and of course, requests. This one came from a picture.
It was just an old wooden house with a large wheel attached to it, situated on the bank of a river. The water dripping from the wheel seemed to imply that the wheel wasn't spinning quickly. In fact, the whole picture seemed to represent a slow but persisten...
2018-05-03 12:43:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I've been told many times that you can't have enough taverns or dungeons in role-playing games. Well, I figured the same must be true for places of worship. From massive cathedrals to local parishes and everything in between. There's always one nearby.
For this installment, I decided to choose the classic Forgotten Realms deity, Helm, the god of protection and vigilance....
2018-04-25 15:07:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Just a quick note to let you know that the sounds from the latest SoundPad, Film Noir, have now been added to the Custom SoundPad tool and are ready for mixing and matching. (you may need to refresh the page to see the new menu item)
As I was adding these sounds, I realized that Custom SoundPad now has over 500 sounds available. I'm very much a quality over quantity pers...
2018-04-18 15:42:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I'm really excited about this new SoundPad. I got the idea for a couple of months ago and it's been germinating since then.
I love the atmosphere and vibe of film noir movies, the issue for me was, that much of this is visual. The lighting, the starkness of the environment, the sense that the characters exist in a kind of bubble inside a largely indifferent environment. ...
2018-04-10 16:50:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Sometimes I start creating an ambience with no real goal in mind. I just start playing around with sounds and tones and see where if leads somewhere. Often it doesn't, and I'm left with a partial thing, maybe with one or two good ideas if I'm lucky. Sometimes, I get caught up in it and find it interesting enough to take it the full 10 minutes.
I've had this track finishe...
2018-03-29 13:50:49 +0000 UTC View Post