Greetings Patrons,
This weeks' ambience is Black Rider, my take on the infamous Nazgûl from the Lord of the Rings. This is a high-octane chase/action track but it has some ebb and flow to it as well. I liked that the Black Rider seems to both approach, stalk, and chase its prey.
As this track is in patron-only sneak-peek mode, I've attached the mixed version of th...
2023-01-25 16:42:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This week's track is the type of happy, cozy tavern setting that only halflings can provide. It was a particularly fun (and challenging) one to make as almost all the instruments were played and recorded live, by me. So that's guitars, violins, and (some) percussion for this one.
This is in patron-only sneak-peek mode right now (it will be live on the site next we...
2023-01-18 16:54:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I hope your 2023 is off to a good start! I've been watching the second season of the excellent spy drama, "Slow Horses" and have been loving the very non-glamorous world of espionage they've created. Covert Ops is my version of this type of noir, but not really retro music. I did add a muted trumpet bit as an ever-so-subtle nod to the genre, but beyond th...
2023-01-11 16:48:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Happy New Year to all! I started the year off by giving my studio a much-needed tidying. It's incredible how many bits and bobs get strewn around in the process of creation. Cables, guitar pedals, percussion instruments - and where did this brick come from?
For the first track of 2023, I created Puzzle Dungeon, a mechanical, moving, and twisting lab...
2023-01-04 16:40:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I just wanted to drop in to wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season. My best gift arrived last night when my older son returned from his semester abroad and I now get to spend a whole week with him before he goes back to school.
I'll most likely be taking this week off but one never knows, I may need to escape into the studio sometime between now and the N...
2022-12-24 17:11:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Edit: Dec. 28th - This has now been released to the public.
Greetings Patrons,
Just in time for the holidays, here's the 31st installment of the SoundPad series, Vikings. I've been working on this for a few weeks. In fact, last week's Viking Village came about as a result of exploring various environments and musical styles.
Starting work on a ...
2022-12-21 14:27:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Edit: I had forgotten to include the id3 tags in the files so they have been re-uploaded. If you downloaded these before Dec 19, 2022 you can re-download these. The tracks themselves are unchanged.
Greetings Patrons,
I wanted to create something for Viking life when they weren't out raiding and crossing vast oceans. Here's a wintery village at the base of some ragged mounta...
2022-12-14 16:56:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
A recent request for an 'elven celebration' stuck in my head and refused to leave. As you may know, I write down every request I get on an ever-growing list. I refer to this if I'm stuck for ideas or just want some inspiration. This request, however, I couldn't shake. And I think the reason for it was that it really begged the question: Do elves party? And if t...
2022-12-07 16:42:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Edit Dec 7 2022: I noticed there were some unintentional digital clicks in the files containing music so I've repaired those and re-uploaded them (see below). The files are:
I have kept the names of the files the same. The new files have a dat...
2022-11-30 14:34:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Another action/chase themed track for this week. This time it's set on the high seas, in old wooden sailing ships.
I've always appreciated the slow pace of naval combat and found that the most interesting part was the period before the cannons started firing broadsides. The ambience here is designed as a POV on the deck of the ship. Mast and rigging creak, s...
2022-11-23 15:46:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had a specific request for an ambience last week that took me down a bit of a rabbit hole (usually a good thing!). I was vaguely familiar with the Japanese spirits, known as Yōkai, but I didn't know how interesting and varied they were.
As I've done my share of creepy woods scenarios - and honestly, there are infinite permutations on this - I was intrigued by t...
2022-11-16 19:38:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This week's track is a chase, it's an escape. It's what happens when a simple action sets off a chain of events, and an entire plan gets tossed out in favor of running like hell.
The ambience portion of this track is pure destruction. Rocks falling, beams cracking, foundations groaning. I created it as a dungeon, or mine collapsing, but it could easily be an...
2022-11-09 15:32:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I didn't really have a handle on where to set this week's track until a couple of days ago. The music came first on this one, but the more I worked on it, the more it seemed to deviate from my original plan. I was going for a utility action track, rooted in folk instruments. But I couldn't shake the idea that it sounded - fun. In fact, it sounded like a party.
Greetings Patrons,
All great cities have a dark side. A place that doesn't show up in brochures, a place that's not for tourists. In fantasy fiction, this is the home of the downtrodden, the ostracized, and the poor. It's a place to scrape by, hustle, and survive.
Beggar's Rest is such a place. It's always dark and foggy, no matter what the time. Thick smoke from coal...
2022-10-26 14:57:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I had quite a stressful week as I decided it was time to replace my 9-year-old, workhorse of a PC with a new one. The 2 days I gave myself stretched to a solid 4. And then - there was that terrifying in-between period where I actually had no computer at all because the sample drives (10TB worth) were disconnected and waiting to be installed into the new case. Yikes!&nbs...
2022-10-19 15:24:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
When I first started working on this track, the file name for the initial idea was: 'druid_forest_thing'. And yet, the finished version is quite literally, millions of miles away from the original.
Maybe it was the whispering flautando strings that pushed me out of the forests for distant barren worlds. Maybe it was the pulsing synth bass that I didn't th...
2022-10-12 14:54:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
After last week's spooky Halloween track I thought I'd bring it back with something nice and uplifting. Here's a staple of fantasy adventure, the ever-present Adventure Supply shop.
The idea was to create a cozy, friendly little shop where you could purchase everything from 50ft of rope, to sacks of grain for your horse. It's a bustling shop, filled with ...
2022-10-05 15:23:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings patrons,
As the spooky season approaches, I thought I'd do something with a horror bent. I should note that the title of this track doesn't really have anything to do with the book or films by the same name, I just liked that it was creepy sounding and seemed to fit!
Village of the Damned is an outdoor setting, appropriately gloomy and rainy. Not much in the...
2022-09-28 15:35:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This is one of those tracks that I assumed I had already done, but hadn't. I've remedied that now. Medieval Banquet, is just that. It's a grand feast in a great hall. Visiting dignitaries, nobles, gallant knights and whispering advisors all take the night off to eat, drink, and be merry.
The music here is what film people would call 'diagetic', meaning it...
2022-09-21 15:24:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Here's a moody gothic reverie set in an old, decrepit chapel. Nature has burst through the walls. Vines cover the pews and dais. Birds nest in the beams. Leaves blow across the floor, and spirits of the departed whisper from the shadows.
I thought this struck a nice balance between mystery and beauty. Perhaps your adventuring party stumbles across this place and h...
2022-09-14 14:21:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
The family beach trip was excellent, but I'm excited to be back in NYC, and most importantly, back in my studio.
The first thing I did was create a complete ambience-only track of a windy bluff full of harpies. I don't know why this was the first thing I thought of, maybe it was the swarming gulls? Anyway, as those of you who have listened to my ramblings fo...
2022-09-07 15:55:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Before I introduce this track, just a short message to say that I'll be out of the studio next week for a much-needed trip to the shore with my family. So, there won't be a track next Wednesday. As I typically do, I'll be bringing my field recorder with me and hopefully, I'll find something other than waves to point it at (I've got lots of those!).
Now, on t...
2022-08-24 17:09:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Here's a magical, off-beat, slightly creepy(?) track that, after the music was finished, I decided to set in the dark recesses of the earth, lit only by bioluminescent fungi. In D&D this would be part of the Underdark, but it could just as easily be above ground. The mood is really the main thing.
Musically, I used disjointed flutes, thunder sheets, glockenspi...
2022-08-17 16:19:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
This week's track features a setting inspired by the new D&D starter set, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. The drowned sailor/zombie trope is fairly common in fantasy games and as soon as I read it I knew it would make for a useful ambience.
At its heart (or lack thereof!) it's a beach scene. But then add some zombies shambling toward you and it beco...
2022-08-10 15:48:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Greeting Patrons,
This week's ambience takes us into the dystopian future of cyberpunk. A teeming mass of humanity is forced to live in close quarters and eke out a living. This trope is central to cyberpunk. The melding of technology, multiculturalism, and both high and low tech. Here, the only market is the black market, and the only hustle is the side hustle. It serves as a grim remind...
2022-08-03 15:37:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I began working on this as an exploration of some new percussion. A simple frame drum and bells in an almost arrhythmic pattern. I knew it was a desert scene after a few bars but I wanted to do something different than the classic duduk + vocal melody (which is classic for good reason!). Some interesting hybrid drones and processed woodwinds and string plucks roun...
2022-07-27 14:51:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I'm disrupting my usual Wednesday release schedule to bring you a special post (Don't worry, I'll be back on Wednesday too).
Many (many) months ago, I got an email from video game design professor (and Patreon patron!) Dave Beck of Paverson Games, about producing custom tracks for a board game he was creating about distilling spirits. Back then he d...
2022-07-25 16:02:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Edit: These tracks were re-uploaded with a different track number. The new # is 328_ and that is what will appear on the site. The files are otherwise identical. You can simply rename the tracks you've already downloaded. - Tim
Greetings Patrons,
I woke up feeling a bit low-energy one day last week (It definitely wasn't the wine the night before!). I sat down in the studio ...
2022-07-20 15:07:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
I saw an interview with one of the authors of the latest D&D adventure books speaking about the tepuis of her native Venezuela and I had to look up the word because I'm sorry to say, I'd never heard it before. Well, a rabbit hole of Wikipedia (linked above) and youtube videos ensued. 2022-07-13 17:03:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Greetings Patrons,
Here's another classic RPG scenario. The ever-popular cultist hideout. This is designed as almost pure underscore, as in, the score holds a single level of energy throughout, so it never blooms over dialog or action.
Musically I went with a faux ancient Greek style instrumentation. Zithers, various drums, lots of basso vocals. I really wanted a bouzouki part...
2022-07-06 15:12:33 +0000 UTC View Post