New Ambience: Ready the Castle
Added 2025-10-15 17:41:40 +0000 UTCPreparations for celebration, or war? (Patreon patrons receive 6 additional versions of this track)
Greetings Patrons,
I have a notebook on my desk that I scrawl all types of things in. Often they're notes on mixing (too much cowbell on measure 18), sometimes it's a musical idea, and often it's ideas for future ambiences. Whenever I get ready to start a new track, I flip back through the pages and see if anything jumps out. This week's track is courtesy of the barely legible phrase "preparations/war/royal visit etc".
Ok, so this was clearly something that , as Thomas the Tank Engine says - 'flew into my funnel'. Now I had to figure out what I was thinking, and what prompted this brainwave. In this case, I never did. But, the time I spent trying to find the genesis of this idea, prompted a bunch of new ones. So I'll call that a win.
Ready the Castle is about the hustle and bustle of activity in the courtyard and surrounding grounds of a castle. The preparations could be for anything. A potential invasion, visiting dignitaries, a wedding, or a yearly feast. I thought about how in each of these scenarios it would be difficult to tell what was being planned for. The ambience is busy workers shouting and running around trying to get things done, portcullises being raised an lowered, carts delivering materials and various livestock.
Musically this is pure orchestral. It's scored like an establishing shot in a film. Starting from a drone shot above, descending from the spires to ground level, macro to micro. Small vignettes of music to match the various activities. The pace picks up and takes on a kind of chaotic vibe before relaxing again. This could work well as generic fantasy background piece as long a little variation is in order.
As this track is in Patreon exclusive sneak-peek, I've included the mixed version (live on the site next week), as well as music-only, and ambience-only versions here for patrons. Additionally, I created 2 'calm' and 2 'empty' versions. The calm versions take down the intensity of the walla (sound design speak for human chatter) to make it, well, calmer. The 'empty' versions remove the human activity in the courtyard (where did everyone go?) leaving a few unattended horses and dogs asking the same question.
Thank you all, as always, for your continuing support.
Best,
Tim
