New Ambience: Barghest Fell

Greetings Patrons,

I'm back. I had a lovely family trip to the beach. On the way home I dropped both my kids off at college, or uni as some may call it.

Before I left I had started this track and gotten fairly far into it. While doing my morning walks on the beach, I kept thinking about what the setting might be. I listen to a lot of film and TV scores while I walk. One of these was the score to the Omen by the late, great Jerry Goldsmith. It's a funny thing - walking on a beach in the early morning, waves crashing, sun rising, people walking dogs - and hearing terrifying music as the soundtrack to all of it. Somebody is probably thinking, "well, that's the power of music, innit?". Ok, yes. But what it made me realize that as composers and sound designers, we are incredibly free to juxtapose anything, with anything else for effect. I've definitely done this before, but this one allowed me to explore a more complex idea than simply a creepy field with large ghost dogs in it.

Musically, this starts out almost romantically. There's even a nice melody to let you know things are right with the world. As the piece progresses it becomes increasingly agitated. Ostinato strings and percussion drive things forward. Then it gets strident - gradually increasing in tempo as the action heats up. It goes through a few more changes, including a kind of Elfman-esque section with glockenspiel and wtf choir. I think this one can work for a lot of genres, especially the darker side of magic and fantasy.

Through all of this, we're standing in a field, or fjäll, or fjell - depending on whose culture we're referring to. And then there are the barghests - a new creature for me - which, again depending on the culture, can mean various things. I think a large spirit dog is probably the most familiar, so I went with that one.

As this track is in Patreon exclusive, sneak-peek mode, I've included the mixed-version (live on the site next week), as well as music-only, and ambience-only versions here, for patrons. I also added a 'rain version' which, well you can guess. And finally, 2 versions that exclude the barghests entirely.

In other news, thanks to patron Roy for spotting a playlist bug on mobile and pointing it out to me. If you couldn't switch tracks in your playlist on iOS or Android devices, this should now be fixed.

Thank you all, as always, for your continuing support.

Best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com