New Ambience: Map Chamber

Greetings Patrons,

This track was entirely based around a violin recording I made a few weeks ago and revisited. It was kind of an anti-violin recording actually. Light bow strokes that only really hinted at the played note. Mostly wispy bow noise and organic sounding string vibrations. I had a heavy brass mute attached to the bridge to remove any of the body resonances and just focus on the strings and bow. It sounded cool. But, as I was near to completing the track there was always one thing that bothered me. It turns out, it was the violin. So, I removed it. I suppose it's like making a mold of something. You use an object to create an empty space, then you remove the object, and fill the space with something else.

Map Chamber is a reverberant room with a pool of water at its center. Just beneath the water the outlines and shapes of the known world are revealed in great detail. There is magic at play here. The map can change focus, shrink, enlarge and by augmented by real time information.

The ambience is built from subtle magical textures, room tones and the gentle rippling of the water. There are people milling about. Let's call them Map Keepers. They are like the oracles of the map.

After using the violin as the focus as I described above, I added several tracks of bowed waterphone. I loved how this referenced the original violin while also underscoring the rippling of the central pool. This eventually became the central part of the sound. Additionally there are flautando strings, some bowed crotales, mark tree and a marimba, hit gently with soft mallets.

As this track is in Patreon 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 download. Additionally, I created two 'No People' versions which creates an empty space with just the environmental elements. I hope you find these useful.

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

Best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com