tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Yōkai Forest

Added 2022-11-16 19:38:40 +0000 UTC

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 the Japanese twist. Not knowing much about the rules and forms of Japanese traditional music, I did what I usually do, and take the Hollywood approach - I hint at it via the use of traditional instruments and various musical tropes. I think it came out quite well.

For the music portion of this track I've got some classic taiko, shakuhachi and koto, mixed with assorted hand percussion, which I played live. The addition of vocals and other instruments as drones helps keep it dark but still rooted in the natural world.

As this track is in sneak-peek mode for Patrons, I've included the mixed-version (on the site next week), as well as ambience-only and music-only versions of the track. Additionally, I've added no-spirits versions to both the mixed and the ambience-only versions. This essentially makes it nighttime forest track.

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

Best,

Tim