tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Cotton Club

Added 2018-08-01 14:47:10 +0000 UTC

Greetings Patrons,

I've been enthralled lately by the excellent RPG book Harlem Unbound by Darker Hue Studios. It's a Call of Cthulhu/Gumshoe source and setting book that invites players into the world of upper New York City in the 1920s.

I've spent a few evenings with this book, whiskey in hand, Duke and Fats on vinyl, imagining this vibrant world of art and culture.

As a sound designer, I'm always looking for that inspiring place or time that I can recreate in sound. To do this one without music would be impossible. And to compose my own would be verging on blasphemy! My only hope was to turn to the actual source.

I've included 3 tracks from the 1920s in this piece - (thank you archive.org!) which are all in the public domain. I cleaned up the recordings somewhat as I knew I'd have a relatively 'dirty' foreground to mask some of the artifacts. I also treated them a bit with reverb making them sound more live and localized. The tracks are:

Harlem Shuffle - Lloyd Scott & His Orchestra
Cotton Club Stomp - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
I've Found a New Baby -Andy Preer & The Cotton Club Orchestra

(These choices were based mostly on recording quality and lack of lyrical content - certainly not top representative pics from the era.) My goal for ambient tracks like this is never to provide a center piece, but to create a background on which events might unfold. Play this one low, whisper to each other over the table, share a bottle of something nice and revel in the fact that you and your friends are draped down and hard-boiled.

Thank you all, as ever, for your continued support of me and the site.

best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com