tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Desert Winds

Added 2018-05-16 14:41:57 +0000 UTC

Greetings Patrons,

A different take on the desert biome this week. The other ones I've done were a bit more musical or more abstract. This one aims for a much more nature focused feel.

Desert Winds is another one of those sounds that I thought was going to be easy, but wasn't. At all. I had some cool wind recordings from a storm at the beach a few years ago which I've used in various sounds but never really featured. I was excited to build an entire track around a single field recording and make some tweaks and be done. Well, it turns out that wind isn't just wind.

I found that the wind I had was much too steady, and therefore kind of dull. So I had to perform all sorts of subtle trickery on it to make it come alive. I animated the pitch and the filtering which made it better. I layered some stock onto it but had to excise anything that resembled a leaf sound.

I did some sand Foley recording to see if I could get some cool blowing, sifting sand noises. That answer would be no by the way, I could not. No matter what I did, it sounded like a guy pouring sand on the beach, not the violent storm I was trying to conjure. But other trickery worked. like some roaring waves pitched and filtered to sound more like a wall of sand than individual grains.

The music is very subtle on this one and I like what it adds a lot. That being said, I know some of you prefer pure ambience so I've included a patron only alternate track as well.

Thank you, as always, for your continuing support.

Best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com