New Ambience: Desert Devotional (Patreon)

Greetings Patrons,

This week's track grew organically out of a few tracks of vocals. I was enjoying the way they bent in and out of tune, especially when I added a long, evolving drone beneath them. Eventually, I determined that this would be some kind of monastic ritual. I didn't want to ground it in any particular practice, so I made a melange. It's very much the type of thing Frank Herbert did when creating religions for Dune. So, that became my inspiration. 

Musically this is vocal-centric. There are also various flutes (long pan pipes, shakuhachi), some percussion textures, courtesy of a gran casa scraped with a superball mallet, and a few organic-sounding synths. 

The ambience has some lovely interior wind sounds. This is what initially gave me the idea of the desert. As the wind rose and fell in the recording, I accented it with guttering candle sounds and subtle torch whooshes. The human sounds (monks) contain footsteps, cloth rustles, and various devotional activities - placing stones, ladling water, etc.

As this track is in Patreon-only sneak-peek mode (live on the site next week) I've included the mixed version, as well as ambience-only, and music-only versions here. Additionally, I created a No Monks ambience-only version which leaves just the empty temple and environmental effects. I debated about creating a No Monks mixed version as the music is basically all monks singing, but I added it anyway. It's a subtle variation, but may prove useful.

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

Best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com