For those of you who follow us on Twitter, you may have seen me post this on the 28th:
Working on the post production for Monday’s episode. Trying something a bit different. Liking how its sounding right now. #PodernFamily
At the time, I was excitedly adding in the music for episode 5. So far, I have worked music in pretty sparingly, usually only having a song every 10 minutes, or when there is a scene change. While working on this episode, I decided I wanted to add in more. This was for a few reasons. The biggest one being that I had been looking for more artists to add to the shows catalog. I also wanted it to feel more intentional and less thrown in at random. Since, honestly, if it wasn’t a scene change, where I added music was pretty random. My mood and tone on this changed while doing this for the first section of combat.
Combat in D&D takes some time. Even with me editing out quite a bit of the rules look ups and map talk, the first combat takes about 30 minutes. Somewhere around the half way point of that, I was really struggling to find good tracks to put in. Music for combat is very high energy, and it was honestly feeling exhausting to listen to. It also usually starts low and builds to an epic “conclusion.” This can work in cinema, where a fight scene might only be a few minutes, then its over. However, this rise and fall wasn’t really fitting with the pace of D&D combat. Honestly, it was getting distracting to a point where I thought people wouldn’t want to listen. As I was wrapping up the first combat, about an hour in and 3 or so hours of editing, I decided I couldn’t release this. Not the way it was.
In order to create what I thought was an easier to listen to episode, I have decided to fall back to more ambient tracks. This means that you can expect more from Syrinscape and Tabletop Audio. Extra music will still be used throughout for the mood. Such as at the start and end of combat. An important kill, or a party member going down. As the group transitions from place to place.
Today’s episode will still be posted before I am done for the night. But I wanted to get this up just in case the change raised any questions. Also, I will be adding in the first version of this episode’s combat to the bottom of this post later today. I’m curious if anyone actually preferred the first version I had. If you are reading this and know of any other artists who focus on ambient tracks, please let me know.
Adventures in Erylia is a storytelling podcast that blurs the lines between an actual play podcast and an audio drama. The podcast features recorded sessions of a homebrew 5th edition game of Dungeons and Dragons that has been heavily edited and enhanced with background music, ambiance, and sound effects.
