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New Ambience: New Orleans Noir
🕑 Added 2020-08-26 14:52:42 +0000 UTCGreetings Patrons,
This ambience evolved a bit from inception to finish. I knew I wanted to do something in New Orleans, something vaguely Cthulhu-ish. I decided it should be set in the 20s, so that part was fairly straight forward. I tried to do some research of actual sounds from the era but it proved to be quite difficult.
YouTube has some great footage, but not surprisingly, it's all silent. No problem, I figured I'd just read some descriptions and construct the sounds based on text. Old cars, streetcars, horses and buggies still active, steam whistles from nearby ferries, and throngs of people, mostly happy.
The music had me stumped though. My normal go to was to find some old dixieland jazz as a background but I wanted the ambience to have a darker edge to it, and dixieland is mostly very jaunty.
My decision was to err on the side of anachronism. I jumped forward a few decades and re-watched a bit of the film Angel Heart, also set in New Orleans. The score , by Trevor Jones ( Excalibur, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth ) is a wonderful mashup of saxophone and synthesizer and I thought that might actually be the exact right tone for this, even if it isn't technically of the period.
I've included an ambience-only and a music-only version here for patrons. The ambience-only one will be largely devoid of menace, as that all comes from the music. It is, however, a good vintage 1920s cityscape which might come in handy.
Thank you all, as always, for your continuing support.
Best,
Tim
P.S.
I'm taking the family for a small vacation before the kids start school (we still don't know exactly what that entails yet). I'll be out of town starting this Saturday and back the following weekend. So most likely no updates until the following week. - T
Comments
Chuck Meriam
This is spectacular!
I think the Mafia games are set in the 20's, maybe you could take inspiration from there next time you want to do something from this era? But anyway, great work!
Jason Reid
OMG I miss my city life right now; this is easily my new favorite track on your site. Amazing as always!
