Halls of the Winter Queen
I’m part of a lovely Dungeons and Dragons campaign run by my friend Griffin Poole, and in early 2021 I wrote some ambient tracks to be an underscore for our sessions. D&D is so wonderfully flexible when it comes to the tone you want to set for a campaign, and for this one the main thing that struck me was the sense of scale: the settings were breathtakingly vast and unfathomably ancient. I wanted to capture some of that feeling in these pieces.
For Planewalking, I always imagined our party traveling over a vast expanse of grassland, perhaps along a path that had been worn from hundreds of years of foot and cart traffic. A sense of apprehension fills the air as the sun sets.
The next piece, Cavern, has some elements of horror scoring. There’s an extreme separation of register, an eerie use of space, and a juxtaposition of very fragile melodic fragments against the grime and rumble of the bass and harmony. My hope with this piece is to convey a sense of apprehension and uncertainty, like what you and your party might feel when descending into the depths of a dungeon. The call-and-response “echo” effect is a nod to Mussorgsky’s Catacombs from Pictures at an Exhibition.
With Forest, I imagined traveling through a hazy and mysterious bit of woodland or marshland. Things in the distance shimmer and glisten; you and your party have completely lost track of where you are or what time it is.
The final piece, Castle, is the theme for a dwarven city. They are a proud people and herald the return of their wayward kin with a joyous fanfare of horns and drums. Unlike the other pieces in the set, which are for electronic instruments, Castle is written for eight brass players and Timpani. A score and parts can be made available upon request.