Bardic Tools Update - August 2025

Heeeello!

It's me again :D Hope your summer was amazing. If you've just discovered Bardic Tools because of the ENNIEs, welcome! I'm Borja, and this blog is the best way to keep up to date with the latest happenings in Bardic Tools.

Cooling off from the ENNIEs nomination, August was a lot more quiet than July. And that's good! As you'll see later, I kind of needed the quiet to work on a big, chunky feature.

Okay, it's not later.

It's now. I'm going to show it right now.

I'm too excited.

Let's gooo!!

New Feature: The Experimental Play UI!

So, a lot of you folks use your computers to prepare sessions, but a tablet or phone to actually run music during the games. That's great! Our playgroup's current DM also does it :)

As you know, the experience of using Bardic Tools on a touchscreen is... not great. In fact, it's kind of awful!

Here are some of the dozens of issues that you've hit when trying to use BT from a phone:

• You end up accidentally dragging and dropping when adjusting the volume.
• The "Play Scene" buttons are hard to click.
• The Soundboard is hard to scroll, you end up sorting scenes instead.
• You end up changing the name of a song on accident.

Well... yeah, you're right!

I tried to run a game from a phone once, and I ended up messing up all my carefully laid out scenes.

Yikes.

No more! Here's my solution to that: The Play Mode.

Play Mode is a new way of interacting your soundboard. When it's active, you:

• Can't sort, arrange, or delete sounds: No more messing up your board!
• Can only see one scene at a time: No more sorting scenes on accident, no more scrolling forever to find the right scene!
• Have the scene controls at the bottom: With chunky, easy-to-click buttons, you can start and stop the scene much more easily.
• Plus, all the cards have been re-designed for mobile, so that they make better use of the screen and work better with your finger.

Interested? Here's a short demo:

WARNING!
This is an extremely experimental feature! I don't recommend using it in games!

The only reason I release it this early is because I want your feedback on whether this solution fixes the problems with touch devices. So please, give it a quick whirl outside of your games, and let me know what you think! Do the controls feel natural? Do you think it would get in the way of your games?

Any and all feedback is welcome at this stage and, to collect it, please use this megathread: To Discord!. You can also email me at borja@bardic.tools.

With that warning out of the way, I'll say I'm very excited by this feature. I feel like a lot of folks wanted to use Bardic Tools for their live games, and couldn't because of the lack of touchscreen support. I love live games with all my heart, and I want them to flourish, so it would make me really happy to enable them as much as possible.

Cool? Cool!

Moving on!

Composer Spotlight: Kevin MacLeod, the OG of CC music

We all owe a lot to Kevin. If you head over to incompetech.com, you'll see that he's published hundreds of tracks that are free to use, for any purpose, and the only thing he asks in return is attribution.

You'll also notice that the website looks a bit dated -- that's because he's been doing this for a very long time!

Kevin is one of the original madlads who started releasing really high-quality music for the internet to use for free. Countless YouTube videos, student films, and indie games owe him their soundtracks. He's been doing this for so long that his songs are licensed under a very out-dated version of Creative Commons!

Let's hear some of his music. It's really all over the place! You can find delicate piano renditions:

But also a piece called "Big Drumming", which is perhaps the most descriptive name a piece of music has ever had. Don't believe me?

But here is my favorite:

You might be thinking "Hang on a minute! Isn't that the soundtrack for a certain magical wizarding world?". Well... yes and no! The song itself is public domain, but the recordings are copyrighted, and... oh, whatever! I'll let Kevin explain it himself:

Saint-Saens' masterpiece. This piece is 100% free to use. It will probably get claimed by any number of music publishers, just so you know. They can't tell the difference between this and their copyrighted recordings. Contest the claims. Contest all the claims. I do not claim music.

So this is basically a big eff-you to Warner's copyright department. How cool is this guy?

Now, I have a confession to make: Kevin has not responded to my emails. In fact, I haven't sent him any. And that's because of this little bit of text he has on his website:

I mean... I really don't think he wants me to write to ask for permission. I spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about this, but ultimately decided that he's saying "look, the license says it all." And the license definitely allows us to use the songs so... 🤷‍♂️ I decided not to bother him.

In any case: Kevin, if by any miracle you're reading this: Thank you. Not only for how your work has helped Bardic Tools, but because you've influenced the internet at large, for the better.

Like, imagine YouTube without this song:

Now: Because his music is so diverse, Bardic Tools has a very small selection of Kevin's tracks. However, our Discord has a megathread with other songs we like from him. Check it out, or add yours, here!

Personal Update: Bardic Tools is 1 year old 🎉🥳🎊

I was doing the monthly review of Bardic Tools, and something weird popped up: I realized that the first real beta users subscribed about a year ago!

That's bonkers to think about, honestly. Some of you have received these for a whole year, and you're still interested in hearing about my project!

To celebrate, I'd like to do something a little special: If you're a subscriber to Bardic Tools, and would like me to send you stickers and a thank-you note in a nice envelope, complete with a wax seal, just let me know on Discord or send me an email to borja@bardic.tools! If I can mail you from the UK(*), I will!

I've also got these nice cards that can hold a yearly gift card to Bardic Tools, so if you were planning to buy one, I'd be happy to add it into the envelope.

Here's a sneak peek of what it looks like:

As always, thank you so much for sticking with me through this surprisingly long update. Growing a project like this is hard, but getting to show it to amazing folks like you make it all worth it.

Hope you have a wonderful month,

-- Borja

(*): Yes, unfortunately that means I can't ship to the US.