{"id":5450,"date":"2014-02-18T09:02:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T17:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=5450"},"modified":"2014-02-18T09:02:20","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T17:02:20","slug":"and-the-winner-is-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/and-the-winner-is-2\/","title":{"rendered":"and the winner is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I posted a work-in-progress roughmix<\/a> of an instrumental track from the upcoming Free Court of Seattle<\/i> book series soundtrack album.<\/p>\n

I also<\/em> posted the bass instrument, in excerpt form, as a solo track. It sounds like a a double bass (a.k.a. standup base) but, as I told everyone, it wasn’t that; I made something else into<\/eM> a double-bass, with studio tricks. And I challenged people to figure out what it was originally.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid nobody got there. A couple of people got into the right category (“tonal percussion instruments”), then wandered back out again, because they kept being sure it had to be bowed, even after I said it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Because nobody guessed correctly, I’m assigning numbers and doing a random winner drawing from everyone who tried, across all reposts I know about! A d20 will work, which is convenient, so dice roll please…<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

THE WINNER IS DAVID, FROM THE ORIGINAL POST! Email me, David! Also I’ll send email if you left a valid one associated with your username.<\/p>\n

As to the actual answer…<\/p>\n


A Hammer Dulcimer<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

YES, REALLY. I thought I was tipping my hand, talking about the mysterious “bass instrument” at the same time that I was talking about Ellen’s hammer dulcimer, but I guess not!<\/p>\n

The discovery was entirely accidental – particularly the bow sounds. That’s not hard work; that’s a processing artefact, I guess<\/em>. I honestly don’t know.<\/p>\n

Basically, I needed something to fill in down there, frequency-wise, to give the track some body. Usefully but separately, I had put four<\/eM> microphones on Ellen’s dulcimer, recording four<\/em> tracks off it, with one in particular set up to pick up as much low end as her instrument could give me. But it didn’t pick up any more low-end than the bass bar microphone, and it also picked up a really “thunk”-heavy sound – every hammerblow got exaggerated. It didn’t add anything positive, so I was going to leave it out.<\/p>\n

So I had a recording I wasn’t going to use anyway, and a need for something bassy. Using the built-in Ardour octave shifter, I dropped it two octaves to see how that sounded. The answer was “still terrible, and if possible, even worse.” I poked around with it, trying various things, and the answer kept being “terrible.” Less so, but still.<\/p>\n

Then, on a whim, I dropped it another octave, and a miracle occurred<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how, but suddenly I could hear bow noises – probably what happened to the thunk sounds – in a recording of an instrument that just plain sounded like a double-bass. Filter out the subsonics, and it became clearer. Filter out the high-end harmonics and again, clearer. After that, it was just treating it like a standup bass.<\/p>\n

And I have no idea why. But damn, I am using this trick forever<\/em>. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I posted a work-in-progress roughmix of an instrumental track from the upcoming Free Court of Seattle book series soundtrack album. I also posted the bass instrument, in excerpt form, as a solo track. It sounds like a a double bass (a.k.a. standup base) but, as I told everyone, it wasn’t that; I made [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}