and the winner is

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 something else into a double-bass, with studio tricks. And I challenged people to figure out what it was originally.

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.

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…

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.

As to the actual answer…

A Hammer Dulcimer

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!

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

Basically, I needed something to fill in down there, frequency-wise, to give the track some body. Usefully but separately, I had put four microphones on Ellen’s dulcimer, recording four 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.

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.

Then, on a whim, I dropped it another octave, and a miracle occurred.

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.

And I have no idea why. But damn, I am using this trick forever. :D

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insects of the writing world

John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Ursula Vernon have teamed up to form the Insect Army, in response to one SFF.net pro-petition writer, who said:

“The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them – they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.”

God, all those people who Aren’t Us and Don’t Know Their Goddamn Place. Anyway, go read John’s post, Ursula has some hilarious art.

I’ve got actual work to do so need not to be writing about this today. But if I see any other good links, I’ll add them here.

eta:

• Juliet McKenna has a good post up expressing her frustration at all the destruction these tools have wrought.
• Diana Francis calls an effective horseshit on the petitioners, and joins the Insect Army.
• Radish Reviews have posted a really nice post on the fallout from all of this, finding some good things in the morass.
• Vox Day, whose use of the SFWA twitter feed to advertise an explicitly racist attack on another SFWA member got him expelled from SFWA and helped get this whole thing going, showed up in the comments section of Cora Buhlert’s extensive link roundup post.

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Recent related posts:
     What is being lost
     A Friday of Followups
     A Horrible Group of People
     An Embarrassing Stumble Towards Irrelevancy
     Collection: The SFWA, Sexism, and Racism Posts

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Collection: The SFWA, Sexism, and Racism Posts

This collection covers posts made in reaction to various sexism and racism explosions in geek culture. Topics include the Hugo Award, SFWA, and PAX controversies, as well as commentary on queer erasure with particular regard to Legend of Korra and Wikipedia, but also in other areas.

If you’re a guy, particularly, and still don’t think sexism and outright misogyny are a problems in geekdom, I hope you’ll read Power and Supervillainy, and then Gatekeeping and Recourse: what only men can do against sexism in geek culture.

And now, the list of posts, by topic:

The 2015 Hugo Capture – how a political slate captured nearly all literary nominations:

• On Buying Some Hugo Awards, and voting NO AWARD – how the Puppies politically-oriented nominations slates captured most of the literary Hugo Award nominations with only 10% of the vote (7 April 2015)
• We’d Better All Be Ready To Go To The Business Meeting – on whether the Puppies plan to swarm the business meeting to change rules, or prevent changes, or just create havok (10 April 2015)
• On Brad Torgersen, puppy leader, and his crocodile tears (11 April 2015)
• A… predicable? And yet baffling? double-down by a Puppy leader (13 April 2015)
• Some Puppies seem to be deleting things or pretending they don’t exist; too bad that’s not how the Internet works; also John C. Wright showed up himself to accuse me of libel for reposting his own essay; that’s also not how libel works (13 April 2015)
• Some nominees bowing out; largely a linkpost (16 April 2015)
• Some Evolving Strategies – are waters being tested for next year? (20 April 2015)
• What in the depths… wherein we go back to a Puppy post in February and learn how not being able to tell a book by it’s cover is SJW DECEPTIONS AND LIES (21 April 2015)
• Edmund Schubert declines his Hugo nomination over the Rabid Puppies, but I have major issues with his sympathies for the Sad Puppies (28 April 2015)
• sad puppy brad torgersen lies like crazy and juliette wade calls him on it, all on File 770 (3 May 2015)
• Cosigned, Strong Letter to Follow – on Tor Books’s Tom Doherty throwing editor Irene Gallo to the wolves for her accurate comments about the Puppies on her personal Facebook page (10 June 2015)
• Puppy Boycott, Ahoy – on the “Heinlein Couldn’t Win a Hugo Today” crowd deciding to boycott Robert Heinlein’s publisher. (18 June 2015)
• Reruns already? The New Old Shtick is to Bring It All Down. (20 July 2015)
• And Here We Go A’SWATing – a Puppy tries to bring the police down on David Gerrold (8 August 2015)
• On Sasquan’s Decision and Statement – wherein they override their harassment committee’s decision, on recommendation by Mr. Gerrold (11 August 2015)
• And There Was NO AWARDing – on the Hugo results and what happens next (25 August 2015)
• This Is Some Serious Street-Preacher Stupid Right Here – on puppy-slate supporters threatening various kinds of legal action (27 August 2015)
• On the Business Meeting, Part 1 – a discussion of the “4 and 6” reform proposal (28 August 2015)
• On the Business Meeting, Part 2 – a discussion of “E Pluribus Hugo,” the other major reform proposal (2 September 2015)
• Gaming the Hugo Awards Didn’t Work; Let’s Try Goodreads (5 January 2016)

Legend of Korra, Korrasami, and Queer Erasure (attempted):

• Regarding Legend of Korra, Korrasami, and Queer Erasure at Wikipedia (19 December 2014)
• A followup to the above: Taking a Giant Sharpie to that Erasure (22 December 2014)
• A Quiet Night at the Lair – not so political, but thoughts on holographic storytelling (25 December 2014)

General geek culture; also GamerGate, and PAX related posts:

• Power and Supervillainy: even if you’re intimidating enough to keep harassment at bay in person, wait ’till you get online (a personal example) (2 July 2013)
• Gatekeeping and Recourse: what only men can do against sexism in geekdom (13 August 2013)
• Three out of Four: starts as a PAX review, then turns into live Gabe Being an Asshole Again (3 September 2013)
• If You Want an Organised Boycott: what a boycott must achieve (4 September 2013)
• Exclusion: why representation matters, the 17% Rule, and why a crowd 33% female is seen as “mostly women” (17 July 2013)
• Pushback and Misandry: How resistance to sexism is lied about and declared “misandry,” a case study involving me (2 August 2013)
• Too Important for This: How Marketing Intentionally Promotes Sexism (16 January 2014)
• GamerGate true-believers are the anti-vaxxers of the online world (11 October 2014)
• A False Symmetry I Will Not Accept (also on GamerGate) (17 October 2014)
• But It’s Not About Misogyny (even though it won’t stop acting like it) (also on GamerGate) (23 October 2014)
• Mozilla and Firefox Careen Into a Ditch (yet more on GamerGate) (5 November 2014)
• A PAX East enforcer – and gamergater – photostalks GamerGate target Brianna Wu at PAX East, retweets murder and rape jokes (7 March 2014)
• Some Things Which Leapt Out at Me – on Norwescon’s post-convention panel photography, and the resultant erasure of women as attending professionals (27 April 2015)
• Just to Impress a Boy – shit people say to women in gaming software (21 May 2015)
• Pixels is not just incredibly terrible, it’s so misogynist even genre reviewers are going full-on NOPE (25 June 2015).
• How SXSW Really Blew It, and where incompetence, past a point, becomes malice (27 October 2015)

SFWA and petition-to-SFWA related:

• Going On until it can’t; on the thematic intersection of the SFWA kerfluffle and the end-game politics of the Baby Boom (2 June 2013)
• Somewhat Past Time …to forthrightly state that Theodore Beale/Vox Day is a white supremacist (14 June 2013)
• Two Followup Items: notes on the persistent devaluation of works by women (17 June 2013)
• All That SFWA Fail as of that point (1 July 2013)
• Orson Scott Card Can Blow It Out His Ass (9 July 2013)
• An Embarrassing Stumble Towards Irrelevancy: on the petition to SFWA (10 February 2014)
• A Horrible Group of People: on the petition’s author, Dave Truesdale (11 February 2014)
• A Friday of Followups (14 February 2014)
• What is Being Lost: How the petitioners are making themselves irrelevant (16 February 2014)
• All the Rage: A Link Collection for Today (17 February 2014)
• Insects of the Writing World – Join the Insect Army! (18 February 2014)
• If One of the Bottles Should Happen To Fall – Sean Fodera’s apology, reactions, and how this is not a resolution. (20 February 2014)

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