[HN Gopher] Octobass
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Octobass
Author : keepamovin
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-06-16 11:33 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I do remember this tall bass. A very cool and unusual museum,
| BTW. Phoenix is a fun town. The Botanical Garden too is not to be
| missed.
| leptons wrote:
| The Musical Instrument Museum is one of the best things to do in
| Phoenix. It's also one of my favorite museums in the world.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Yes, definitely plan to spend a few hours - it's a massive
| museum packed with musical instruments and cultures from around
| the world. They give you positional-aware headsets that play
| music and information as you near a display.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That place is amazing. Went there once thinking it would be a
| 30 minute diversion before we did other stuff. We spent nearly
| 4 hours in there.
|
| Wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone in Phoenix.
| tkgally wrote:
| There's also a very nice musical instrument museum in
| Hamamatsu, Japan [1]. I really enjoyed it and would like to go
| again.
|
| [1] https://www.gakkihaku.jp/en/
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Serious question - why else do I want to go to Phoenix? Say
| enough for a long weekend. I keep hearing good things about
| this museum but Phoenix is too far away for me to go just for
| this.
| leptons wrote:
| I have family there, which is the _only_ reason I would ever
| go to Phoenix.
| kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
| Here's a video of one being played (sort of):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3VdVbBOxw
| esperent wrote:
| Skip to 5:41 to hear it actually played. Although I assume
| you'd need very good speakers and I'm not sure if the YT audio
| compression is good for very low tones.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| At least for my hearing, there is a fall off around 20hz,
| though that could be my headphones.
|
| https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| I can't speak for YouTube's specific compression, but since
| there's less information in low frequency sounds they should
| compress better than high frequency sounds.
|
| Anecdata: the bass in low bitrate online drum and bass radio
| in the 2000s always came through cleaner than the mids and
| treble.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Where "sort of" depends on your personal answer to "does
| spending 15 minutes recording yourself making various noises
| with it, then editing the clips together count as "playing"?".
| apricot wrote:
| "The Montreal Symphony Orchestra is the only orchestra that owns
| one of these unusual instruments"
|
| They actually have three. https://www.osm.ca/en/octobasses/
| jpease wrote:
| Saw it in Phoenix.
|
| Definitely big.
|
| Wouldn't recommend for slap.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| "Bass! How low can you go?" (Public Enemy - Bring the Noise)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| "With a range so deep it goes lower than humans can hear"
|
| To be fair, the difference between "sound" and "air pressure" is
| vibes. A tire inflator is probably putting out infrasonic
| frequencies, too.
| garthogjazz wrote:
| Co-Builder of the last two in Montreal here, actually the
| octobass shown in the article is incomplete, it lacks the pedals
| that are present on the original one by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.
| These pedals allows for legato, which is not achievable if you
| play only with the levers.
|
| About those in Montreal, one of them is a replica (+ minor
| upgrades) of the original one, and two of them are driven with
| motors.
|
| You can see some close up in [1]
|
| [1] https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2024/08/14/irez-vous-
| voir-...
| keepamovin wrote:
| _This_ is the HN we came for. Wow. The guy that built this!
| BoostandEthanol wrote:
| "Some of the instruments fall below the human hearing range, only
| the vibrations can be felt," feels unreal to me for some reason.
| I can't imagine a vibration rattling through me without hearing
| something at that power.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Sounds like something you'll _have_ to try! :)
| tpoacher wrote:
| Apparently this is a thing that was used in old horror movies.
|
| Subsonic music would play just before a scary encounter,
| creating a feeling of uneasiness to the audience without any
| consciously perceptible stimulous, and thus priming the
| audience for the horror to come.
| tenthirtyam wrote:
| The interwebz once told me that the human eye resonates at
| 19Hz or so, which apparently when triggered is very useful
| for inducing a sense of fear.
| _kb wrote:
| It's used to rattle more than just humans with processes like
| DFAT [0]. Here's the NASA handbook on their use [1].
|
| For experiences that are a little more human friendly, subsonic
| audio is something that's also explored more commonly in the
| noise art. Stefanie Egedy [2] is one artist that's been working
| in that space lately.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-
| field_acoustic_testing
|
| [1]: https://s3vi.ndc.nasa.gov/ssri-kb/static/resources/NASA-
| HDBK...
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Yo2hcSAbc
| jclem wrote:
| For years, a friend of mine (in San Francisco) and I (in New York
| City) have sent one another an image [1] of one of these being
| tuned any time we're doing coast-to-coast software debugging
| (especially relevant when we were working on a realtime
| collaborative text editor).
|
| [1] https://www.loc.gov/item/2014714519/
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Kinda funny, my son recently started playing both guitar and bass
| guitar and quickly got into building them. He mashed up a Ukulele
| with a fretless Guitar and put two bridges on the Guitar so it
| has a harp section. Just before this got posted he came around
| and asked me about the physics of building an (electric) bass
| guitar tuned an octave or two octaves lower than a normal bass
| guitar.
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