Un-distorting a "jewish" sound clip.
February 24, 2011 9:05 PM Subscribe
I need help un-disorted a sound clip. There is a sound in Civilization 4 that plays whenever you discover Judaism. I could not place it--and I know my Jewish prayers--so I dug in the install folder and found the full file. It is heavily distorted in a way I cannot quite figure out. Could someone help me see if this was ever a prayer to begin with, or was just random vocalizations approved as being "Jewish enough" in order to avoid offending people with actual prayers?
The file is http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZFFZ1Z3Y
It feels like they ripped out an entire channel of sound or something. I tried obvious stuff in audacity--reversing it, changing the tempo, reversing it then changing the tempo--and it didn't work.
For those who own Civ4: all of the full tracks have this weird modified feeling, although Judaism is the only one with "voices." They can be found in assets/sounds/buildings. The full versions are the names of the religions; the short versions have the work "dink" in them. So the version that plays in-game is a clip of the above mp3 (jewish.mp3) called jewishdink.wav. Because the dink clips are so short, the weirdness of the full versions cannot be appreciated in-game.
The file is http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZFFZ1Z3Y
It feels like they ripped out an entire channel of sound or something. I tried obvious stuff in audacity--reversing it, changing the tempo, reversing it then changing the tempo--and it didn't work.
For those who own Civ4: all of the full tracks have this weird modified feeling, although Judaism is the only one with "voices." They can be found in assets/sounds/buildings. The full versions are the names of the religions; the short versions have the work "dink" in them. So the version that plays in-game is a clip of the above mp3 (jewish.mp3) called jewishdink.wav. Because the dink clips are so short, the weirdness of the full versions cannot be appreciated in-game.
It sounds like voice to me, made to sound distant from the listener by means of heavy reverb and EQ and maybe a little delay or chorus... nothing exotic, or easily reversible.
Put yourself in the shoes of a sound designer, on a tight deadline, who has hundreds of other sounds to crank out that day. For a one-shot sound effect like this, it would be far easier to make up some appropriately mumbly sounding fake vocalizations than to find a good excerpt of a real Jewish chant and then invent a way to scramble it.
posted by xil at 12:15 AM on February 25, 2011
Put yourself in the shoes of a sound designer, on a tight deadline, who has hundreds of other sounds to crank out that day. For a one-shot sound effect like this, it would be far easier to make up some appropriately mumbly sounding fake vocalizations than to find a good excerpt of a real Jewish chant and then invent a way to scramble it.
posted by xil at 12:15 AM on February 25, 2011
Best answer: You didn't have to go through the effort, it's already on Youtube.
According to a commentor:
transliteration:
"(adon 'olam 'asher malakh, beterem kol yetzir niv(ra"
translation:
"the lord of the world, who reigned before everything was created"
I don't know Hebrew, so I comment, but the transliteration does look spot on to me. Still can't figure out the ones for Hinduism or Christianity though. The Taoism one has always piqued my interest - I remember hearing the exact same chant in the "Mongols" section of the History pages in Age of Empires II.
posted by Senza Volto at 4:17 AM on February 25, 2011
According to a commentor:
transliteration:
"(adon 'olam 'asher malakh, beterem kol yetzir niv(ra"
translation:
"the lord of the world, who reigned before everything was created"
I don't know Hebrew, so I comment, but the transliteration does look spot on to me. Still can't figure out the ones for Hinduism or Christianity though. The Taoism one has always piqued my interest - I remember hearing the exact same chant in the "Mongols" section of the History pages in Age of Empires II.
posted by Senza Volto at 4:17 AM on February 25, 2011
Well, how silly of me to not Google that. Here you go, the full text.
posted by Senza Volto at 4:19 AM on February 25, 2011
posted by Senza Volto at 4:19 AM on February 25, 2011
Response by poster: It's Adon Olam?!? I know all of Adon Olam and I never thought... wow. OK.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:26 AM on February 25, 2011
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:26 AM on February 25, 2011
Response by poster: I think, on reflection, I was being thrown by how DIFFERENT it is musically from the normal Adon Olam. The normal tune for Adon Olam these days is quiet jaunty, as Adon Olam usually ends a service and the tune is trying to rouse people from the stupor (if you don't care) or exhaustion (if you do) that a three to four hour prayer service can cause. This is the Adon Olam I know.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:32 AM on February 25, 2011
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:32 AM on February 25, 2011
Wow, neat. I'm not sure I'd call that quiet, though!
posted by canine epigram at 8:48 AM on February 25, 2011
posted by canine epigram at 8:48 AM on February 25, 2011
I think flibbertigibbet meant "quite jaunty"?
posted by limeonaire at 3:56 PM on February 25, 2011
posted by limeonaire at 3:56 PM on February 25, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by threeants at 11:34 PM on February 24, 2011 [3 favorites]