January 2015

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happy new year

Thanks! You too!

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So I noticed that there's a handful of pieces we never got your opinion on (I noticed it in Colours and Mayhem Universe B). Any plans on goin' back and opinionating all over us about those now that you've laid down the top 50?

I wouldn’t rule it out later on, especially when there’s some new music to chew on. For the most part, if I didn’t comment on a track, it’s because I didn’t have anything to say, good or bad. Just a blank opinion. But everyone’s tastes change. Especially mine!

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Cobalt Beep(ing)

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Nope! I absolutely didn’t know that! In fact, you’ve piqued my curiosity: the passage sounds so lyrical and well-blended that an additional meaning seems almost too good to be true. So let’s prove it! With the mighty power of digital signal processing (all done with the free tool Audacity)!

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That’s a spectrogram of Cobalt Thief during that part of the song (roughly 2:27 to 2:52). See the section of horizontal lines in the top half? That’s the chiptune Morse code.

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That’s a zoomed-in view of the section. The 7500Hz line is particularly strong (though there’s a lot of harmonics), so it’s convenient to look at. So here we’ve got [.–. .-.. .], three letters: PLE in Morse code.

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I highlighted the dots and dashes throughout the passage here. The pattern is unmistakeable: only the locations for character breaks require a little experimentation. I arrived at this on my second try:

.–. .-.…- … . ……-.. .–. …. .. –

… which translates, as you said, to: PLEASE HELP HIM. A very cool double-meaning for a musical phrase in the song.

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OOOOOOH if we`re talking about morse code used in homestuck soundtracks Indigo Heir uses the code for SOS near the end!

Heh, now that’s one that I did pick out pretty immediately, if only because the SOS Morse code pattern (… —- …) is probably the most famous and used bit of code there is. It’s used in movies when ships are sinking, and it’s used to sell cookware cleaning accessories. It’s everywhere!