answer

call it down

20 HP

Call it with a few notes and, after a breath, it answers: your phrase played back with every note made a chord of four voices. It has a phrase of its own, and it's waiting for it. The nearer you come, the bigger it answers; play it back exactly and it lands.

The ANSWER panel: black, in gold dots a vast flat-topped butte at night, its layered cliffs behind the knobs, its scree spreading to the foot. Under the name a board of bare circuit board, five columns of four tiles, and under it one long window of nine lengths along the butte's flat top; under that the big REPLY knob, COLOUR under it with five dots round it, the CALL button under that. TONES and NOTE at the top corners, VOICING and DISTANCE either side of REPLY with their jacks, KEY and CALL's jack either side of COLOUR, CHORD and LANDED either side of the button, TENOR and ALTO under them, BASS, NEAR and SOPRANO along the foot. answer at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it or tap either side of it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. COLOUR clicks from kind to kind the same way; CALL is a button to press: it calls, and the lead plays it back. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A slow dark beat, a soft lead calling into TONES and NOTE, and a pad on the four voices. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything ANSWER does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The beat, the lead and the pad are a stand-in rack.

The call

TONES, NOTE: your call, a note on every rise of NOTE (unpatched, every new semitone): up to five notes, ended at the fifth or by a rest.
KEY: its key, minor, on the note KEY plays. Unpatched, C minor.

The answer

Every note of your call comes back as a chord: the alto carries the call, the soprano sings over it, the tenor and the bass under it. A note in its key gets a chord of its key; a note outside it gets a chord built on itself, which sounds strange there.

REPLY, the big knob: how far the answer moves from your call: fully left an echo a fifth up, every voice moving with it; then into its key; at noon your own notes harmonised; then upside down; fully right upside down and a tritone away.
VOICING: how wide the four voices spread, from close together to five octaves and more.
COLOUR: the chord's kind, a click a kind: bare fifths, triads, sevenths, ninths, clusters.
DISTANCE: how long it waits after your last note, how slowly it answers and how long it holds the last chord: a breath fully left, seventeen steps, four times slower and a long hold fully right.
REPLY, VOICING, the jacks: their CVs, added to the knobs.

Its phrase

It has five notes of its own in its key, and every call is held up against them, note for note, in any octave. Each note of your call lights a column of the board: one tile when it's heard, and as it's answered, four if it was the right note, three a semitone off, two a tone off. The horizon under the board lights from the middle out as the whole call comes nearer.

The landing: play its phrase back exactly and the answer ends on one enormous chord, its key's major chord over four and a half octaves, held for a long while, every window lit. Then it lifts off, and waits for a new phrase.
CALL, a lit button and its gate: it calls you, playing its phrase on all four voices in octaves, the board's columns lighting one by one. Play it back.

What comes out

BASS, TENOR, ALTO, SOPRANO: the answer's four voices, low to high, each held until the next chord.
CHORD: a gate on each chord of an answer, and on each note of its own call: the envelopes.
LANDED: a gate while it holds the landing: drop the drums out, swell everything.
NEAR: how near the call it's answering came to its phrase, 0 to 8 V: open a filter with it and the answers grow brighter as you close in.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, a five-way switch, a lit button

Inputs

TONES: 1 V/oct, ±5 V
NOTE: gate, rising past 1 V
KEY: 1 V/oct, its key's note (unpatched, C)
CALL: gate, rising past 1 V
REPLY, VOICING: CV, added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

Voices: BASS, TENOR, ALTO, SOPRANO: 1 V/oct, ±10 V
CHORD, LANDED: gates, 0/5 V
NEAR: CV, 0 to 8 V