armonica

not for the nervous

20 HP

A chord voice of glass. One root and one chord go in, and four wet fingers rest on twenty-one glass bowls turning on a spindle. At every change each finger slides to the nearest bowl of the new chord: a note that stays keeps singing, a note that moves has to speak again.

The ARMONICA panel: black, and up the middle in gold and bare board a tower of twenty-one nested glass bowls on an iron spindle, the smallest at the top and the biggest at the foot, its rims beaded with water. Knobs either side of the glass, the jacks down both edges, the chord switch at the spindle's foot.

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. CHORD is a switch: it clicks from chord to chord the same ways. Rub the glass up the middle with the pointer, back and forth or round, or hold Space on it: the spindle spins up. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

Chords from one sequencer, a root and a quality a bar; some patches put a voice, a lead or drums beside it. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything ARMONICA does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser: each bowl a few modes of a real glass, each finger a wet one catching and slipping on the turning rim. On the module the glass up the middle is a touch strip you rub; here the pointer stands in for your hand.

The chord

ROOT: the chord's root, 1 V an octave. Only its note counts; where the chord sits is REGISTER's job.
CHORD, an eight-stop switch: major, minor, 7, minor 7, major 7, sus4, diminished and augmented, fully left to full.
CHORD's jack: a stop a semitone, added to the switch. A second lane of the same sequencer writes the chords as notes: C major, C sharp minor, D seven, and so on.
CHORD's dots are lights: the one lit is the chord in play, wherever the jack has put it.

The fingers

Four fingers on four bowls, one on each note of the chord; a chord of three doubles its root. At a change each finger moves to the nearest bowl of the new chord, the four moving as little as they can, none crossing another, and a pull toward the middle keeps a long progression from wandering off up the glass.

A finger that holds stays on its bowl, and the bowl sings on without a break.
A finger that moves lifts: its old bowl rings down on its own while the new one takes its time to speak.
REGISTER: where the hands are on the spindle, the middle of the twenty-one bowls they reach, from low E to high A. Its jack adds an octave a volt: move it slowly and the chord climbs the tower through its inversions.
TOUCH: a gate. High, the fingers are on the glass; low, they lift and every bowl rings down. Unpatched, they stay on.

The glass

Glass bowls on a spindle turned by a treadle, the rims kept wet and played with the fingertips: the armonica Benjamin Franklin designed in 1761. A German critic of the time warned that it overstimulated the nerves, and that anyone with a nervous disorder shouldn't play it.

SPEED, the treadle: how fast the spindle turns. Slow is a hush that barely catches; faster rings louder and brighter, and the glass's slow pulse quickens.
The glass itself: rub it and the spindle spins up, then coasts back to the treadle's pace.
DRY: how wet the fingers are. Soaked, they slide; damp, the glass sings pure; dry, it hardens, chatters, and at full it squeals.
PRESSURE: the finger's weight. Light is airy and slow to catch; firm presses the note out; full crushes it, and it groans.
SPEAK: the glass's own time. Thin glass speaks at once and dies quickly; heavy glass takes two seconds to speak and rings for a minute.
Their jacks each add to their knob, a volt a tenth of the way round.
The bowls are lights: each glows as much as it's singing, so you can watch which fingers held and which moved.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the glass, the low bowls a little to the left and the high to the right, and the same chord in either alone.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 5 knobs, an eight-stop switch, the glass to rub

Inputs

ROOT: 1 V/oct, 0 V is C3
CHORD: CV, a stop a semitone
TOUCH: gate
REGISTER: CV, 1 V an octave
Four more: SPEED, SPEAK, DRY, PRESSURE: CV, 1 V a tenth of the knob

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio