combust by daylight noise

The drummers

The kit is the same all night. The person playing it isn't: each sits a little ahead of your clock or behind it, swings or doesn't, ghosts on the snare or doesn't, and has a fill and a count-in of their own.

CLOCK: a sixteenth an edge. The drummer plays against where the next edge is due, so a pusher really is early. Unpatched, it keeps 120 BPM of its own.

RESET: the next edge is a downbeat.

LIFE, the big knob: how long each one lasts: a bar fully left, about sixteen at noon, a whole night most of the way round.

LIFE, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.

STRANGERS: how different the next one is: much like the last fully left, someone new from the same world at noon, more and more from another world turned up.

SCENE: a five-way switch, the world they come from: rock, funk, breaks, four on the floor, half-time.

How they play

FILLS: how often and how big their fills are, each drummer's own: none fully left, their habit at noon, every bar or two turned up.

HIT: how hard they hit, from barely touching it to every hit near its hardest.

ROOM: where they play, from a dry booth to a club to an arena with a slap off the back wall.

The death and the count-in

Every drummer dies mid-bar, in a way of their own: in flames, the kit stopping dead; choking, their playing sagging to a halt; falling into the kit; or simply not there for the next hit. The stool smokes for a beat or more, then the next one counts in on the sticks and comes in on a bar line. The dead are tallied beside DEAD.

COMBUST, a lit button and its gate: the drummer goes now. Its cap glows as their life burns down. During a count-in, the one counting in goes.

KEEP, a lit button: this one stays, lit, until you press it again.

Past full

The last stretch of every knob goes too far, on purpose.

LIFE: the drummer never dies. They just get worse, bar after bar: dragging, sloppier, softer, dropping hits.

STRANGERS: strangers from no world at all, kicks in threes and fives across your four.

FILLS: the fill never ends, rolled, a crash on every beat.

HIT: the kit clips. ROOM: the room never stops ringing.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the kit, the hats to the left, the ride to the right.

KICK, SNARE, HATS: a trigger on each of this drummer's hits, when and as hard as they play it: your own drums play with their feel.

DEAD: a gate, high from a death until the new drummer's first downbeat.

FEEL: where this drummer sits on the beat, 0 V pushing hard, 4 V dead on, 8 V dragging.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, SCENE's switch, both buttons, the 45 LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its right edge. Each window has its own white LEDs in a cell of a black printed baffle, the bass drum's nineteen on rings so its head lights to the rim. An RP2350 runs the drummers four thousand times a second on one core and plays the kit on the other.

The COMBUST panel playing: the snare and the hats lit in the drum kit's windows, two strokes on the tally, the empty stool in gold dots behind the kit, its knobs, SCENE's switch and the COMBUST and KEEP buttons on.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel
+12 V: about 50 mA dark, 145 mA playing, 225 mA at the most (estimated)
−12 V: about 5 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a five-way switch, 2 lit buttons

I/O

CLOCK: a sixteenth an edge, high past about 0.9 V, safe to ±12 V; unpatched, its own 120 BPM
RESET, COMBUST: gates, high past about 0.9 V: RESET makes the next edge a downbeat, COMBUST kills on its rise
LIFE: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way, read to ±7.5 V, safe to ±12 V
LEFT, RIGHT: the kit, about 2 V RMS at noon, straight to 6 V and softly to 8 V at the most
KICK, SNARE, HATS: triggers, 10 ms, 2.5 to 8 V by how hard
DEAD: gate, 0/5 V
FEEL: CV, 0 to 8 V

Engine

Brain: RP2350: the drummers 4,000 times a second, the kit at 46.875 kHz in 32-bit float
Light: 45 white LEDs, 200 frames a second
Power cycle: a new first drummer at the first edge; only the calibration is kept