courtyard by daylight noise

The yard

Each window holds one bar of what you played, looping in time with the track, quiet, muffled and panned where it stands. The yard starts empty and fills a window a bar.

CATCH: how often a bar is caught: fully left only an empty yard refills; one bar in four at noon; every bar at full. When all eight are lit, a new bar moves into the window lit longest.

SNAP, a button and its gate: catch this bar, whatever CATCH says, into the window LOOK points at.

LEFT, RIGHT: what you play. It goes on through to the yard as it is, and the windows catch its middle.

CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to a bar. Unpatched, it keeps 120 BPM. A bar can be up to four seconds long.

The lens

LOOK, the big knob: which window you watch, swept across the façade a column at a time. It finds the lit window nearest where it points, and swings there in 80 ms.

ZOOM: how close it brings that window. Fully left every window is an equal murmur; turned up, it comes forward, louder, clearer and drier, towards the middle, while the rest and your live sound fall back; at full you hear that window alone, exactly as it was caught.

LOOK, ZOOM, the jacks: their CVs, added to the knobs, 5 V the whole way. A stepped CV into LOOK cuts the lens from window to window.

The night

NIGHT: how fast the lights go out, each on a beat. Fully left, never; about one every four bars at noon; one every beat at full. When the last goes out, the yard fills again, a window a bar.

MOTIVE: how much the suspect is up to, the first one home and the last to bed. Fully left, every window plays exactly what it caught. Turned up, now and then he changes his loop: a slice cut out, cut short, played backwards, swapped, dropped an octave or played twice, and the change stays. At full, three slices every bar. He never does it while you watch him close.

FLASH, a lit button and its gate: a white pop, the whole yard down to nothing for a tenth of a second, then back over a second and a half, muffled at first, under the rising whine of the flash.

The windows are lit while someone's home, brighter as their bar is louder, the watched one brightest; a shadow crosses the suspect's window as his change plays.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the yard: your live sound with the windows round it, each in its own small room, and the yard's echo.

WINDOW: the watched window alone, as close as ZOOM brings it.

SUSPECT: a trigger as each changed slice of his loop first plays.

LIT: a volt for every window still lit.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, both buttons, the 64 LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its left edge. Each pane has two white LEDs in its own cell of a black printed baffle, so a dark window beside a lit one stays dark. The bars are kept in 8 MB of memory beside an RP2350, which runs the yard on both its cores.

The COURTYARD panel at night: its eight windows lit across the top, one watched and brighter, a shadow crossing the suspect's, its knobs, jacks and 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 75 mA dark, 155 mA in usual play, 250 mA at the flash, 265 mA at most (estimated)
−12 V: about 6 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button, a button

I/O

LEFT, RIGHT in: audio, ±5 V and up to ±9 V before it clips; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to a bar, high past about 0.9 V; unpatched, its own 120 BPM
SNAP, FLASH: gates, rising past about 0.9 V; safe to ±12 V
LOOK, ZOOM: CV, added to the knobs, 5 V the whole way; safe to ±12 V
LEFT, RIGHT out: audio, the yard, up to ±9.75 V
WINDOW: audio, mono, the watched window alone
SUSPECT: trigger, 0/5 V, 10 ms
LIT: CV, 0 to 8 V, a volt a lit window

Engine

Brain: RP2350, both cores, at 46.875 kHz
Memory: 8 MB: eight bars of up to 4 s (a bar at 60 BPM), 16-bit
Light: 64 white LEDs behind 32 panes, 183 frames a second
Power cycle: the yard starts empty; only the calibration is kept