crossing by daylight noise

The CROSSING panel: black, with a wide road at night in gold dots, its dashed lane lines running across from edge to edge, a kerb and a wet footpath across the lower half. Up the middle, windows of bare circuit board in ten rows: a bar for home under the name, eight lanes each two long slots either side of a small round spot, and a bar for the kerb. LANE 1 to LANE 4 across the top, RIVER and DODGE either side, TICK and KERB beside the crossing, GO's jack and NERVE's beside the kerb, NERVE the big knob under it, the PACE and CLIMB switches either side with their dots, the GO button at the foot; HOP, SQUASH and HOME out down the left edge, PITCH, SPLASH and ACROSS down the right. crossing 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. PACE and CLIMB click from stop to stop the same ways. GO is a button: press it to make it hop now, whatever the traffic. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through CROSSING: a dark groove's kick, snare, hats and bass line in its lanes; every hop plays the lead, and a squash, a splash and home each sound of their own. All made in the page.

example patches

The traffic, the hops, the deaths and the lights are CROSSING's engine as designed, running in your browser; the groove and its sounds stand in for a rack.

The traffic

LANE 1–4: gates, four parts of your groove. Every rise is a car in its lane. The crossing's lanes one to four read them, and lanes five to eight read them again.
TICK: a clock, a pulse a step; sixteenths are the plain use. It keeps each lane's last sixteen steps and expects the next bar to go the same way, so a fill it hasn't heard catches it out.
RIVER: how many of the far lanes are river: none fully left, four at noon, all eight fully right. On the road a hit is a car; on the river a hit is a log that floats for four steps.

Getting across

NERVE, the big knob: how brave. Fully left it waits for the best gap a lane will give it, at noon half that, fully right any gap at all. Past noon it more and more often takes a hop it can't get out of, and stands its ground when a car comes.
NERVE, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
PACE, a switch: how often it tries a hop: every six sixteenths, every quarter note, every three sixteenths, every eighth or every sixteenth. A car coming makes it leap out of the way at once.
DODGE: how readily it hops back when the way ahead is shut: never fully left, often fully right.
GO, a lit button and its gate: it hops now, whatever the traffic. With the jack patched, each one waits at the kerb for GO. The cap is lit while one waits there.

The climb

KERB: the note at the kerb, 1 V an octave. Every crossing starts there.
CLIMB, a switch: how far each lane lifts the note: a semitone, or one, two, three or four steps of the natural minor scale on KERB. Two, at noon, climbs a chord in thirds; four stacks fifths over four octaves.
Home is one lane past the last: the home note, a fifth over it and the octave, and a beat later the next one is at the kerb. Squashed or swept off, the same.

What comes out

HOP: a gate for every hop and every note of the figure, half a step long.
PITCH: the note of the lane it's in, 1 V an octave.
SQUASH: a trigger when a car gets it on the road.
SPLASH: a trigger when its log runs out under it on the river.
HOME: a trigger when it gets across.
ACROSS: how far across, a volt a lane, 0 to 8 V.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, 2 five-position switches, a lit button

Inputs

Lanes: LANE 1, LANE 2, LANE 3, LANE 4: gates, rising past 1 V
TICK: clock, a pulse a step, rising past 1 V
KERB: 1 V an octave, ±5 V
GO: gate, rising past 1 V
NERVE: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

PITCH: 1 V an octave, ±5 V
ACROSS: CV, 0 to 8 V
Gates: HOP, SQUASH, SPLASH, HOME: 0/5 V; HOP half a step, the rest 10 ms triggers