elsewhen

a room that leaves

20 HP

A reverb that gives the quiet the big rooms: a whisper opens a cathedral, a slammed snare stays in a box. Press LEAVE and the room takes off with whatever's inside it, groaning, and lands somewhere else with a thud, on the beat. Knock, and hear how big it is.

The ELSEWHEN panel: black, a tall pointed doorway in the middle of a stone wall in gold dots, its ring of arch stones under the name, a vaulted hall going back and back inside it in a window of bare circuit board, and a wedge of light falling out of it across a stone floor to the foot. LEFT and RIGHT in at the top corners, SIZE and WHEEZE under them, LEAVE and WHEN under those; INSIDE, the big knob, on the threshold, THUD and ROOM either side of it, LEAVE and KNOCK, two buttons, on the floor below it, WHERE under them with eight small dots round it, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners; dashed white rings round LEAVE, WHEN and THUD. elsewhen 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. WHERE clicks from room to room, and turning it sends the room there; LEAVE is a button: press it and the room leaves; KNOCK is a button: press it and hear the room. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through ELSEWHEN: a kick, a crushed snare and a bass, loud; whispers, ghost clicks and a soft lead, quiet. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The rooms, the groan, the trips and every out here are ELSEWHEN's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the bass, the whispers and the lead are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The rooms

Everything that comes in is shared out by its own loudness at that moment: the loud into a box, the quiet into a hall. Each sound keeps the room it went into, so a snare never cuts short a hall that's already ringing.

INSIDE: how far apart the two rooms are. Fully left they're one room, a plain reverb. At full the box rings a sixth of a second and the hall twenty, and the hall is fed louder: ghost notes bloom, hits stay dry.
SIZE: the room before INSIDE splits it, from a cupboard to a cathedral that hardly lets go (two seconds at noon, half a minute at full).
WHEEZE: how much the room breathes and grinds by itself. Up to noon the tail sighs and drifts; past it the tail is ground through four low strings that rise and fall on every groan.
KNOCK, a button: one rap on the door. It goes straight into the hall, loud or quiet what's playing, so you hear how big the room is and what it's made of. With nothing going in, it's the only sound there is. While the room's away there's nothing behind the door, only the rap.

Leaving

LEAVE freezes the room with what's inside it. Its tail groans and fades away, the room is gone for a groan, it groans back, and on the fourth groan it lands with a thud: somewhere else, the same tail ringing on in a new place.

LEAVE, a button and a gate in: the room goes now. The button is lit for the whole trip.
WHEN, a clock in: the groans keep its time, one a tick (or every few ticks of a quick clock), and the room lands on one. With nothing in it a groan is 1.2 seconds.
WHERE, an eight-way switch: where it goes. Left to right, stone, tile, a metal hull, a cave, a forest at night, a well, a stairwell, and anywhere, a different room each time. Turning it sends the room there.
The lights: the far window at the end of the hall, steady while the room's here, flashing on every groan of a trip, and the light coming out from it toward you, bay by bay, as far as the room is big.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: what came in, untouched, with the room added to it. There's no mix knob; INSIDE is the mix that matters.
THUD: a gate on the landing, to hit something on the downbeat it lands on.
ROOM: the size of the room open now, 0 to 8 volts, and nothing while it's away. It rises as the music gets quieter.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (INSIDE's big), an eight-way switch, a lit button, a black button

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
LEAVE: gate, rising past 1 V
WHEN: clock, rising past 1 V

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, what came in and the room
THUD: gate, 0/5 V, 10 ms on the landing
ROOM: CV, 0 to 8 V, the room's size