five

something walks behind you

20 HP

A dark piano figure in five beats to the bar, on your clock, against your four. It drifts out of step with you and back again, and every five of your bars its downbeat lands on yours and it strikes. In between it's always there, a little behind you, getting closer.

The FIVE panel: black, the gold dots of a clipped hedge at night with a narrow gap down the middle and the upper storey of a house behind it, its two windows of bare circuit board cut into slits like blinds. BEAT and BAR in at the top corners with NEAR out between the windows under the name, HOME and AWAY in under them, STRIKE and HIDE's buttons under the windows, FIGURE and BEHIND either side of CLOSE, the big knob, STRIKE and HIDE's jacks under the buttons, CLOSE's jack under its knob, WALK, ONE, STRIKE and STEP out below, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot either side of DARK. five 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. STRIKE and HIDE are buttons: press them any time. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A slow, dark rack in F# minor at 120 BPM, in four, its beat into BEAT and its bar into BAR; FIVE's voice beside it. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything FIVE does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The rack round it is a stand-in.

It walks behind you

Give it your beat and it walks at your tempo, but in five. Your bars are four beats long and its are five, so it drifts out of step with you a beat a bar, and comes back: every five of your bars its first beat lands on yours.

BEAT: your beat, a clock. Unpatched, it keeps a steady 120 BPM of its own.
BAR: your bar's first beat. It only marks it, it never resets the count, so it meets you every five bars whatever your metre (in threes, every fifteen beats). Unpatched, your bars are fours.
HOME and AWAY: its two notes, V/OCT. The figure is built from them and their octaves. Unpatched, AWAY is a semitone above HOME.
BEHIND: how far behind your beat it walks. Fully left, a hair off it; at noon, about a sixth of a beat; fully right, a whole beat, and lurching, every other beat later still, so it never settles back on your grid.

The strike

When its downbeat meets yours it strikes: a huge stab under a low piano chord, every light on the panel at once and a gate. As the next one comes, the strings swell and the stab grows.

STRIKE, a lit button and its gate: strike now. Its walk goes on in five, untouched.
HIDE, a lit button and its gate: it's gone, silent, until the next time the downbeats meet, and then it's suddenly there, on the strike.

Its voice

A bare, close piano, octaves and no pedal, with strings and a heavy analogue stab underneath.

CLOSE, the big knob: how near it is. Fully left it's far off, a faint figure an octave up, drifting in a reverb; at noon it's beside you; fully right it's in your face, loud, dry and driven, every note doubled an octave under.
CLOSE, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
FIGURE: the figure, five of them across the knob: two notes ticking an octave apart, the octave ticking in fives, the figure itself at noon, a falling run, and runs and grace notes at full.
DARK: what it's made of. A bare piano fully left, piano and strings at noon, and a heavy stab under every accent of the figure at full.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: its voice.
WALK and STEP: the figure's note and a gate at every note, to play another voice of yours in five.
ONE: a gate on its own first beat, every fifth beat.
STRIKE: a gate at every strike.
NEAR: a voltage rising from 0 at one strike to 8 V at the next.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 3 knobs, 2 lit buttons

Inputs

BEAT: clock, rising past 1 V
BAR: gate, high on your bar's first beat
HOME, AWAY: V/OCT, ±5 V
STRIKE, HIDE: gates, on their rise
CLOSE: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio
WALK: V/OCT
STEP, ONE: gates, 0/5 V; STEP a tenth of a beat a note, ONE 10 ms
STRIKE: gate, 0/5 V, 10 ms
NEAR: CV, 0 to 8 V