flyover

they come in low

20 HP

Your sound goes up in the ships and they fly over you. Each pass comes in sharp from far off, swells and brightens as it nears, crosses from one ear to the other, falls flat as it goes, and the blades chop it all the way. One ship, or eight in a V.

The FLYOVER panel: black, a ship seen from straight below in black against a sun in gold dots, nose up, five blurred blades making a disc from edge to edge, smoke in the sky past its rim. An arch of twenty-five windows of bare circuit board from side to side across the disc, a ring of sixteen round the sun; SPEED, the big knob, on the ship's belly, SHIPS with eight small dots round it on its tail; CARGO and PASS in the top corners, ROTOR and LOW either side with ROTOR's CV and NEAR over them and SPEED's and LOW's CVs under them, ABOVE and BEND either side of the tail, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot; dashed white rings round PASS and ABOVE, ticks round BEND. flyover 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. SHIPS clicks from one ship to eight; a turn takes hold at the next pass. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through FLYOVER: a sung line or a pad goes up in the ships, with drums and a bass beside it. It's all made in the page as you listen. Headphones make it clearer.

example patches

The flight, the passes, the blades and every out here are FLYOVER's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The sung line, the pad, the drums and the bass are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The flight

Everything it does comes from where each ship is. Sound takes time to reach you, so a ship coming is heard sharp and a ship going is heard flat. It's louder and brighter near, duller far off, heard a little sooner at the nearer ear, and the ground under you throws back a second copy a few thousandths of a second late, a comb that sweeps as it goes over.

SPEED, the big knob: how fast they fly. Fully left they hang still and nothing moves; at noon a pass every five seconds and a seven-semitone swoop; at full they come in two octaves sharp and pass in a dive of three octaves.
LOW: how low they come, from 160 metres up (soft, dull and barely moving across) to nine metres, right over your head: loud, bright and hard from one ear to the other.
SHIPS, an eight-way switch: one ship to eight a pass, fully left to fully right. They fly in a V, each on its own line, at its own speed and height, so a squadron is a chorus of Dopplers passing through each other.

The blades

ROTOR: the chop. Fully left it's a fan in the room with you, slow and close, on the whole sound and swinging from ear to ear. By eleven o'clock the chop has moved up onto the ships: a rotor's beat at noon, a tearing buzz at full. Up there it bends with the Doppler too.
The lights: the arch is the sky from one horizon to the other, lit where each ship is heard, as bright as it's near; the ring inside it is the five blades, turning slow enough to follow.

Passes

PASS, a gate in: a pass sets off now from the far end of the line. With nothing in it they keep coming by themselves, out one way and back the other, one pass every 320 metres they fly.
SPEED, LOW and ROTOR, CVs in, added to their knobs: a slow wave in LOW dives them and climbs them away; in ROTOR the fan in the room turns into the blades outside and back.
CARGO: the sound that goes up, mono. A ship is one place in the sky; the stereo is what the flight makes of it.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the ships as each of your ears hears them, and nothing of the sound as it went in. Between passes it can go quiet.
ABOVE: a gate as each ship goes right over you, as you hear it: one a pass with one ship, a ripple of eight with eight.
BEND: the pitch the ships are heard at, 1 V an octave, up as they come and down as they go, the nearest counting most. Into an oscillator's V/OCT, the rest of the rack goes up with them.
NEAR: how near the nearest ship is, 0 to 8 V: the swell as a voltage, higher the lower they come.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (SPEED's big), an eight-way switch

Inputs

CARGO: audio, ±5 V, mono
PASS: gate, rising past 1 V
CVs: SPEED, LOW, ROTOR: ±5 V, added to the knobs

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the ships as each ear hears them
ABOVE: gate, 0/5 V, 10 ms as each ship goes over
BEND: 1 V an octave, the pitch they're heard at
NEAR: CV, 0 to 8 V, how near the nearest ship is