gibbous

it isn't itself tonight

20 HP

A filter with a real calendar and the real moon in it. Most of the month it's warm and well behaved. As the moon waxes it grows, and on the three real nights round the full moon, after dark, it's a different module. Then it's sorry.

The GIBBOUS panel: black, gold dots of a wolf from straight on, jaws closed, its eyes lost in shadow, its ears up against a big moon of bare circuit board with its seas in copper. FEED and LIE at the top corners, HAIR and TEETH down the left, THROAT and CHASE down the right, HUNGER's jack and SCENT either side of the big HUNGER knob on its muzzle, PREY, MOONRISE, HOWL and MOON out beneath them, and RESTRAIN's slot across its chest with a black cap on it. gibbous 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. RESTRAIN: drag its cap along the slot, or tap either side of it. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A bass, a pad, a lead and drums in A minor at 104 BPM through GIBBOUS. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything GIBBOUS does here is its engine, the module's own code, running in your browser, with your date and your clock. The rack round it is a stand-in.

It keeps an appointment

A clock with its own cell keeps the date, power or no power, and the moon on the panel is tonight's. Every one on Earth turns on the same three nights.

Polite: from the old moon to the first quarter, a warm resonant filter.
Growing: as the moon waxes the resonance sprouts, a growl gets in under everything and its transients get teeth.
The turn: on the three nights round the full moon, from dark until dawn, what comes in is a throat. It goes after the loudest note, holds it, howls, drops octaves and bites. With nothing patched in, it howls anyway.
Sorry: for a week it's dull and it trembles, and it flinches from what it bit. The last note it howled at stays in it, ringing faintly in whatever you play.

Telling it where it is

It leaves us with its clock set, but it can't know where it's going: which side of the moon is lit there, and when it gets dark.

From this page: power it from the rack, plug the USB-C on its board's right edge into a computer and press the button in Chrome or Edge: it takes this computer's clock and time zone. Press it again when your clocks change.
From its panel: power it up with HUNGER and CHASE fully clockwise. It stays quiet and the moon shows tonight's phase. Push RESTRAIN to the end your real moon is lit on (if you can't see it, a growing moon is lit on the right in the north, the left in the south). Leave it a moment and the eyes blink three times: it's kept.
Told nothing: it takes the north's side, and with no time zone its three nights run all day, round the full moon.

Your sky the north the south

Or in a terminal on its USB port, type T1793000000 Z0 S0 and Enter. The first number is now, in seconds.

You can lie to it

LIE: patch a voltage in and it believes you, date and hour both. 0 V is the new moon, 4 V the full moon, 8 V the new moon again. An envelope here is the whole month in a bar.
The moon shows what it believes. Take the cable out and it goes back to the truth.

What it's got

HUNGER, the big knob, and its jack: cutoff and appetite in one move. Fully left closed; at noon a warm filter; fully right it self-oscillates, on any night.
HAIR: noise from every edge of what comes in, and a sub-octave off its zero crossings. Full, it's mostly hair.
THROAT: from a clean filter to three formants. Full, it speaks. It isn't saying anything.
TEETH: a wavefolder that snaps open on transients, and a jaw that shuts behind them.
CHASE: how keenly the resonance goes after the loudest note it hears, in tune, by ear. Full, it leaps and whistles at every note. On the nights it chases whatever this says.
SCENT: 1 V an octave on the resonance, for playing it.

Held back

RESTRAIN is a slider across the foot of the panel. There's no jack for it: it's a thing you set.

All the way left: it does nothing.
Across: it holds the moon back and closes in on the sound. What's held back builds, until it lunges: you hear its chain rattle, and for a moment it's out.
All the way right: even the full moon can't get out. On any night it's muzzled. On the nights it strains, and you can hear it pull at its chain.

What comes out

HOWL: the sound.
MOON: the month, 0 to 8 V, one cycle in 29.53 days, the same scale as LIE: the world's slowest LFO.
MOONRISE: a gate from moonrise to dawn on the three nights. Anything in the rack can keep the appointment.
PREY: the loudest note it hears, 1 V an octave. Any oscillator can follow it.

Inside

The moon is one window of bare circuit board, lit from 10 mm behind by 74 white LEDs in a printed cavity whose walls follow the terminators. RESTRAIN is a 60 mm slide pot on the board's back. Its lever comes up through a slot in the board and another in the panel, and a printed cap sits on its tip, black with a gold line across it like the knobs.

The GIBBOUS panel: a wolf in gold dots from straight on, a big moon of bare circuit board behind its head, lit a few days before full, RESTRAIN's black cap in its slot across the foot.

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; RESTRAIN's cap stands 8 mm in front
+12 V: about 65 mA at a new moon, 150 mA at a full one (estimated)
−12 V: about 6 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a slider with 60 mm of travel

Inputs

FEED: audio, ±5 V, clean to ±9 V
LIE: CV, 0 to 8 V, the month: overrides the date and the hour
HUNGER: CV, added to its knob, 5 V the whole way
SCENT: 1 V an octave, ±6 V

Outputs

HOWL: audio, ±5 V, a soft ceiling at 6.25 V
MOON: CV, 0 to 8 V, 29.53 days a cycle
MOONRISE: gate, 5 V
PREY: 1 V an octave, 0 V at C1, holds the last note

Engine

Brain: RP2350, 46,875 samples a second
The moon: its real phase, to about two minutes, worked out every 30 s
The clock: keeps the date and the hour on a CR1220 cell; set before it leaves, told where it is from this page or its panel
Light: 74 white LEDs under the moon, one under each eye
RESTRAIN: a 60 mm slide pot, its lever through the panel, a printed cap
Power cycle: keeps the time zone, the hemisphere and the last note it howled at