headless by daylight noise

The neck

The head is a sound's attack: the click of a hit, the pluck of a string, its first few milliseconds. HEADLESS finds every one on the two inputs together and cuts it off at the neck. The body is everything after, and it swells in where the head is let go.

CUT, the big knob: where the neck is. Fully left a hair of click, 1.5 ms; at noon a bite, 30 ms; fully right 600 ms, so whole hits and whole notes are taken as heads and the body is only what outlasts them. The swing over the knob reaches as far as the cut, and comes down on every head.

CUT, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.

LEFT, RIGHT: the sound in. Both sides are cut at the same neck.

GRAFT, a gate: while it's high every body wakes with the last head. The rhythm stays and the sounds come out wrong, the snare with the kick's attack. With CUT at full it's whole hits, and the loop plays itself one hit late on its own beat.

The gallop

GALLOP: how the heads come back. Fully left they stay where they were: a clean split. Just above, a walk: one hoof a stride, each head thrown back once. At noon a canter, da-da-DUM, each head thrown three times. Towards full more riders join, until there's a hoof on every thirty-second note and every head comes back two dozen times: a stampede.

STRIDE: the gallop's clock, one pulse a stride; patch quarter notes. The hooves fall exactly on its fractions. With nothing patched, the rider keeps his last stride.

The hoofprints up the sides light as the heads come in, left thrown left and right thrown right.

The rider

RIDE: how near he rides, on the heads alone. At noon they're as they were cut. Fully left he's far off: the heads quiet, dark and washed in fog. Fully right he's on top of you: the heads loud, dry and bright, thrown hard left and right, and the body ducks under every hoof. With GALLOP fully left it shapes the attacks in place, from soft to hard.

TAKE, a lit button and its gate: while it's held every head is taken and none comes back. Let go and they all come back at once, a volley of them over the next beat, on the clock.

What comes out

BODY: the sound headless.

HEADS: the heads, in place or galloping back.

LEFT, RIGHT: the two mixed, in stereo: your sound with its own heads coming back at it.

HOOF: a trigger for every head thrown back; with GALLOP fully left, one for every head as it's cut.

With GALLOP fully left and RIDE at noon, BODY and HEADS add back up to the sound, and so do LEFT and RIGHT, a few milliseconds late.

Specs

Format

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

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
STRIDE: clock, a pulse a stride, rising past 1 V
TAKE, GRAFT: gates, high past 1 V
CUT: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

BODY, HEADS: audio, mono
LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the two mixed
HOOF: trigger, 5 V, 5 ms