hearsay by daylight noise

The event

A phrase played in after a silence is a new case: the four fall silent and listen, and a bar after it ends they tell it, all at once, round and round on the clock, until the next.

TRUTH, the event's pitch, V/OCT, kept as it was played.
DEED, its gate: each rise a note, up to sixteen in four bars. Eight clocks of silence end it.
GAVEL, the clock: the grid the event is put on and the four tell it on. Unpatched, it keeps the last clock's pace (sixteenths at 120 BPM from the start).
The row under the name: the event's notes, lit as they're heard; while it's told, the plain witness's note flickers, so the one he leaves out never lights.

The four

ACCUSED tells it bigger: an octave up, turns, runs and repeats, its leaps stretched, its hits pushed early, double speed toward the right.
WIDOW tells it slower and lower: half speed from noon, its major notes turned minor, notes held into the next, rests where she breaks down.
VICTIM tells it from below, as if through someone else: an octave under, backwards, then upside down too, its gates stuttering.
WITNESS tells it almost as it was, but always leaves out the same note, the highest: a hole, then covered by the note before, then cut so he runs ahead.
The figures light while each one speaks, from the lap up to the height of its note in its own telling.

How they tell it

LIE: how far they stray. Fully left all four tell it exactly, in unison; each one's lies come in as it turns, and fully right they barely match.
MEMORY: how much each telling shifts from the last. Fully left the testimony is fixed; turned up, notes are told afresh each time and wander, the accused's upward, the widow's down, as far as LIE lets them.
NERVE: their timing. The accused rushes, the widow drags; past noon they talk over each other, each new note cutting off whoever's speaking.
LIE and MEMORY also come in as CVs, added to their knobs.

Closing the case

CLOSED, a lit button and its gate, each a toggle: shut, no new phrase is heard (the cap blinks at each note refused) and the four go on telling the case they have. Pressed while a phrase is still coming in, it ends there.

What comes out

VICTIM, WIDOW, WITNESS, ACCUSED: each a pitch, V/OCT within ±5 V (a note past it folds back an octave), and a gate, high for each note, held through a tie.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, CLOSED, the 58 LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its left edge. Each band of a figure and each of the event's windows has its own cell in a black printed baffle, lit by its own white LEDs, so a figure lights from the lap up and never into the next. An RP2350 hears the event and tells it four ways, four thousand times a second.

The HEARSAY panel with all four telling: the four kneeling figures lit white from the lap up, the event's row of small windows glowing under the name, its knobs, jacks and CLOSED's button on.

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
+12 V: about 45 mA dark, 155 mA in use, 240 mA at the most (estimated)
−12 V: about 5 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, a lit button

I/O

TRUTH: 1 V an octave, −6 to +6 V, read to the nearest semitone 2 ms after DEED rises; a 24-bit converter, calibrated; safe to ±12 V
DEED, GAVEL: gates, high past about 0.9 V, safe to ±12 V; GAVEL unpatched keeps the last clock's pace
CLOSED: gate, high past about 0.9 V: each rise opens or closes the case, as the button does
CVs: LIE, MEMORY: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way, safe to ±12 V
Pitches: VICTIM, WIDOW, WITNESS, ACCUSED: 1 V an octave, −5 to +5 V (a note past that folds by octaves), 16-bit, calibrated
Gates: VICTIM, WIDOW, WITNESS, ACCUSED: 0/5 V, high for each note, held through a tie

Engine

Brain: RP2350, 4,000 steps a second, 32-bit float
Memory: one event: up to sixteen notes over sixty-four clocks
Light: 58 white LEDs in 32 windows, 100 frames a second
Power cycle: it wakes with no case; only the calibration is kept