hitstop

12 HP · effect

Makes anything hit like a heavy punch. Each trigger at HIT stops the sound dead for a few frames and shakes it, then jumps back to where it would have been, so the groove stays on the clock.

The HITSTOP panel: black, with a burst of gold sparks flying out from one clear lens under the name, the outer ones arcing down the panel. White labels: SHAKE and LINK either side of the burst, WEIGHT under it on the big knob, the outputs COMBO and DROP, HIT on the spine, IN L and IN R with WEIGHT CV between them, and the outputs OUT L and OUT R at the foot. hitstop at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. There's no button: HIT is a jack, played here by the rack.

The freezes are HITSTOP's own. The drums, bass and lead going through it are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The spark, the readout and the sound here are HITSTOP's engine as it's designed, running in your browser: every freeze, every combo. The drums, the bass and the lead are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The hit

It's the way a hit lands in a fighting game: for a few frames, everything stops. Put a mix through it and send HIT a trigger. The hit's first few milliseconds play, then the sound holds that instant still while the input runs on underneath. When the freeze is over it crossfades straight back to the input, wherever the sound has got to, so nothing is ever late.

HIT: each rising edge is a hit.
WEIGHT: how long each hit holds, 2 frames (a tick) to 16 (a thud), a frame a sixtieth of a second.
WEIGHT CV: ±5 V adds or takes away half the knob.
SHAKE: how hard the held sound shakes. Down, a dead stop; up, its pitch and level judder a little every frame, and it's never louder than the input.
IN L and IN R to OUT L and OUT R: stereo, IN R normalled to IN L.

Combos

Hits close together chain into a combo, and each one after the first lands a little softer, a frame shorter and shaking less, as a long combo should. A hit that lands while the last is still frozen is a counter-hit: it catches the new instant and holds it half as long again, and the spark burns brighter.

LINK: how long after a freeze the next hit can land and carry the combo on, 50 ms to 2 s.
COMBO: steps up a volt a hit, to 10 V. Patch it to a filter and a combo opens it.
DROP: a trigger when LINK runs out with no hit, and COMBO falls back to 0 V.

The panel

Twelve HP, every part on the line's staggered grid and mirrored about the middle. The art is a burst of sparks, and the spark under the name sits at its heart: the panel's one light, lit for as long as each freeze holds and brighter on a counter-hit.

The spark under the name; SHAKE and LINK either side, WEIGHT big between them.
COMBO and DROP, with HIT on the spine.
IN L and IN R with WEIGHT CV between, then OUT L and OUT R at the foot.