hoard: 20 HP, a build-up and drop machine, by daylight noise

Saving up

The hoard is the row of eight jars along the foot of the panel. Every gate at KICK drops a pot into the next one, lit from the left in the colour of the spell to come. With all eight full there's no room for another, and the newest shimmers. Nothing is spent until you cast.

KICK: each gate saves a pot.

STEAL: each gate takes the newest pot away. Patch a second rhythm here and the hoard rises and falls.

LEAK: how fast the hoard leaks if it isn't spent, from never to a pot a bar. Each pot that leaks breaks with a flicker of the spell.

CLOCK: a clock a beat, four to a bar. With it, LENGTH and LEAK count in bars; without it, in seconds.

The spell

CAST spends every pot at once on the sound running through. The more you saved, the bigger and longer the spell: one pot is a flicker, a full row the biggest thing it does. The spent pots flare white-hot and go out one by one, newest first, the last as the spell lets go and the signal comes back dry. Cast again during a spell and what you've saved since goes on top.

CAST: the button, or a gate at its jack. The button is lit while a spell runs. With nothing saved it does nothing.

SIZE: what one pot is worth. Down, a full row is a quarter of the spell: a stutter, a dip. At noon a full row is the whole of it. Up, a single pot brings the whole sky down.

LENGTH: how long a full spell lasts, a beat to eight bars with CLOCK in, a quarter of a second to sixteen seconds without. A smaller spell is its share of that.

EARTH: a crushing low thump, the floor dropping out. The mix slams down through a low-pass, a sub drops away under it, and it rumbles.

FIRE: a riser into white-hot drive. The distortion blooms through a rising, ringing filter into a flanged roar.

THUNDER: stutter bolts and gated cracks, each strike thrown to one side of the stereo field.

The build

While the pots fill, the sound already leans toward the spell to come, a little more with every pot, so saving up is the build and the cast is the drop. You hear it from about three pots.

EARTH thins the low end out, so the drop lands.

FIRE lifts its filter and adds a little grit.

THUNDER crackles: little dropouts and stutters, side to side.

What comes out

OUT L and OUT R: the signal, the build and the spells. Outside them it's the input, untouched. IN R takes IN L when nothing's in it.

POTS: a volt a pot, 0 to 8 V. Patch it to a filter or a riser and the build is heard twice over.

CASTING: high while a spell runs. Patch it to a crash, or use it to take the hats out.

The panel

Twenty HP, every part on the line's staggered grid and mirrored about the middle. The hoard stands on a gold shelf along the foot: eight jar-shaped windows of circuit board, two lights behind each. Above them, two hands in gold dots.

IN L and IN R at the top corners, KICK and the CAST jack under the name, LENGTH and LEAK either side of SIZE.

CLOCK and STEAL under them, MAGIC's switch in the middle, POTS and CASTING beside it.

OUT L and OUT R at the bottom corners, the CAST button between them, over the hoard.