hold still

everything waits for you

20 HP

The last eight seconds of whatever comes in, played back at a speed made of movement: a CV changing, a knob turning, the music's own hits. Nothing moving, the sound hangs in the air; move, and time lurches forward to catch up. SHOT breaks it into glass.

The HOLD STILL panel: black, with a head and shoulders of broken glass in gold dots looking out from the middle, the top of its head flying off in shards out to both edges round the SHOT button on its brow. 31 small shard-shaped windows of bare circuit board hang round SHOT and fall down both edges. MOVE and NOW at the top corners, SHOT's trigger and TICK either side under the button, STILL and FOLLOW either side of the face, TIME the big knob under its chin, STILL's and TIME's CV jacks at the edges over the shoulders, SPEED and TOCK, then LEFT, SHARDS and RIGHT at the foot; a dashed white ring round SHOT's trigger, TICK and TOCK. hold still 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. SHOT is a button: press it to break the held instant. Turning any knob moves time. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack in D minor through HOLD STILL: a pad, an arpeggio and drums, and a hand on MOVE. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

Time, the record, the shards and every out here are HOLD STILL's engine as it's designed, running in your browser, eight seconds of record as the module keeps. The pad, the arpeggio, the drums and the hand on MOVE are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Movement

Time here is made of movement. A movement buys time, and the playhead spends it at once, up to eight times real time; when nothing moves, time falls back to what STILL allows. The knobs are movement too: turn any of them and time moves.

MOVE: any CV. Its change is movement, its value means nothing: a still voltage, high or low, moves nothing.
TIME: how much time a movement buys. A 1 V step buys a twentieth of a second fully left, half a second at noon, over six seconds fully right.
STILL: how still time goes when nothing moves. Fully left it hardly slows; at noon it crawls at an eighth of real time; from about four o'clock it stops dead and the instant holds.
STILL and TIME's CVs: each adds to its knob, 5 V the whole turn. A gate into STILL holds time still on cue; a CV into TIME says how far each movement goes. Neither moves time; only movement does.
FOLLOW: where movement comes from. MOVE alone fully left; fully right the music in NOW, its hits and changes, so the drums shove the pad forward.

The record

NOW is written into a record of the last eight seconds as it comes. The playhead can't pass the present: caught up, it plays live. Nor can it fall more than seven and a half seconds behind: there the record stops taking in and keeps the instant it holds, until time moves on.

Held, the sound is grains of the instant at their own pitch, so a chord hangs in tune and shimmers left and right.
Catching up, it's tape: the record read at speed, rising in pitch as it rushes to the present.

Glass

SHOT: a button and a trigger in. It breaks the held instant into shards, glints of it at higher pitches thrown across the stereo field, that hang and then fall. The cap stays lit while the glass hangs. A SHOT doesn't move time.
SHARDS: how it breaks. A crack of two fully left; about ten hanging nearly a second at noon; fully right a cloud of 24 hanging three seconds before they fall.
The lights: 31 shards round SHOT and down the edges light in time's own steps, outward and down. Held still, one stays lit; sprinting, a streak. A SHOT's shards light on their own side and fall down the edge.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the sound in moved time, and the shards.
TOCK: a clock into TICK, played back in moved time. Held, none come; catching up, they rush. Clock a sequencer from it and it only steps when something moves. With nothing in TICK, a step every eighth of a second of the record.
SPEED: time's speed: 0 V still, 5 V real time, nearly 9 V sprinting.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 4 knobs (TIME's big), a lit button

Inputs

NOW: audio, ±5 V, the last 8 s kept
MOVE: CV, ±10 V, its change
SHOT: trigger, rising past 1 V
TICK: clock, rising past 1 V
STILL, TIME: CV, ±5 V, added to the knob

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V
TOCK: clock, 0/5 V, 3 ms
SPEED: CV, 0 to 10 V, 5 V at real time