hold the door

say it until it's a name

20 HP

A phrase looper that wears its phrase down. Every pass the quietest, least eventful slices drop out and the gaps close up, so a bar tightens into a stammer, then into one sound that stays. Hold it and nothing wears while the door strains; let go and it all goes at once.

The HOLD THE DOOR panel: black, gold dots of a vaulted stone passage running away to a tall pointed door in the middle. The door is a window of bare circuit board in sixteen boards one above the other, with a thin window round its edges. SAY and KNOCK at the top corners, TAKE's and HOLD's jacks and buttons down the sides, AGAIN and NAME either side of the door's foot, SLUR, the big WEAR and PUSH in a row under it, the CV jacks, LENGTH's switch with five dots, LEFT and RIGHT at the bottom corners. hold the door 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. LENGTH clicks round its five stops the same way. TAKE and HOLD are buttons: press TAKE to catch what was just said; hold HOLD down. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A rack round HOLD THE DOOR: a voice, drums or a synth line into SAY, a drone and hats under it. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

The phrase, the wear and the push are HOLD THE DOOR's engine as designed, running in your browser; the rest is a stand-in rack.

Taking a phrase

It always listens to SAY, sixteen seconds back. TAKE catches what was just said, cut into slices on the clock, and plays it over and over.

SAY: what's said: a voice, a drum machine, a line, anything.
KNOCK, the clock in: every knock is a slice, so the loop stays on the rack's grid as it shortens. Unpatched, sixteenths at 120 BPM.
LENGTH, a five-way switch: how much TAKE catches. Fully left a beat (four slices), then half a bar, a bar (straight up), two bars, and fully right four bars.
TAKE, a button and its gate: at the next knock the phrase is the last LENGTH of SAY, whole again.

Wearing it down

Every pass, the slices that matter least drop out and the gaps close up: silences first, then breaths and the softest syllables. The bar becomes half a bar, a quarter, a stammer, until one slice is left, the loudest and hardest. That one repeats for good: the phrase has become a name.

WEAR: how much each pass loses. Fully left nothing, a plain looper; at noon an eighth of what's left, a bar to a name in about fifteen seconds; fully right half, a bar to a name in four passes.
SLUR: how the joins close. Fully left, hard cuts: a stammer. Turned up, each slice rings on into the next; past noon it sags as it fades, and fully right every moment is two slices smeared, drooping at every join.
The door: its sixteen boards are the phrase, read from the top. Each glows while its slices are left, flashes as one plays and goes dark when it's worn away.

Holding the door

Something on the other side pushes. Hold the door and nothing wears, but what it would have lost is owed and the push builds. Let go and everything owed goes at once.

PUSH: how hard it's pushed. Turned up, the phrase is driven into a soft clip and a low thump starts under its strongest slices; fully right it's crushed to a few bits and thumped on every slice.
HOLD, a lit button and its gate: while it's held, the push climbs past PUSH's own over about a bar: louder, rougher, the thumps doubling. Let go, and on the next knock the owed wear comes at once, with a slam.
The crack: the light round the door is the push, coming in under it first and climbing both sides as it grows.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the phrase in stereo, each slice placed by where it was in it, start to the left, end to the right, narrowing as it wears so the name sits in the middle.
AGAIN: a trigger at the start of every pass. It comes faster as the phrase shortens, on every knock once it's a name.
NAME: high while one slice is left, until the next take.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (WEAR's big), a five-way switch, 2 buttons (HOLD's lit)

Inputs

SAY: audio, ±5 V
KNOCK: clock, rising past 1 V, a slice a knock
TAKE: gate, rising past 1 V
HOLD: gate, held while high
WEAR, PUSH: CV, ±5 V, added to each knob

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: the phrase, ±4.5 V
AGAIN: trigger, 0/5 V, every pass
NAME: gate, 0/5 V, while one slice is left