i let you in

take its hand

20 HP

The panel is a hand. Hold it and what you play comes out in another voice, made of what it heard earlier, chopped and sung at your pitch, in your rhythm. One finger and it whispers behind you; the whole hand and it speaks through you. Hold on too long and it stays.

The I LET YOU IN panel: black, with an old hand in gold dots held up palm out down the middle, the whole hand a window of bare circuit board that lights from behind a segment at a time, its forearm running on to the foot. IN, WHO, LET IN and the WHO knob down the left edge; GRIP, HUNGER, CANDLE and the HUNGER knob down the right; NINETY on the wrist with OUT and SPIRIT either side, STAYED under it, the LET IN and CANDLE buttons in the bottom corners. i let you in 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. Hold the hand: press and hold a finger, the thumb or the palm, and drag across more of it (or use more fingers) to hold more. LET IN and CANDLE are buttons. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is the rack through I LET YOU IN. The line, the drums and the voices it heard before you came are made in the page.

IN becomes your microphone, from when you press it; what it hears stays in your browser.

example patches

The hand, the voice, the time and every out here are I LET YOU IN's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The line, the drums and the drone are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Holding it

Patch something into IN: a synth line, a voice, a drum loop. Its rhythm and its pitch play the voice, and everything at IN is kept: that's what the voice is made of.

The hand: the whole hand is a window, and each finger, the thumb and the palm feel a touch. Each one held takes it a sixth deeper: one finger and it whispers behind you, three and it speaks, your palm laid over the whole hand and it speaks through you. What you hold glows, breathing with the voice.
GRIP: holds the hand for you, a finger every 0.8 V (index, middle, ring, little, thumb, palm), so a 5 V gate holds all of it. It adds to your fingers.
LET IN: the button, or a gate at its jack. All the way in, whatever the hand: your sound is gone from OUT and only the voice is left. Press again to stop.

The voice

Each note at IN takes a chop of what it heard before, sung at your note's pitch in its own octave, at your rhythm. The old words keep their own pace, so it sounds like a voice cut up and played, not one sound filtered by another.

WHO: how far back it reaches. Fully left, the last two seconds: what you just played comes back at you. Noon, a minute ago. Past it, the phrases it kept, a loud two seconds every so often, through power cycles; at full, the voices it came with, which it never writes over.
HUNGER: how much of you it takes. Fully left it's a breath under your sound. Turned up it eats more of you where it speaks; past eleven o'clock it drags the pitch toward its own; past noon it cuts each of your notes into 2 stutters, from half past one 4, from three o'clock 8. At full you're only where it starts and stops.
The CVs: a jack for each, 10% of the dial a volt.

It stays

The candle lights when the hand is first held. From then the time adds up whenever it's held, and never runs back. As it runs out the hand fills with light, a segment at a time, from the fingertips down to the heel.

NINETY: how long you may hold. Fully left half a second, noon ninety seconds, half past one twenty minutes, fully right never. Past it, it stays: let go and it keeps speaking, taking more, and when IN goes quiet it speaks on its own.
CANDLE: the button, or a trigger at its jack, blows it out. The voice breathes out, the time goes back to nothing, and nothing gets in until the hand is let go. It's the only way to end it once it has stayed.

What comes out

OUT: IN with the voice in it, eaten as deep as the hand goes.
SPIRIT: the voice alone.
STAYED: a gate, high from the moment it stays until the candle goes out.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs, 2 lit buttons, a hand to hold (its fingers, thumb and palm)

Inputs

IN: audio, ±5 V full scale
GRIP: gate or CV, a finger every 0.8 V
LET IN, CANDLE: gates past 1 V (CANDLE as it rises)
WHO, HUNGER: CVs, ±5 V, 10% of the dial a volt

Outputs

OUT, SPIRIT: audio, held under 5 V
STAYED: gate, 5 V while it has stayed