lament by daylight noise

The board

The board is read clockwise round the frame from the top left, then into the middle, a fragment a tile. The tiles are different lengths, so moving one moves where every note after it lands. The empty place is a rest. Two bars, with nothing else touched.

You can't put a note where you want it. A tile only moves into the gap, so every change drags others with it, and half of all the orders can't be reached at all. Push a tile with another in front of it and they go together.

A tile at home burns. A lost one barely shows. The one being read flashes.

CLOCK: a step each pulse. With nothing patched it runs at 120 BPM.

RESET: back to the top left tile.

Getting warmer

Home is a real phrase, a bass falling by step with a line wailing over it. Out of order the steps turn to leaps. Nearly home isn't always near: about one board in five has no slide that makes it warmer, and three tiles barely out of place can be eighteen slides away. To get the last ones in you usually break what you've got.

TEETH: how hard a lost tile grinds. Fully left it plays clean wherever it is. At noon it sours, the further from home the more. Fully right it shakes against the tile sitting in its place, fast enough to growl through any voice you patch it to.

WARM: how near the whole board is to home, up to 8 V. Patch it to anything you'd like to come right.

It opens

The last tile is a door. As it nears home the rack thins and something starts to come; hold it there if you like. Let it land and every tile goes out, and whatever you sent through ROOM stops. Something comes through the gap on every out, and it's different each time, because it's built from the slides that got you there. There's no way to turn it off. Slide a tile and it stops.

WIDE: how far it opens. Fully left, a chord rings under the phrase and nothing's taken. Past noon the phrase stops and something climbs. Fully right the whole rack goes, as a tape stops, and doesn't come back.

ROOM: your rack's mix goes in here and out of GAP, until it opens.

KEY (1 V an octave): moves the phrase. While it's open, every note that moves here is written into the tiles, in the tiles' own rhythm. That's the only time they'll take one.

How long a tile is

GROWTH: how much of a tile plays. Fully left one note a tile. At noon the fragment. Up from there it goes round twice, four times, eight, turned about and up an octave, until a tile is two bars and a slide is a change of section.

KIN: what a tile says to the tiles beside it. Fully left nothing. Turned up it plays a little of the next tile along, then of more of them. Fully right each tile plays every tile that touches it, so where a tile sits matters as well as when.

What comes out

TUNE: the phrase as the board reads it, 1 V an octave.

KEEN: a gate for each note.

WARM: how near home, up to 8 V. Open, it falls away to nothing.

SLIDE: a trigger each time a tile lands. Open, it fires by itself.

OPEN: a gate, high while it's solved.

GAP: ROOM, the knock of the tiles in the tray, and what comes through.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: eight sliding tiles, 4 knobs

Inputs

CLOCK: gate, rising past 1 V
RESET: gate, rising past 1 V
KEY: 1 V an octave
ROOM: audio, ±5 V

Outputs

TUNE: 1 V an octave
KEEN: gate, 5 V
WARM: CV, 0 to 8 V
SLIDE: trigger, 5 V, 5 ms
OPEN: gate, 5 V
GAP: audio, ±5 V