likeness

they become each other

20 HP

Two sounds come in, left and right, strangers. Slowly each takes on the other's rhythm, tone and voice while the field between them closes, until they're one face in the middle, half of each. SPLIT tears them apart.

The LIKENESS panel: black, a pale mask in gold dots under the name, its eyes and lips closed, long ribbons from its temples hanging to the foot. The mask's face is a window of bare circuit board. LEFT and RIGHT in at the top corners, WIDTH and LEAN under them, FEATURES and TIDE under those, LIKENESS's jack and SPLIT's gate under the chin either side of the big LIKENESS knob, ALIKE and MEET out at the edges, ONE and APART out either side, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners, the SPLIT button between them. likeness 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. SPLIT is a button: press it to tear them apart. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark loop in E minor, two of its parts through LIKENESS, one left, one right. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything LIKENESS does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The loop is a stand-in rack.

Becoming each other

LIKENESS hears each side as its rhythm, how its loudness rises and falls; its tone, the shape of its spectrum; and its voice, the fine detail, the partials and the notes. Each side shapes itself toward the other in those, both ways at once, while the field closes, so the two end as one sound in the middle. Two different sounds work best: a pad and a pluck, a voice and a beat.

LIKENESS, the big knob: how far they become each other. Fully left they're strangers and the stereo passes as it came; at noon they come halfway; fully right all the way, one face.
LIKENESS, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
TIDE: how slowly they drift back together after a split, from under a second fully left to ten seconds at noon and three minutes fully right. Once they're there the likeness ebbs and floods at the same pace.
LEFT, RIGHT: the two sides in, a stereo pair or two different sounds.

What they borrow

FEATURES: fully left only each other's rhythm, so a pad pulses with a beat and the beat swells like the pad; at noon the tone too; fully right everything, down to the voice, so a pad sings a melody's notes and a drum rings in a chord.
LEAN: which one becomes which. At noon they meet in the middle, half of each; fully right the left one becomes the right one's likeness while the right keeps its own, and fully left the other way.

The field

WIDTH: fully left mono, at noon the field as it came, fully right two and a half times as wide, out past the speakers. As they become alike the field closes too, and when they meet it's one centred sound. Folded to the middle it never cancels: two sides in opposite phase still meet as one.
The face lights with them: each half from its own edge in, pulsing with its own sound, dark down the middle while they're strangers. As they drift together the light leans in; at one face the whole face is lit.

Split

SPLIT, a lit button and its gate: tears them apart. The field snaps past the speakers, each side is wholly its own again, and the drift starts over. Its cap glows as they become one.
MEET: a gate, high while they're one. Patch it into SPLIT and they part the moment they meet.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the two sides as they are now.
ONE: the face, the two together, in the middle.
APART: what's still theirs alone, their difference. Nothing once they're one, a burst at a split. ONE and APART add back up to LEFT, and take away to RIGHT.
ALIKE: the likeness, 0 to 8 V.
MEET: high while they're one face.

Every out is 21 ms late: that's how long it takes to hear a sound's shape.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
LIKENESS: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way
SPLIT: gate, rising past 1 V

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the two sides
ONE, APART: audio, their middle and their difference
ALIKE: CV, 0 to 8 V
MEET: gate, 5 V while they're one