memento mortem

the moments before

16 HP

When a sound dies, it plays back what came just before, in the dark: muffled, far away, or only its shape. Then it holds the last instant still. STEP goes back to the death before that, and the one before that.

The MEMENTO MORTEM panel: black, with an old pocket watch in gold dots filling it, its chain falling down both sides and coiled at the foot. STEP's button is the watch's crown, under the name. BACK, the big knob, sits in the middle of the black dial, ringed by twelve arcs of bare circuit board; IN, DARK, STILL, their two jacks and HEAR stand round it on the watch's rim. DIE and STEP's jack at the top corners, OUT and HELD low down with eight small upright lights between them, DIED at the foot. memento mortem 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. STEP is a button: press it to go back to the death before. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a dark loop through MEMENTO MORTEM, made in the page as you listen. Listen starts the patch from its top.

example patches

The listening, the memory, the dark, the still and every light here are MEMENTO MORTEM's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The loop is a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

When a sound dies

It listens to IN all the time and keeps the last minute and a half. When what it hears falls away and stays gone, that's a death: a loop that stops for a beat, a chord let go, the end of the night. The ring round BACK breathes with IN while it's alive.

HEAR: what counts as a death. Fully left only a real silence of a second and a half; at noon a gap of a fifth of a second in a loop; at full every note's tail.
DIE: a gate. A death now, while the sound goes on.

The moments before

At a death it plays back what came just before, ending where the sound died. The ring fills toward twelve as the memory gets there. It plays over whatever comes next, so the gaps fill with what was.

BACK: how far back each memory starts, from a tenth of a second to a minute. At noon about a bar.
DARK: how dark the memory is. Fully left it's clear, as it was. At noon it's muffled and far away. At full only the shape is left: sunk under 350 Hz, every hit swelling up before it lands, at half speed and an octave down.
The CV: DARK has a jack under it, ±5 V turning it half its travel. A slow wave there breathes the memories in and out of the dark.

Held still

When the memory reaches the death, the last instant holds: a frozen chord of whatever was sounding as it died. Every arc of the ring stays lit while it holds. The next death's still takes over from it.

STILL: how long it holds, from a quarter of a second to six seconds at noon to for ever at full. Then it fades. A jack under it takes a CV, as DARK's.

Stepping back

It keeps the last eight deaths: the eight small lights between OUT and HELD, the newest on the right, the one it's on lit bright.

STEP: the button, or a gate at its jack. The death before the one it's on: its moments play again, then its still. Again for the one before that. It's lit while there's one further back. A new death brings it back to the newest.

What comes out

OUT: IN with the memory over it: the moments before, then the still.
HELD: the still alone, a held chord that changes at every death. Into a filter, a long room, its own channel.
DIED: a trigger at each death, for a hit in the silence.

Specs

Format

Width: 16 HP
Controls: 4 knobs (BACK's big), a lit button

Inputs

IN: audio, ±5 V; the last 87 seconds kept
DIE, STEP: gates, rising past 1 V
DARK, STILL: CV, ±5 V half the knob's travel

Outputs

OUT: audio, IN and the memory, held under 5 V
HELD: audio, the still alone
DIED: trigger, 5 V for 10 ms