midnight

sweet until twelve

20 HP

A voice: one small, breathy, sweet hum you play like a lead, and three rules, each a button and a jack. Get it wet and copies pop off it, singing round your tune. Feed them after midnight and they cocoon and hatch as something else. Light melts them; the first only flinches.

The MIDNIGHT panel: black, with gold rings spreading out across it as from a drop in still water, round NIGHT. Twelve short arcs of bare circuit board ring NIGHT, the hours; under them seven round windows, one in the middle and six round it, the voices. FEED under the name between TICK and its own jack, TUNE and SING at the top corners, the WATER and LIGHT buttons down the sides with their jacks inside them, MISCHIEF and NASTY with their CVs either side of the voices, HUM under them, AFTER and HATCH over LEFT and RIGHT in the bottom corners, HUM's CV at the foot. midnight 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. WATER, FEED and LIGHT are buttons: press one to splash, to feed them or to turn on the light, which stays on while you hold it. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack round MIDNIGHT: its sequencer sings the song into TUNE and SING and ticks into TICK, over a kick, a clap, hats, a sub bass and a pad; LEFT and RIGHT go through a dark room. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The voices, the rules and the lights here are MIDNIGHT's engine as it's designed, running in your browser; the song, the beat and the room stand in for a rack.

The little voice

Each note scoops up into place and opens from a closed hum, a coo; the note before is held soft under it, so one line sings in two parts.

TUNE: the song's notes, 1 V an octave, C4 at 0 V.
SING: the song's gate. It sings while it's high, a new note at each rising edge; unpatched it hums all the time.
HUM: the voice. A breathy, closed coo fully left; a soft "oo" at noon; fully right a full open song, both notes strong, a wide warble and a big scoop into every note.
HUM, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way.

Water

Every splash, a copy pops off the first, up to six, each a little different: its own lag, its own part, its own size, its own side of the stereo field.

WATER: a button and a gate, a copy a splash. Born sweet, or nasty if any are in the cocoon or hatched.
MISCHIEF: how far they stray. Fully left a unison choir, each a moment late. Turning up they lag further and one by one take their parts, octaves, fifths, fourths, thirds and sixths, always on notes your tune has used. Past noon they sing notes of their own and run ornaments round yours; fully right, six tunes.
MISCHIEF, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way.

The night

The night keeps the rack's time: twelve hours to midnight, lit one by one round NIGHT, then twelve to dawn as they go out. After midnight the sweet ones stray a little further. Dawn melts anything hatched.

TICK: each tick moves the night on; unpatched it ticks by itself twice a second.
NIGHT: how fast. At noon a night of 64 ticks, sixteen bars of quarters with midnight halfway; fully left eight times as long; fully right eight ticks.

Food and light

Food after midnight turns them: every sweet copy cocoons for an hour of the night, its song choked under a swelling throb, then hatches as something else. Before midnight food does nothing; the first never eats.

FEED: a button and a gate.
NASTY: how far the hatched ones turn. Fully left a little rough, still mostly your tune; turning up they chatter, leap, slide and cackle in notes of their own; fully right pure chaos, shrieks and all.
NASTY, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way.
LIGHT: a button and a gate. Every hatched one and every cocoon shrieks and melts, one after another; the first and any sweet ones only flinch. Its cap is lit while it's held.

What comes out

LEFT and RIGHT: the voices, the first in the middle, each copy on its window's side.
AFTER: a gate, high from midnight to dawn. Patch it into FEED and they eat as the clock strikes.
HATCH: a gate, high while the hatched ones are loose.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 4 knobs (HUM's big), 3 buttons (LIGHT's lit)

Inputs

TUNE: 1 V an octave, C4 at 0 V
SING: gate, high past 1 V
TICK: clock, rising past 1 V
Gates: WATER, FEED, LIGHT: rising past 1 V
CVs: HUM, MISCHIEF, NASTY: ±5 V, added to each knob

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: the voices, ±4.5 V
AFTER, HATCH: gates, 0/5 V