noon

at noon the clocks stop

12 HP

A clock divider with a day in it. As noon comes on, its four outs swing, wander off the grid and drift away on their own times. At noon every clock stops; the four go up into the rock one at a time, and later one comes back, with gaps.

The NOON panel: black, with stone in gold dots rising up the middle and a face in the stone looking out under the name. DAY, the big knob, sits in a ring of twelve small windows of bare circuit board, an hour each, twelve marked at the top; under it four small upright windows climb the middle toward it. DREAM and AFTER either side of DAY, CLOCK and RESET at the top corners, ONE to FOUR in pairs down the sides, WATCH and NOON at the foot, and the NOON button low in the middle. noon 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. NOON is a button: press it for noon now, and again for the morning. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack clocked by NOON: bass, glass, kick and chime on the four outs, the hats, the snare and the chords on WATCH, a bell and a hum on NOON. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The day, the dreaming, noon and every out here are NOON's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The clock, the drums and the band are a stand-in for the rest of a rack. The page's days are short: noon comes about a minute in.

The day

Patch a clock into CLOCK and the four outs divide it, exactly, as any divider would. Then the day goes by: the twelve hours round DAY light as they pass, and as noon comes on the four grow dreamy.

CLOCK: sixteen clocks are a bar. Everything is counted in them, so noon falls on a bar line, and when the clock stops, NOON waits.
RESET: the next clock is dawn of the first day. Patch the rack's reset here and NOON's bars are the rack's.
DAY: how long the morning lasts, from one bar to 4096 (two hours at 120 BPM); 64 bars at noon. At one bar, every other bar ends in a stop.
DREAM: how far they drift. Full left they stay on the grid and stop dead. At noon they start dreaming half-way through the morning; full right, from dawn. First they swing, then they wander off the grid, then each runs on her own time, up to a third slower than the clock.

Noon

At noon every clock stops, on the downbeat: the four, WATCH, and whatever the rack clocks from them. Then the four go up into the rock one at a time, each with one last step. A while later one comes back, missing pieces of herself: her division, on the grid, with the same holes every sixteen steps. Then the day starts again, all four whole. Each day a different one comes back.

AFTER: how long they're gone, from one bar to 64; 8 at noon. The longer they're gone, the less of her comes back: fourteen of every sixteen steps full left, eight at noon, two at full.
NOON: the button. Noon now; pressed in the afternoon, the morning comes back on the next clock. It's lit from noon to dawn.
The lights: the hours round DAY, and four windows up the middle, one for each out, flashing on its gates. At noon only twelve is lit; the four stand still, then go out one by one. The one who comes back is dimmer.

What comes out

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR: gates, the clock divided by 2, 3, 4 and 7, each high for half its step. Two, three and four lock to the bar; seven never does.
WATCH: the clock itself, passed through until noon and stopped till dawn. Clock a sequencer from it and the rack stops with the four.
NOON: high from noon to dawn. Its rise is the stop; into a VCA it brings a drone in for the afternoon.

Specs

Format

Width: 12 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (DAY's big), a lit button

Inputs

CLOCK: gate, rising past 1 V, sixteen to a bar
RESET: gate, rising past 1 V

Outputs

The four: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR: gates, 0/5 V, the clock ÷2, ÷3, ÷4, ÷7
WATCH: gate, 0/5 V, the clock until noon
NOON: gate, 0/5 V, high from noon to dawn