one percent by daylight noise

The ONE PERCENT panel: black, with countless drops of water hanging in the dark in gold dots, and drops of bare circuit board you can see light through: seven in a line down the middle from the BREATHE button to the big DOSE knob, and ten a side flung up and out from DOSE. BREATHE and CLOCK at the top corners, LEFT and RIGHT in under them, COLOUR and HANG either side under DOSE with HOLD below it, each with its jack beside it; HELD and CRASH out low between, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners and SLOW out at the foot. one percent 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. BREATHE is a button: press it to breathe in, press it again to come down early. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through ONE PERCENT: a dark groove of drums, a driven bass, a pad and a chord stab, a crash on CRASH. All made in the page.

example patches

The breath, the stretch and the lights are ONE PERCENT's engine as designed, running in your browser; the groove and the crash stand in for a rack.

The breath

BREATHE, a lit button: press it to breathe in. Time slides down over a third of a second and stays slow; press again and it comes down on the next beat. It's lit while you're in.
BREATHE, the jack: a gate that does the button's job.
HOLD: how long a breath lasts. A beat, two, a bar or two bars over the first half of the turn, two bars at noon, then four, eight, sixteen and thirty-two.
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to the bar. A breath counts from the nearest beat and lands back exactly on one, so in on the one is back on the one. With nothing in CLOCK, HOLD counts seconds, from half a second to a minute.
Breathe again too soon and it's shorter and not as deep; rest, and it comes back halfway for every breath's length you wait. The button keeps a faint glow while it rests.

Slow time

DOSE, the big knob: how slow. A half fully left, about a fourteenth at noon, a hundredth at full, where a single drum hit takes most of a minute. Turn it while you're in and time slows or quickens with it.
The pitch never falls. At a half the music plays on at half speed, clean; deeper, the moment smears into a shimmering wash of its own notes.
COLOUR: the flood. A plain stretch fully left; turning up, the highs begin to sparkle, an octave and a twelfth bloom over every note and the quiet partials come up; at full it's all glitter.
HANG: how each hit hangs. Fully left the hits melt into one slow pad; at noon each lands crisp; turned up, every hit is caught as it lands and hangs on as its own glittering spray, up to eight seconds.
Their jacks, DOSE, HOLD, COLOUR and HANG, add to the knobs, 5 V the whole way round.
The drops down the middle fall to how slow time is, a hundredth at the bottom; the spray either side glitters with the wash, lows nearest DOSE.

Coming down

Over the last quarter of HOLD it wears off: time creeps back up, halfway.
Then the come-down: the wash sweeps up and tears apart in a sixth of a second, and you're back in the music where it is now, on the beat. It never catches up and never plays what you missed.

What comes out

LEFT and RIGHT: your mix, untouched until you breathe in, then only slowed time. LEFT alone in feeds both.
HELD: a gate, high from the breath to the come-down.
CRASH: a trigger as you land, for a crash or a drop.
SLOW: how slow time is now, 0 to 8 V, falling and rising with it, for anything else that should slow down too.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 3 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

BREATHE: gate, rising past 1 V
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to the bar
LEFT, RIGHT: audio; LEFT alone feeds both
CVs: DOSE, HOLD, COLOUR and HANG: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio
HELD: gate, 0/5 V
CRASH: trigger, 10 ms, 0/5 V
SLOW: CV, 0 to 8 V