overgrowth by daylight noise

overgrowth

it feeds on itself

20 HP

A wavefolder that grows. The harder it drives its folds the more it grows, and the more it grows the harder it drives them, until the voice is a dense, writhing mass that can't hold itself: a white flash, a moment's silence, and the sound comes back clean. CAPSULE holds it back.

It grows

OVERGROWTH folds whatever comes in, back on itself at the rails, over and over, every fold a new edge. But its fold isn't set and left. Every moment it grows on how hard it's driving its folds, and growing drives them harder, so a loud note feeds it and it feeds on itself. Under the level CAPSULE can hold, a note blooms and settles back; over it, nothing holds it.

SEED: the sound it grows on. A sine or a triangle folds best, a bass line best of all; a loud note feeds it, a soft one barely does.

FOLD, the knob and its jack: where it starts. Fully left nearly clean, at noon a fold or two, fully right a hard fold of a dozen edges before anything has grown. A collapse always comes back here.

CAPSULE, the big knob, and its jack: how much it's held back. Fully left nothing holds it, and anything that sounds runs away; at noon a loud held note blooms to about half and stays; fully right it's shut, a plain wavefolder with no memory at all.

APPETITE: how fast it grows. Fully left a slow swell over half a minute or more; at noon a few seconds to run away on a loud bass line; fully right a mass in under a second.

The mass

MASS: what the overgrowth becomes. It sets how many more folds it grows, how far its four strands of folds spread apart and across LEFT and RIGHT, how much weight an octave under it puts on, and how dark it gets. Fully left it grows only a few more folds, thin and in the middle; fully right many more, low, dark, wide and heavy.

Clean, it's mono. As it grows the strands drift apart and writhe, each with its own slow sway, faster the bigger it gets.

The rings round CAPSULE light out from the middle as far as it has grown, each half following its own side: a small core when it's clean, all five at the edge of collapse, flickering faster as it writhes.

The collapse

When it can't hold itself any longer it collapses: the mass goes up in a burst of white noise, then silence, then the sound comes back clean and small, at the starting fold, and it begins again.

WHITE: how big a collapse is. Fully left a blink, twenty milliseconds of nothing; at noon a sixth of a second of white and half a second of silence; fully right a long white roar and two and a half seconds of silence before it fades back in.

SEAL, a lit button and its gate: press it, or send it a rising edge, and it collapses now, grown or not. Its cap glows as it grows and goes white with the flash.

The rings go white together, fade, stay dark through the silence, and the core comes back with the sound.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the sound, folded. The same out of both while it's clean; its strands spread between them as it grows.

GROWTH: how far it has grown, 0 to 8 V, 8 V the moment it can't hold itself. It falls to nothing at the collapse.

COLLAPSE: a trigger at every collapse, its own or SEAL's.

Specs

Format

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

Inputs

SEED: audio, ±5 V
SEAL: gate, rising past 1 V
FOLD, CAPSULE: CV, added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V
GROWTH: CV, 0 to 8 V
COLLAPSE: trigger, 5 V, 10 ms