overshot

the river plays it backwards

28 HP

A tap pours into leaky buckets round a wheel, and the wheel turns a music box. A little water plays the lullaby in time; past FLOW's noon the wheel stalls, creaks and turns back, and the tune runs backwards. The screen shows you why: the heavy buckets are on the wrong side.

The OVERSHOT panel: black, a wide screen across its top half, and round it in gold dots a cow's skull in a dry riverbed. SHOVE and CLEAR at the top corners; GATE, FLOW, SPIN and WATER down the left edge, V/OCT, BRAKE, TURN and BOX down the right; LEAK, BUCKETS, DAMP and BRAKE round FLOW. overshot 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. FLOW clicks at noon. SHOVE and CLEAR are buttons: press SHOVE to push the wheel the way it's turning, hold CLEAR to pull the pins as they reach the comb. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

The wheel, the music box and the water are OVERSHOT's own. The pad, the drone, the low hit and the room round them are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The wheel, the water, the pins, the comb, the screen and every out here are OVERSHOT's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The pad, the drone, the hit, the LFO and the sequencer are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The water

The tap pours into the top bucket, and every bucket leaks. With a little water the full buckets ride the falling side and the wheel turns one way. With more, it turns so fast that they're carried up the rising side still full, and they pull it to a stop and back. A leaky waterwheel like this follows the same equations as the Lorenz attractor: past the edge it never settles.

The wheel

The cylinder turns with the wheel, a turn for a turn, so the tune runs at the wheel's speed and in its direction. When the wheel stalls, a pin stays pressed on a tine, and the tine creaks as the water strains against it.

The box

The cylinder holds up to 64 pins and the comb grows a tine for each note, up to eighteen, tuned to concert pitch. It comes pinned with a lullaby. Turning back, each pin knocks its tine from the far side and drops it: a click, then a softer note.

What comes out