rally by daylight noise

The RALLY panel: black, with a table under a hanging lamp in gold dots. Over the table an arc of seventeen round windows of bare circuit board runs from a bat at the left edge to a bat at the right, over a narrow window for the net, under the SERVE button. SERVE and NET jacks in the top corners, SPIN and ANGLE under the table, PACE the big knob in the middle with LENGTH and SKILL beside it and a SPIN and a PACE jack at the edges, TICK and TOCK out down the sides, CLOCK on the middle, MISS and SPEED out beside it, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot with BALL between them. rally 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. SERVE is a button: press it to serve whatever's playing into BALL. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through RALLY: a dark groove of kick, hats, a driven bass and a pad, and a rimshot, a clap, a pluck or a synth line into BALL. All made in the page.

example patches

The serve, the rally, the net, the sound and the lights are RALLY's engine as designed, running in your browser; the groove and what goes into BALL stand in for a rack.

The serve

BALL: what you play in. It passes to LEFT and RIGHT in the middle, and at every serve the ball is caught from it: the next 0.3 seconds, from just before.
SERVE, a lit button, and its gate: serve. With nothing in the gate, every hit at BALL serves while the ball isn't in play, so drums rally themselves. Pressed mid-rally it's a let: the ball is served again.
The button is lit while the ball's in play. Whoever won the last point serves.

The rally

Every return plays the ball again on its own side, at the serve's level: it doesn't fade, it stays in play until somebody misses, hit harder (brighter, driven) as it speeds up.
PACE, the big knob: how much quicker every return. Fully left it's steady, a plain echo crossing the stereo; at noon the speed doubles every five returns; at full, on almost every one, into a buzzing blur.
LENGTH: the first crossing. A flam fully left, half a second at noon, two seconds at full.
CLOCK: patched, the returns land on the beat's divisions and step down them as the ball speeds up: quarters, eighths, triplets, sixteenths, on to a blur. LENGTH picks the first, from a bar to a sixteenth.

Spin and angle

SPIN: right of noon every return is higher, left of noon lower, up to five semitones a return at the ends. Each lands on a semitone, and an octave up or down the ball bounces off a wall and comes back.
ANGLE: fully left the ball goes straight down the middle; at noon the sides are hard left and right; past noon every return comes off at an angle, its pitch kicked up or down at random, up to eight semitones at full.
The SPIN and PACE jacks add to their knobs, 5 V the whole way round.

The miss

SKILL: how long the rallies last. Two or three returns fully left, about ten at noon, twenty at three o'clock; fully right it never misses.
A miss goes into the net: halfway across, a low buzz in the middle, the rally gone, and quiet until the next serve.
NET: a gate that puts the ball in the net now. With SKILL at full, SERVE and NET start and end every rally where you want.

What comes out

LEFT and RIGHT: BALL in the middle and the rally either side.
TICK and TOCK: a trigger at every left hit and every right hit, the serve included, for drums to play the rally.
MISS: a trigger at the net.
SPEED: how fast the ball is, 1 V for every doubling of the serve's speed, up to 8 V; into an oscillator's pitch the rally climbs a tune.

Specs

Format

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

Inputs

BALL: audio
SERVE, NET: gates, rising past 1 V
CLOCK: a pulse a beat
PACE, SPIN: CVs, added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio
TICK, TOCK: triggers, 5 ms, 0/5 V
MISS: trigger, 10 ms, 0/5 V
SPEED: CV, 0 to 8 V