red light

20 HP · VCA

Four VCAs that play red light, green light with your rack. While the light is green they pass, and each channel climbs toward the line by how much it plays. When it turns red they shut on a stop-time break, and anything still sounding is out. The ones who make it across play through every red.

The RED LIGHT panel: black, with an old porcelain face in gold dots, its eyes looking out halfway up. Under the name a round light of bare circuit board cut into twelve wedges round a hub, a line through it across the top, and four lanes of small bars running up the panel to the line. The knobs SENSE and DISTANCE in the top corners, SONG and TIME under them; START under the light; CAUGHT and ACROSS under the line; each channel's IN, CV and OUT down its own column; CLOCK, RED and SONG down the middle. red light 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. START: click or tap it, or press Space or Enter on it. The patches step on by themselves until you turn a knob or press START.

The light, the lanes and the four VCAs are RED LIGHT's own. The drums, bass, lead and pad it plays with are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The light, the lanes and every VCA here are RED LIGHT's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the bass, the lead and the pad are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Green and red

While the light is green a little tune plays and the four channels pass. When the tune ends the light turns red, on the beat: every VCA shuts at once, so the music stops, and RED goes high to stop whichever sequencers you've patched it to. Half a beat later the light has turned. Then green again.

SONG: the phrase, from one beat (the light turning every other beat) to sixteen; the tune is sung across it, fast or slow.
CLOCK: a gate a beat, and the phrase and the light land on it. Unpatched, 120 BPM.
RED: a gate, high while the light is red.
SONG out: the tune, eight notes of a music box.

Still

Once the light has turned, anything still sounding is out: a part nobody stopped, a note held over, an echo or a long tail. A part that stopped clean stays in. Out, a channel's VCA stays shut and its lane goes dark until the round is over.

SENSE: how still is still. At 0 only a part still playing hard is caught; at full, any breath.
CAUGHT: a trigger when anyone's out.

The line

Each channel has a lane of lights up the panel. While the light is green it climbs by how much it plays, so a busy, loud part gets there first. At the line it's across, and from then on it plays straight through every red.

DISTANCE: how far the line is. At 0 everyone's across at once, and it's four plain VCAs.
ACROSS: a trigger when anyone's across.

The round

The light's twelve wedges are the time: they go out one by one as the round runs down, and the tune speeds up as they go, so the breaks come closer together. When the time is up, everyone who isn't across is out. A bar's rest, and a new round with everyone back.

TIME: the round, from 8 beats to 128.
START: a new round now, everyone back.

Four VCAs

IN 1 to 4: the four channels, audio or CV.
CV 1 to 4: each channel's level, 0 to 8 V. Unpatched, it's open.
OUT 1 to 4: each channel out. One left unpatched adds into the next, so OUT 4 is the mix.