rigged

pull the strings

28 HP

A marble run on a one-bit screen. A switch under each of its four bays picks the part that hangs there, from the same eight, and every marble plays the machine you've built. Turn one while it runs and the part is hoisted out and another lowered in.

The RIGGED panel: black, a marionette's control in gold dots along the top, its strings hanging past a big dark screen to two carved hands and down to the four bay switches. MARBLES, GATE and V/OCT down the left with the A and B triggers under them; TILT, OUT and TURN down the right with D and C; under the screen the four switches, A to D, each with the eight parts printed round it as little pictures, and DROP between them under the parts' names. rigged at the top, daylight noise at the foot.

Turn a knob: drag it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. The four switches turn the same way, the arrow keys a part at a time. DROP is a button: press it and the hopper lets one marble go. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

The machine and every sound it makes are RIGGED's own. The clock, the sequencers, the kit, the bass and the pad are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The machine, its marbles, the screen and every out here are RIGGED's engine as it's designed, running in your browser; the screen is drawn from it pixel for pixel, twenty frames a second. The clock, the sequencers, the kit, the bass and the pad are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The bays

Four bays hang from the gantry, A to D, each a step lower than the last, and every marble runs through them in that order. Under each is a switch with the same eight parts printed round it, and whatever it points at hangs in that bay. Each bay is tuned to a note of the key, falling as the run falls, so the same part plays a different note in a different bay, and four switches write the phrase and the groove. Turn one while it runs: a hook hoists the old part out and lowers the new one in, and a marble caught in the bay drops through to the next.

A, B, C, D: what each bay holds, one of the eight. A is tuned to the octave, B the fifth, C the minor third and D the root.
TURN: every bay's part moved on a place a volt, all four at once, round the eight. A sequencer into it rebuilds the whole machine on every step.

BELL: the marble clips its lip on the way past and it rings the bay's note, as hard as the marble was going.
STAIR: three bars stepping down, a quick falling figure from the bay's note.
SEESAW: the marble rides the plank down and the boot on the other end kicks a bucket. The kick.
TUB: a splash, then the marble sinks and drains out a moment later. The snare, and a pause.
CAGE: the marble trips it and it crashes down behind it, then winches back up; a marble that comes meanwhile waits at its wall.
FUNNEL: holds a marble until a second lands on it, then lets both go: half as many, and every hit after it doubled.
ROCKER: tips the other way at every marble, sending every other one over the next bay. Two in a row count: the phrase changes every marble and comes round every fourth.
SPRING: throws the marble back up into the bay before, once, to play that part again.

The marbles

There are eight. The ones the machine isn't using wait in the jar at the bottom; the rest go round, from the hopper through the bays, up the lift and along the belt back to the hopper. The parts that hold a marble back, the tub, the cage and the funnel, are where they queue.

MARBLES: how many are in the machine, none to eight. At one, a single marble's phrase; at eight, a crowd queueing at the tub and the cage. At none it empties itself into the jar and stands still.
DROP: a button: the hopper lets one marble go.
GATE: a rising edge lets one go. With the hopper empty, only the flap's clack.

The run

TILT: how steeply the run hangs, so how fast the marbles roll: the machine's tempo. A marble's way through four parts takes two seconds with none and under 0.8 at full, where the run is a rattle broken only by the tub and the cage.
V/OCT: the key, live. Every tuned part retunes at once; at 0 V, D is C3 and A is C4.

What comes out

Everything you hear is something a marble hit: the parts, the hopper's flap, the hooks and their chains, the lift, the belt and every roll along the rails.

OUT: the machine, every sound in it.
A, B, C, D: a trigger whenever that bay's part does its thing: a strike of the bell or a bar, the kick, the splash, the crash, a funnel's pair, a rocker's marble over the bridge, the spring's throw. Swap a part and that jack's rhythm changes with it.