scorpion: 12 HP, an effect that's tender until you cross a line, by daylight noise

The line

LINE is how loud the voice has to get before it snaps. It listens to what comes in, fast enough to catch a hit within a few milliseconds, and the moment the voice goes over, the lamp goes out and the stomping starts.

LINE: from −40 dB fully down, where almost any note crosses it, to 0 dB at full (a 5 V sine), where only the hardest hits do.

CV: adds to LINE, 4 dB a volt.

PUSH: a gate. Its rising edge snaps it whatever the level, and while it's held it stays snapped.

The kiss

Under the line it's tender. Time slows: the voice is read back behind itself in short, overlapping grains, each at the pitch it was sung, so a phrase stretches out without sinking. Then it blooms into a long, soft tail. The lamp over LINE glows with the bloom.

SLOW: real time fully down; at full a near standstill, a thirty-second of real time, each moment held and smeared. It never falls more than 2.2 seconds behind: past that it lets the oldest go and takes up a fresher moment.

WARM: dry fully down; at full a huge, soft tail, twelve seconds long, its top rolled off.

KISS: a CV adding to SLOW and WARM.

The stomp

Over the line it grabs the hit that crossed, a fifth of a second of it, and stomps it: plays it again and again, each time lower, slower and more crushed, until the voice has been quiet for half a second. Then it's tender again.

HEAVY: how fast it gets heavy. Fully down it creeps there over thirty stomps; at full the third is already pulp, an octave down and ground to a few bits.

SNAP: a trigger at every stomp. Patch it to a kick.

STOMP: a CV adding to HEAVY and NATURE.

The blood

Every stomp leaves blood: stains lit red from behind, filling outward from LINE, flashing with each stomp and glowing after. It never washes out until the power goes off. The more there is, the dirtier the kiss: the voice and its bloom saturate and crumble as the stain grows.

BLOOD: 0 to 8 V, how stained.

NATURE: how far each outburst lowers the line, up to 30 dB at full blood. At 0 the line stays where LINE puts it; turned up, a patch that keeps snapping snaps sooner and sooner.

The panel

Twelve HP, every part on the line's staggered grid and mirrored about the middle: the left column the kiss, the right the stomp. A round lamp window sits over LINE on the spine, and sixteen stains are cut through to bare circuit board, faint until they're lit red from behind. The art is a scorpion in gold.

IN and PUSH at the top corners; SLOW and HEAVY either side of the lamp.

LINE in the middle, WARM and NATURE either side of it, its CV under it.

KISS and STOMP down the edges, OUT on the spine, BLOOD and SNAP at the foot.