scrap

the metal grows

20 HP

A drive where the sound grows scrap metal. Push it in and it rusts; play on and pieces of metal grow out of its hits, a pipe, a plate, a coil of wire, a bolt, each ringing at the sound's own pitch and struck by every hit after, until the body is a machine. TEAR rips it all off.

The SCRAP panel: black, gold dots in the shape of a whole body's bones, its collarbones out to the top corners, its ribcage edge to edge with an iron pipe down each side, a riveted plate over the breastbone, its spine down the middle and its pelvis across the foot. Sixteen pieces of metal in windows of bare circuit board stand on it: down each side a pipe, a bent plate with rivet holes, a coil of wire, a hex bolt and another pipe, a plate bolted at each hip, a bolt either side of the breastbone and a coil either side of the spine; down the middle under DRILL a drill bit in the same bare board, its flutes in chevrons. TEAR, the button, under the name, GROW and METAL either side; DRIVE, the big knob, under it; DRILL under DRIVE; FLESH and FUSE in at the top corners, the GROW and TEAR gates with dashed white rings, DRIVE and DRILL under them, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners. scrap 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. TEAR is a button: press it to rip the metal off. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through SCRAP: a pounding beat, a distorted bass and a few stabs into FLESH (or the bass into FLESH and the drums into FUSE). It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The drive, the metal, the drill and the tear here are SCRAP's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The beat, the bass and the stabs are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Growing

SCRAP hears every hit in what comes in: how hard, how bright, and at what pitch. A hit over the line may grow a piece of metal: a kick's dark thump a pipe, a snare a plate, a hat a coil of wire or a bolt. The piece rings at the pitch the sound had when it grew, moved by octaves into its own range, so the metal rings in the sound's key. Every hit after strikes every piece grown, each a few milliseconds apart, so they clatter.

GROW: how readily a hit grows a piece. Fully left nothing grows; at noon about one hit in four over the line; at full every hit, the line low. Once all sixteen are grown, each new one tears off the oldest of its kind and takes its place, re-tuned.
GROW, a gate in: grows a piece now, of the last hit's kind and pitch.
The lights: each piece of metal is dark until it grows, flashes as it does, and lights as it rings.

Flesh and metal

The sound itself is the flesh. It goes through the drive, and the drive is what strikes the metal and feeds it, so the harder it's pushed the harder the metal rings. As the metal covers the body, the flesh goes.

DRIVE, the big knob: how hard the sound is pushed. Fully left it's clean, the sound untouched; by noon it rusts, gritty, a scrape riding its top; at full it screams.
DRIVE, a CV in: added to the knob, five volts the whole way round.
METAL: how loud and long the pieces ring, silent fully left, a pipe ringing three and a half seconds at full. With four pieces or more grown, METAL at full leaves no flesh at all: only the machine.

The drill

A motor grinding at the sound's own pitch: it spins up while the sound plays, bogs down on every hit and winds down when it stops. Its flutes turn on the panel as fast as it runs.

DRILL: off fully left; turned up, the grind louder and faster. Past three o'clock it bites into the sound itself.
DRILL, a CV in: added to the knob. A gate here is the trigger on a power tool: the drill revs with it and winds down after.

Fuse and tear

FLESH: the sound the metal grows out of.
FUSE: a second sound, fused in. It's pushed through the same drive, grows its own pieces, and its hits strike all the metal: drums in FUSE ring the pipes a bass in FLESH grew.
TEAR, a button and a gate in: rips the metal off. Every piece is struck one last time and bends down as it goes, the outermost first, with a screech of metal; then it's flesh again. The button glows with how much metal there is to tear.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the machine in stereo: the flesh and the drill in the middle, each piece where it grew, so the left side's metal is on the left and the sound widens as it grows.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 4 knobs (DRIVE's big), a lit button

Inputs

FLESH, FUSE: audio, ±5 V, pushed through the drive together
GROW, TEAR: gates, rising past 1 V
DRIVE, DRILL: CV, ±5 V, added to the knob

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the machine in stereo, exact to 6 V and saturating softly past it