segments

shoot it and it splits

20 HP

A melody walks a field of notes, turning at every mushroom and edge, its body following its head. A shot takes a segment and leaves a mushroom; the segments behind it walk off as a new head, turning back. One line becomes up to four, each with its own pitch and gate.

The SEGMENTS panel: black, a segmented body of bare circuit board down the middle, a rounded head under the name and eleven plates below it, its long legs in gold dots reaching out among the controls. WALK and WAVE at the top corners, LENGTH and SCALE under them, the big FIELD and AIM knobs either side of the body with their jacks outside them, ROOT and SHOOT's jack below, then four columns of outs, HEAD 1 to HEAD 4, each a pitch over a gate with a small head window between, and the SHOOT button at the foot of the body. segments 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. LENGTH and SCALE click from stop to stop the same ways. SHOOT is a button: press it to fire up the AIM column; its cap glows while something is there to hit. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A rack round SEGMENTS: a clock into WALK, each head on a voice of its own (a bright lead, a plucked bell, a hollow voice, a bass) over a kick, a clap and a dark drone. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

The field, the walking, the shots and the lights are SEGMENTS's engine as designed, running in your browser; the clock, the voices and the drums stand in for the rest of a rack.

The field

Eight notes across, up the scale to the right, and six rows down, each a third under the one above. A head walks its row a step a clock; where the way on is the edge or a mushroom it rests a step, drops a row and walks back. So it plays runs, a breath and a fall at every turn, down the field and, from the bottom, back up.

WALK: the clock, every rising edge a step. Unpatched, eight steps a second.
FIELD: how thick the mushrooms grow. Fully left an open field and long runs; at noon a fifth of the places; fully right nearly every step a turn, each line falling and climbing in thirds. Now and then a place is sown again, so the field never settles.
SCALE: the field's notes. Its five stops, left to right: major, minor pentatonic, natural minor, harmonic minor, chromatic.
ROOT: V/OCT, added to every head's pitch.
FIELD, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way.

Shooting

SHOOT, a lit button and its gate: a shot up the AIM column at the lowest segment in it. That place becomes a mushroom; the segments behind walk off as a new head, climbing where the first falls.
A shot head turns its body back; a shot tail shortens it; a lone segment shot ends that head. With four heads walking, a fifth split brings the tail down as mushrooms.
AIM: the column the shots fly up, the field's eight columns left to right. SHOOT's cap glows while a segment is in it.
AIM, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way.

Waves

LENGTH: a wave's segments: 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12; turned, a new wave of that length comes in at once. A long body holds its notes into each other; each piece shot off it plays shorter.
WAVE: a gate in: a new wave at the top now, from the left end, then the right. Whatever's walking leaves the field; the mushrooms stay.
Shoot every segment and a new wave comes in at the next step.

What comes out

HEAD 1 to HEAD 4: each a pitch, V/OCT, and a gate, high at every step its head takes, low on a rest. The first body is HEAD 1; a new head takes the lowest free number.
The body lights segment by segment, each head brighter, and goes dark where it's shot; the small head by each pair of outs lights while that head walks.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 2 big knobs, two five-stop switches, a lit button

Inputs

WALK: clock, rising past 1 V, a step each
SHOOT, WAVE: gates, rising past 1 V: a shot, a new wave
ROOT: V/OCT, ±5 V
FIELD, AIM: CV, ±5 V, added to each knob

Outputs

Pitches: HEAD 1, HEAD 2, HEAD 3, HEAD 4: V/OCT, ±5 V
Gates: HEAD 1, HEAD 2, HEAD 3, HEAD 4: 0/5 V