seven days

copy it before the seventh

20 HP

Everything through it plays off a tape that wears a day at a time: warm on the first, then flutter, the highs gone dull, noise rolling through the beat, dropouts, the pitch lurching. On the seventh day something climbs out. Plug a cable into COPY and the copy carries the curse away.

The SEVEN DAYS panel: black, gold dots of an old television in a wooden cabinet against a peeling wall, its legs on lit floorboards running down to the foot. The television's screen is a window of bare circuit board in ten bands across the top, its seven channel buttons seven small round windows under it. LEFT and RIGHT in at the top corners, WEAR and TRACKING under them over their jacks, WARMTH and WOW inside, DAYS's big knob in the middle, the WATCH button under it with SYNC and WATCH's gate either side, SEVENTH and CURSE out under them, LEFT, COPY and RIGHT out at the foot. seven days 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. WATCH is a button: press it and the next day comes now. COPY is a jack: click it to plug a cable in, and again to pull it out. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark song in D minor, drums, a pulsing bass and a chopped voice, through SEVEN DAYS; COPY, once it's patched, to a hall. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything SEVEN DAYS does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The song and the hall are a stand-in rack.

The week

DAYS, the big knob: how fast the days go. An hour a day fully left; four and a half minutes at noon, so a week is about a set; a second and a half fully right.
SYNC: a clock, a pulse a beat. Patched, the days count it, from 8,192 beats a day to a bar, and the noise locks to the beat.
WATCH, a lit button and its gate: the next day comes now. Its cap flashes at every dawn.
The days under the screen count the week: the days gone dim, today bright.

The wear

Day one is a warm tape with a little wow and hiss. Each day after brings the next kind of wear and deepens the ones before: flutter, dull highs, the tracking going (noise and the heads' buzz rolling through the beat), dropouts, then the picture rolling, the pitch sagging and lurching back. The screen shows it.

WEAR, and its jack: how hard each day hits. Fully left the days come but the tape never wears; at full, by the sixth day it's ruined.
TRACKING, and its jack: the tape's own tracking fault, on any day. At full, three bands of noise roll through every beat and the dropouts never stop. A gate here puts the noise in time.
WARMTH: the tape's drive and hiss, whatever the day. Fully left clean; at noon a warm cassette; at full slammed.
WOW: the tape's own wow and flutter, whatever the day. At full every note swings over half a semitone.

The seventh day

Through the seventh day the tape's own echo comes round on itself: it rings, then howls, and the static rises over the screen.
At its end something climbs out: the tape stops dead, screaming down, then nothing, then day one, clean, and the week starts again.
SEVENTH: a gate when it climbs out, the tape's or the copy's.

The copy

COPY: plug a cable in and a copy is made. It takes the curse as it stands, the day and all its wear, out to whatever you patched, both sides mixed to one; its days go on there to its own seventh.
The tape is clean again at once, back at day one. Pull the cable and the copy is gone; plug it in again and a new copy takes what the tape has.
While there's a copy, its day blinks.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the tape, 24 ms behind what goes in.
COPY: the copy, mono, silent until it's patched.
SEVENTH: a gate, 0.6 s, when something climbs out.
CURSE: how far into its week the tape is, rising through the days, 0 to 8 V.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
SYNC: clock, a pulse a beat, high past 1 V
WATCH: gate, high past 1 V
WEAR, TRACKING: CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the tape
COPY: audio, mono, the copy
SEVENTH: gate, 5 V, 0.6 s
CURSE: CV, 0 to 8 V