slack by daylight noise

The strings

SLACK, the big knob and its jack: how slack the strings are. Fully left they're tight: a pick bends the note 6 cents sharp and it settles true. At noon it bends a third of a semitone sharp and sags a quarter tone flat as it rings. Fully right every pick flops: three quarters of a semitone sharp, a semitone flat as it dies, buzzing and rattling on the frets, never quite in tune with the last.

FRET: the low string's note, 1 V an octave, 0 V the A at 55 Hz; the bass plays an octave under it.

PICK: each rising edge picks the strings, a palm-muted chug.

DROP, a lit button and its jack: hold it and the strings let go, diving an octave over half a second and rattling; let go and they spring back up to tune, overshooting sharp first. The cap glows as far as they've dropped.

The slap and the squeal

CLACK: the bass's slap. Fully left a soft fingered bass; turning up, a click and the string snapping back on the frets, then a thump; past noon dead slaps fill the riff's rests, so at full the bass is a drum kit.

PINCH: the squeal. An accent catches a harmonic three to four and a half octaves over the note that rings over the chug, bends up and shakes; past noon plain notes squeal too, and at full every note screams.

ACCENT: a note picked while it's high is dug in, open, louder, bent further, and squeals.

The riff

BOUNCE and its jack: SLACK's own riff on the clock. Fully left it's off and only PICK plays. Turning up, eight riffs of two bars each: straight eighths, gallops, syncopated sixteenths, gaps, threes and twos, rests on the beats, the one a rest, and at full a stop-start riff that drops out for a bar. Past a third of the way the riffs swing, harder as it turns.

CLOCK: sixteenth notes, a step a pulse. Stop it for a second and the next pulse is the riff's first.

MUTE: the palm. Fully left there's none, and every note rings on into the next; at noon the chugs are short and the open hits ring; fully right every note is a dead thud.

The riffs chug on the low string and its fifth, ring out open on their accents with the octave on top, scratch the odd ghost, and move off FRET to the minor second, the minor third and the tritone.

What comes out

AMP: both strings through a heavy, low drive, a scooped tone and a closed cabinet, the low end growing as the strings slacken.

GUITAR and BASS: each alone; the bass with its clicks and thumps.

RIFF: a gate on every note the riff plays, half a step long, so a kick can follow it and stop when it rests.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front, the USB-C at its right edge. Each of the neck's 49 white LEDs lights its segment through a channel of a black printed baffle running up its line; the walls across a channel stop well short of the panel, so a lit line reads as one string, not seven lamps. Each step of the riff has a well of its own.

The SLACK panel: a guitar's headstock in gold dots, its strings let loose off the tuners, seven lit lines down the neck under the name and the riff's steps either side, its knobs, jacks and DROP on.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel
+12 V: about 62 mA at rest, 103 mA with the riff at noon, 159 mA on the busiest patch, 208 mA at the most (estimated)
−12 V: about 5 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button

The strings

Strings: the low string, its fifth and octave, the squeal, the bass an octave under
Lowest note: 13 Hz
Riffs: eight, two bars of sixteenths each
Swing: up to 0.3 of a sixteenth

Inputs

FRET: 1 V an octave, ±6 V, 0 V the A at 55 Hz
CLOCK: sixteenths, high past 1 V
Gates: PICK, ACCENT, DROP: high past 1 V, low under 0.8 V
CVs: SLACK, BOUNCE: 5 V the whole way, added to their knobs

Outputs

AMP: audio, up to 10 V peak to peak, never past ±5.8 V
GUITAR, BASS: audio, about ±4 V
RIFF: gate, 5 V, half a step (10 ms at the least)