sleep

they wake as each other

28 HP

It sits between four of your sequences and their voices and remembers what each one plays. At midnight everything stops under a rising tone, and the city wakes with every part playing another's memories. Over a set, the parts trade lives.

The SLEEP panel: black, with gold dots of a city skyline at night, a clock tower up the middle and blocks stepping down to the edges, four tall gold towers standing in it, each with a column of window panes of bare circuit board, and a ring of twelve hour marks round the button at the top. DAY 1 to 4 in down the top of four columns, LIFE 1 to 4 out at their feet; CLOCK and RESET at the top, MIDNIGHT's button with the clock round it in the middle under the name, STILL, the big knob, under it with SWAP and TUNE either side, NIGHT's switch under STILL with MIDNIGHT's and WAKE's jacks either side, SLEEP and TUNING out, WAKE's button at the foot. sleep 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. NIGHT is a switch: it clicks between its five stops the same ways. MIDNIGHT and WAKE are buttons: press MIDNIGHT and midnight comes on the next step; press WAKE and everyone is back to themselves. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark loop in F minor at 124 BPM: a bass, a lead, an arpeggio and chord stabs, each a lane through SLEEP, with drums on the same clock. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

The day, the memories, midnight, the swap, the tone and the windows here are SLEEP's engine, the module's own code, running in your browser. The loop, its voices and its drums are a stand-in rack.

By day

Patch four lanes of pitch and gate into DAY 1 to 4 and take them out of LIFE 1 to 4. By day they pass straight through, and it keeps every note each lane plays: which note, when in the step it came and how long it was held.

DAY 1 to 4: each lane in, a V/OCT and its gate. A day of up to 32 bars is remembered.
CLOCK: a step an edge, sixteen to a bar. RESET: the next edge starts a new day, and the first night again.
NIGHT: how long a day is. Its five stops are 1, 4, 8, 16 and 32 bars, 8 at noon.

Midnight

At midnight the city stops: every LIFE out holds its pitch, every gate falls, and SLEEP goes high. Patch it to your sequencers' run/stop and they stop where they stand, and go on from there in the morning. While it sleeps, a tone made of every lane's last note rises out of TUNING, and the towers on the panel grow with it.

MIDNIGHT, a lit button and its gate: midnight on the next step, whatever the hour. Its cap glows up through the day's last hour.
STILL, the big knob: how long it sleeps. An eighth fully left, a hiccup; a bar at noon; four bars at full.
TUNE: the size of the tone. Fully left a hum an octave under the lanes' notes; at full a towering chord of stretched octaves, rising two octaves into the morning.

Morning

It wakes with each lane playing another lane's day, its notes and its rhythm, moved by whole octaves into its own register, so a bass playing the lead's line plays it low and in key. The first night lane 1 gets lane 2's, 2 gets 3's, 3 gets 4's and 4 gets 1's; every night after, they move on one more.

SWAP: how much is handed across. Fully left nothing: the stop and the tone alone. Then a step in sixteen, up to whole memories at noon. Past noon each step can come from any lane's memory, anywhere in its day, every step at full. A step not handed across is the lane's own, live.
WAKE, a button and its gate: everyone back to themselves until the next midnight. While the city sleeps, it wakes at once, nobody swapped.

What comes out

LIFE 1 to 4: each lane out, a V/OCT and its gate: its own, or the memories it was given.
SLEEP: a gate, high while the city sleeps, for exactly as long as STILL says.
TUNING: the tone, only while it sleeps.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, NIGHT's switch, both buttons, the 64 LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its right edge. Each window has its own white LED in a cell of a black printed baffle, so a lit floor never lights the floors above and below it. An RP2350 keeps the city's memories and sounds the tone on both its cores.

The SLEEP panel asleep: the four towers' windows lit and growing, the clock's twelve marks lit round MIDNIGHT's glowing button, its knobs, NIGHT's switch and buttons on.

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

Specs

Format

Width: 28 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel
+12 V: about 55 mA dark, 140 mA in usual play, 200 mA at the busiest (estimated)
−12 V: about 6 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, a five-stop switch, two buttons (MIDNIGHT lit)

I/O

Pitch in: DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3, DAY 4: 1 V an octave, −6 to +6 V, read to the nearest semitone 1 ms after its gate rises; a 24-bit converter, calibrated; 0 V unpatched; safe to ±12 V
Gates in: DAY 1 to 4, CLOCK, RESET, MIDNIGHT, WAKE: high past about 0.9 V, low under it; safe to ±12 V; unpatched, low
CLOCK: a step an edge, sixteen to a bar; unpatched, its own: 120 BPM in sixteenths
Pitch out: LIFE 1, LIFE 2, LIFE 3, LIFE 4: 1 V an octave, −5 to +5 V (a note past that folds by octaves), 16-bit, calibrated; held exactly while it sleeps
Gates out: LIFE 1 to 4, SLEEP: 0/5 V
TUNING: audio, peaks of 1.5 V (TUNE fully left) to 4.6 V (full), never past 8 V

Engine

Brain: RP2350, both cores, at 46.875 kHz
Memory: two days of four lanes, up to 512 steps (32 bars) each
Light: 64 white LEDs, 125 frames a second
Power cycle: it wakes to an empty first day, night 0; only the calibration is kept