split second by daylight noise

The SPLIT SECOND panel: black, with a hardware store's aisle at night in gold dots, tools hanging on pegboard down both walls and a strip light down the middle, running to a watch's face of two digits and four pips of bare circuit board under the CLICK button. START and STRIKE at the top corners, V/OCT and CLOCK under them, SCREECH the big knob in the middle with RISE, ROOM and TIME round it, LEFT and RIGHT in and out down the right, OVER, CLIMB and STRIKE out on the left, SCREAM out at the foot. split second 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. CLICK is a button: press it to start the watch, press it again to strike. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played through SPLIT SECOND: a dark groove of drums, a driven bass and a pad into the room, the scream over it, an impact on STRIKE. All made in the page.

example patches

The watch, the scream, the room and the lights are SPLIT SECOND's engine as designed, running in your browser; the groove and the impact stand in for a rack.

The watch

CLICK, a lit button: press it to start the watch, again to strike. It's lit while the watch runs.
START and STRIKE: gates that do the button's two jobs, one each. A gate into both strikes and starts again at once.
TIME: how long from the click to the strike. One to four bars over the first half of the turn, four at noon, then every bar up to thirty-two.
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to the bar. The watch counts from the nearest beat, so a click a moment early still counts from the one. With nothing in CLOCK it counts seconds, from half a second to a minute.
The face counts down the bars left, the pips filling with the beats; in the last bar it flashes on every beat.

The scream

SCREECH, the big knob: a thin synth whine fully left; towards noon a woman's voice comes up inside it, singing "ah" and opening to "ee" as it climbs; fully right a ragged scream, clipped and folding, the breath loud, a rattle under it.
RISE: how far it climbs over TIME: not at all, an octave at noon, two at full, quickening towards the strike. Turned well up, it breaks into a feedback howl at the top.
V/OCT: where it starts, 1 V an octave; 0 V is the E above middle C. Its SCREECH and RISE jacks add to their knobs, 5 V the whole way round.

The room

LEFT and RIGHT in: your mix, stereo; LEFT alone feeds both. Until the watch is clicked it passes untouched.
ROOM: how far your mix sinks while the watch runs, darker and quieter: a little at once at the click, the rest over the run. At full it ends 20 dB down with nothing much over 110 Hz, a muffled thud.
At the strike the scream is gone in two milliseconds, and the room is back in full within one.

Over time

Nobody strikes by TIME and it runs over: OVER goes high, the face counts the bars over and flashes, and the scream tears, worse with every bar: the fold harder, the wobble wild, a howl on top. It never stops on its own.

What comes out

SCREAM: the scream, 10 V peak to peak at its loudest.
LEFT and RIGHT: the room.
CLIMB: 0 to 8 V over the run, a straight ramp, held while it's over and gone at the strike, for anything else that should rise with it.
OVER: a gate, high while it's over time.
STILL: a gate, high while the watch runs.
STRIKE: a trigger at every strike, for the drums to land on.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 3 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

START, STRIKE: gates, rising past 1 V
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, four to the bar
V/OCT: 1 V an octave
LEFT, RIGHT: audio; LEFT alone feeds both
SCREECH, RISE: CVs, added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

SCREAM: audio, 10 V peak to peak
LEFT, RIGHT: audio
CLIMB: CV, 0 to 8 V
OVER, STILL: gates, 0/5 V
STRIKE: trigger, 10 ms, 0/5 V