stack by daylight noise

The STACK panel: black, with a concrete tower block at night in gold dots, lower blocks of flats either side at the foot and its door at the bottom. Up the middle, the tower's windows are windows of bare circuit board, four across and twelve floors high, with a thin roof over them. TOP and HEIGHT out at the top corners, SHAPES and SWAY's jacks and knobs either side of the windows, LINE and CLEAR out beside them, TURN and LEVEL below, DROP's jack and NEXT's under the windows, DROP the big knob, CLOCK and RESET either side of it, HATS and SNARE out, and KICK, the NEXT button and TOMS along the foot. stack 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. NEXT is a button: press it to slam the falling piece down. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played by STACK: its four drums into a dark kit, LINE into a swish, CLEAR into a crash, TOP into the lights going out, HEIGHT into a bass line and a pad that get louder the higher the stack. All made in the page.

example patches

The well, the pieces, the fills and the lights are STACK's engine as designed, running in your browser; the clock and the sounds stand in for a rack.

The well

CLOCK: a pulse a step; sixteenths are the plain use. Each floor is a step of the bar: the ground floor the one, then beat three, beats two and four, the off-beat eighths, and in the top four the sixteenth before each beat.
RESET: a new game now, and the bar from its first step.
DROP, the big knob and its jack: how fast the pieces fall. At noon about a floor a beat; fully left a floor every six beats; fully right the whole well in a step.

The pieces

SHAPES and its jack: which pieces come. Fully left only straight fours; at noon all thirteen; fully right gapped and crossed ones that leave holes.
TURN: how each one lands. Fully left stood on end, a run down one drum, with the toms' column kept for a straight one; fully right laid flat across the kit.
SWAY and its jack: how far each piece swings as it comes down. It settles as it falls, so a slow drop lands where it was aimed and a fast one lands wherever the swing has it.
NEXT, a lit button and its gate: the falling piece slams straight down, still swinging. The cap glows while a piece falls.

Fills and levels

A floor filled all the way across blinks until the bar's last beat, then plays out as a fill, a run down the kit, and goes; the floors above come down. Two, three or four go together in the last two, three or four beats.
Every four floors cleared is a level, and the pieces fall 15 % faster.
LEVEL: where a game starts. Fully left at level one in an empty well; at noon level three on two floors of junk; fully right level nine, nine floors up.
When a piece lands over the top floor it's topped out: the drums stop, and a new game starts on a downbeat at least a beat later.

What comes out

KICK, HATS, SNARE, TOMS: a gate for each window that plays, half a step long, a column of the well each.
LINE: a trigger as each full floor starts its fill.
CLEAR: a trigger on the downbeat after four floors go at once.
TOP: a trigger when it tops out.
HEIGHT: how high the stack is, 0 to 8 V, 0 V while it's topped out.

Specs

Format

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

Inputs

CLOCK: clock, a pulse a step, rising past 1 V
RESET: gate, rising past 1 V
NEXT: gate, rising past 1 V
CVs: DROP, SHAPES, SWAY: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

Drums: KICK, HATS, SNARE, TOMS: gates, 0/5 V, half a step
Triggers: LINE, CLEAR, TOP: 0/5 V, 10 ms
HEIGHT: CV, 0 to 8 V, two thirds of a volt a floor