star-crossed by daylight noise

star-crossed

two melodies that fall in love and die

20 HP

Two lines from two houses, in and out. Love bends each toward the other, thirds, then fifths, then the same note; the feud makes them refuse each other's notes and beats, so they answer instead. If they ever meet, the same note at the same moment, both die.

Two houses

House A on the left, house B on the right, part for part. Patch a line into each and take it out again: what comes out is what each plays once they've met. The two rows of lights are the two lovers, sliding down toward the drop as their notes draw near.

V/OCT, GATE (each house, in): its line. Each note is read a millisecond after its gate rises, to the nearest semitone.

V/OCT, GATE (each house, out): the line as it plays now, its notes bent, its gate shut while it waits or lies dead. With LOVE and FEUD at zero, the line as it came in.

Neither house is the bass or the lead: swap the lines and the knobs and the outs swap too.

Love

Every scene they start as strangers. With every note a line plays its love grows, and its notes bend toward the other's last note: thirds and sixths, then fourths and fifths, then the other's own note, its register drawn across as well. Where it can, it keeps to the notes its own line has been playing.

LOVE (each house): how fast that line falls, from never to all the way in four notes. At full it's the other's shadow.

LOVE (in): CV, ±5 V, added to the knob.

The feud

A note that refuses won't take the note the other last played, won't sound while the other sounds, and plays in the other's gap instead, so call and response forms by itself. A lover defies its house once its love outgrows the feud.

FEUD (each house): the chance each of its notes refuses. At full the two never sound together.

FEUD (in): CV, ±5 V, added to the knob.

Fate and death

If the two sound together within FATE's reach, both die: both gates shut, POISON fires, the drop flares and the red runs up both rows. They lie dead until the next scene, then rise as strangers and it starts again.

FATE: how near is too near: at zero only the same note in the same octave, at full any two notes within two octaves. Its reach glows red above the drop.

FATE (in): CV, ±5 V, added to the knob.

POISON: a trigger at each death.

SCENE: the button and its trigger in: the next scene, now. Unpatched, the dead rise on the busier line's eighth note; patched, they wait for the next trigger. It glows while they lie dead.