tin

the band follows him

20 HP

A tinny toy drum that plays to your clock and won't stop. Clock your sequencers from its BEAT and ONE and the whole rack is dragged, bar by bar, out of its march and into a waltz. Cross it and it screams until the glass breaks.

The TIN panel: black, with gold dots of a smashed pane of glass, one jagged hole in the middle of the panel, long forked cracks and big sheets of glass running out from it to every edge. WALTZ, the big knob, in the hole; a ring of 24 bare circuit-board windows round it; six sheets of bare board round that, cut into 34 shards. MARCH and BAR in at the top corners, WALTZ and SCREAM in under them, ROLL and DENT at the sides, BEAT and ONE out under the knobs, DRUM and GLASS out at the foot, and three buttons across the foot: FOUR, SCREAM and THREE. Dashed white rings round MARCH, BAR, SCREAM, BEAT, ONE and GLASS. tin 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. SCREAM is a button: hold it down and he screams; a tap breaks one pane. THREE and FOUR drop that bar in at his next downbeat. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A rack played by TIN: BEAT and ONE clock and reset its kick, bass and lead, so they play his bars; DRUM on top. All made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The bars, strokes, drum, scream and lights here are TIN's engine as it's designed, running in your browser; the clock, sequencers, kick, bass, lead and pad stand in for the rest of a rack.

The march

He hears your march at MARCH and BAR, and his own clock comes out at BEAT and ONE. Clock and reset your sequencers from those and they play his bars, not yours. The ring round WALTZ goes round once a bar of his: his beats glow (a cross in a march, a triangle in a waltz) and each stroke flashes where he is.

MARCH: your clock, in sixteenths, four to a beat.
BAR: your downbeat: the next clock is the first of your bar. Unpatched, every sixteenth clock.
WALTZ: how far he's dragged the band. Fully left he marches with you, BEAT on every clock and ONE on your downbeat.
Turned up to ten o'clock, bars of three slip in among his fours, more as you turn, so his downbeats walk away from yours. At noon every bar is three, straight, at your tempo.
On up, the waltz lilts and slows, the first beat longer, until fully right three slow beats fill your bar (8, 4 and 4 sixteenths), his downbeat on yours again.
A turn takes hold at his next downbeat, so BEAT never doubles or drops a tick.
WALTZ, the jack: a CV added to the knob; 5 V takes it the whole way round.
THREE and FOUR: buttons. His next bar is that one, whatever WALTZ says; held, every bar. A tap of THREE in a march trips the band for a bar.

The drum

ROLL: how much he drums. Fully left the beats alone; then the off-beats, flams and drags; at noon a busy march cadence; fully right every sixteenth a buzz roll, swelling into each downbeat. He plays each bar twice.
In a bar of three his second and third beats click on the rim: oom, pah, pah.
DENT: the drum itself. Fully left a bright new toy, high and ringing; at noon a battered snare, lower, its rattle loose; fully right a dented pot, low and clanging, the hard strokes popping the dent in and out.

The scream

SCREAM, the button and the jack: while either is held he screams, for most of a second at least. The shriek climbs and holds; the pane sings back, then breaks, and keeps breaking while it's held. A tap breaks one.
The drumming goes on underneath, and the pane on the panel falls apart shard by shard.

What comes out

DRUM: the drum, the scream and the glass.
BEAT: his clock, sixteenths of his bars: twelve to a bar of three, the lilt's longer on the one.
ONE: his downbeat, with BEAT's first of each of his bars.
GLASS: a trigger for every pane that breaks.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (WALTZ's big), 3 buttons (SCREAM lit)

Inputs

MARCH: clock, sixteenths, rising past 1 V
BAR: gate: your downbeat
WALTZ: CV, ±5 V, added to the knob
SCREAM: gate: he screams while it's high

Outputs

DRUM: audio, ±5 V
BEAT, ONE: his clock and downbeat, 0/5 V, 10 ms
GLASS: trigger, 0/5 V, 10 ms, a pane each