treatment

sick at the sound of it

20 HP

An effect you can condition. Hold TREAT while the music plays and it's made sick to it, and taught the notes it hears. From then on those notes make it sick by themselves: the sound lurches, chokes, sweats and retches whenever they come round, and only then. CURE undoes it.

The TREATMENT panel: black, gold dots of one wide-open bloodshot eye filling the middle, its iris a round window of bare circuit board round a pale pupil. LEFT, MELODY and RIGHT in across the top, TREAT's button and jack down the left, CURE's down the right, DOSE and FORGET either side under the eye with NAUSEA, the big knob, between them, their jacks under them, SICK and RETCH out down the sides, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot. treatment 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. TREAT and CURE are buttons: hold TREAT down while the music plays; press CURE. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark progression in E minor: the pad, the bass and the bells through TREATMENT, the drums round it. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything TREATMENT does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The music is a stand-in rack.

The treatment

It hears the twelve notes in whatever goes through it: chords and whole mixes, not just one line. The iris is what it's been taught: each note a fibre, lit from the pupil outwards as far as it's conditioned.

TREAT, a lit button and its gate: while it's held, it's made sick, whatever is playing, and taught every note it hears, the louder the note the more.
DOSE: how much a treatment teaches. Fully left it takes a long treatment; at noon two seconds teach a chord most of the way; fully right a moment is a whole treatment.
CURE, a button and its gate: every note let go at once. Held, nothing can be taught.
MELODY: a V/OCT in. Patched, it hears that note instead of the sound, so you can teach it exactly.

Sick

Afterwards, whenever what's playing comes close to what it was taught, it's sick by itself; the closer, and the more it was taught, the worse. Anything else passes clean. The pupil lights with it.

NAUSEA, the big knob: how badly it shows. A little and the sound rolls, the pitch lurching as it sways from side to side; more and the throat closes on it, a cold hiss rises and it gags; past halfway it retches, the sound heaving up torn and falling an octave and more. Fully left nothing shows.
FORGET: every time the taught notes come back untreated, it wears off a little. Fully left it never forgets; fully right it's over it within the bar.
NAUSEA, DOSE and FORGET, the jacks: their CVs, added to the knobs.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the sound, sick or not. Never taught, cured, or with NAUSEA fully left, it's exactly the sound that went in.
SICK: the sickness as a voltage, 0 to 8 V, so it can make the rest of the rack ill too.
RETCH: a gate, high through every retch.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 2 knobs, a lit button, a button

Inputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V; RIGHT takes LEFT when it's empty
MELODY: V/OCT, ±5 V; heard instead of the sound when patched
TREAT: gate, treated while high
CURE: gate, rising past 1 V
CVs: NAUSEA, DOSE, FORGET: added to the knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio
SICK: CV, 0 to 8 V
RETCH: gate, 0/5 V, high through a retch