tumbler

The door

• DEPOSIT: what's locked in: a loop, a voice, a whole mix.
• The dial: a hundred numbers a turn, and one turn is two octaves of the minor scale. Every note is a notch, a semitone short and a tone long, so you can tell where you are with your eyes shut.
• The crack: while you hunt you hear the sound through a narrow slit, tuned to the note the dial is on. Each number listens two octaves higher than the last.
• The bolts: each opens a band of the sound at its number's note. The three numbers are always a chord of the key: a good ear can guess the third.
• SHUT, the button and its gate: the door slams, the bolts drop, and there's a new combination.

What it feels like

• FEEL: how hard the notches are. Fully left no notches at all, a heavy wheel that coasts; at noon a ratchet; fully right they throw the dial about and it won't sit still.
• PICK: how much the true numbers stand out. Fully left nothing to find. At noon a tick you can barely hear, and two of the three ticks are false: only the true one gives. By three o'clock only the true one ticks. Fully right every note ticks, loud, a false safe.
• SLIP: what the dial does when you let go. Fully left it stays. Past noon it walks by itself, catches on the numbers and turns back, cracking its own safe. Fully right it runs round too fast to catch on anything.
• DRIFT: how far the numbers wander while you work. Bolts already drawn walk the scale with them, so at full the chord won't hold still.

What else it does

• KNOCK: every hit knocks the dial. A positive hit knocks it up, a negative one back; the bigger the hit, the harder. Low FEEL and it hops from note to note; high FEEL and it rings in its notch and the door shakes with it, until you put a finger on it.
• TURN: the rack turns the dial, a volt an octave, half a turn. It climbs out of one notch and drops into the next, and you can hold it back.
• KEY (1 V an octave): moves the notes, the crack and the bands.

What comes out

• TAKE: what gets through the door.
• DIAL: the note the dial is on, 1 V an octave, bending a little as it leans in its notch. A melody by touch.
• TICK: a trigger on every new note.
• BOLT: a trigger as each bolt draws.
• OPEN: a gate from the door's landing until it's shut.
• LEAN: how hard you're leaning on the dial, up to 8 V.

Specs