two-up

come in, spinner

20 HP

Every call, two pennies go up. Two heads and the stake doubles; two tails and it's gone; one of each is odds, and they go straight back up. A random gate with ratchets, a stake that climbs and crashes, and the crowd round the ring.

The TWO-UP panel: black, with a great old skull in gold dots from the name to the mark, on cracked ground that runs out to the edges. Its two eye sockets are two round windows of bare circuit board, each a coin's face in a ring of twelve. SPIN, a lit button, stands on its crown and TAKE, a black button, between its eyes, with five small round windows under it. LEAN, the big knob, sits below in a staircase of seven small windows up each side, then the STAKE switch and its five dots and the ROAR at the tip of the snout. Down each side: CALL and LEAN, the ODDS and HEAT jacks over their knobs, ODDS and STAKE, HEADS and TAILS; TAKE and MONEY either side of the snout. two-up 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. STAKE clicks from stop to stop the same ways. SPIN and TAKE are buttons: toss by hand, or take the money. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played by TWO-UP: hats on HEADS and ODDS, a snare on TAILS, a bass on STAKE, the crowd from the ROAR. It's all made in the page.

example patches

The tosses, the stake, the lights and the crowd here are TWO-UP's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The clock, the drums, the bass and the drone are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The toss

Two heads is HEADS, two tails is TAILS. One of each is odds: the ODDS gate fires and they go straight back up a quarter of a call later, so a run of odds is a ratchet. Five in a row and the spinner loses.

CALL, the clock in: every rising edge is a toss. A call that comes while the pennies are still up is swallowed.
SPIN: a toss by hand. Its cap is lit while the pennies are up.
LEAN: weighted pennies. All tails fully left, a fair game at noon, all heads fully right.
ODDS: how often they come down one of each. Never fully left, a plain coin; half the throws at noon, as two fair pennies; nine in ten fully right.
LEAN and ODDS, the jacks: CVs added to the knobs; 5 V takes each the whole way round. A gate into ODDS is a fill.

The stake

Every head doubles the stake, from a semitone up to sixty-four. Tails wipes it to nothing. STAKE comes out at 1 V an octave, so a bass played from it climbs a run of heads and crashes on tails.

STAKE, the switch: how many heads he lets ride before he takes the money: three, four, five, six or seven, left to right. The stake then holds until the next toss lands, and the next spinner starts from nothing.
TAKE, the button and its trigger: the money, now. The run ends wherever it has got to and the stake holds there. With nothing riding it does nothing. A bar line into the jack ends every climb on the phrase.
The lights: heads lights the faces, tails the rims, and the rims spin while the pennies are up. The staircase climbs a step a head; its faint step is where he'll take the money. The five small windows count the odds.

The night

HEAT: how hot it is. Fully left every toss lands on its call. Turned up, they land late, by up to four tenths of a call, drifting like a drunk's timing; the re-throws stumble, the odds come more often and the crowd gets rougher. Its jack is a CV added to the knob: a slow rise is the night coming on.
ROAR: the crowd round the ring: a murmur that grows as the stake climbs, a cheer on heads, biggest when the money's taken, a groan on tails, a sharp breath on every odds, and the whole ring roaring when five odds lose.

What comes out

HEADS: a gate on two heads, high for half a call.
TAILS: the same on two tails, or on the fifth odds.
ODDS: a gate on every odds, so a burst is a ratchet.
MONEY: a gate every time the money's taken, at STAKE's count or by TAKE.
STAKE: the stake, a semitone a step, 0 to 5.33 V.
ROAR: the crowd, audio.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (LEAN's big), a five-stop switch, 2 buttons (SPIN lit)

Inputs

CALL: clock, rising past 1 V, a toss each
TAKE: trigger, rising past 1 V
CVs: LEAN, ODDS, HEAT: ±5 V, added to the knobs

Outputs

Gates: HEADS, TAILS, ODDS, MONEY: 0/5 V
STAKE: CV, 0 to 5.33 V, 1 V an octave
ROAR: audio, about ±5 V