understudy

only one walks away

20 HP

A sample and hold that makes two of everything it takes. At every trick a copy appears, moved, and stands; the original drops into the tank and drowns, sinking to the floor, or, if it took a slice of sound, slowing and darkening into silence.

The UNDERSTUDY panel: black, in gold dots two tall cabinets on an empty stage either side of the middle, a spotlight's beam between them and the boards at the foot. In each cabinet's door a column of ten slats of bare circuit board, the copy's on the left and the tank on the right; under the name a cone of bare board, the spotlight, over the big TANK knob; PLEDGE and the TRICK button down the middle, BREATH at the foot. LEAD and TRICK's jack at the top corners, TURN and DOUBT under them with their jacks, COPY and ORIGINAL, PLEDGE's and TANK's jacks either side of TRICK, REVEAL and DROWNED at the foot corners. understudy 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. TRICK is a button: press it to do the trick yourself. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A dark groove in C minor and what the patch puts into LEAD and TRICK. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything UNDERSTUDY does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. The groove, the sources and the two voices are a stand-in rack.

The trick

LEAD: what's taken, a voltage or a sound. It always keeps the last two seconds.
TRICK, a lit button and its gate: perform it now. Its cap flashes, the spotlight under the name goes out, and two appear: the copy in the cabinet on the left, the original at the top of the tank on the right.
PLEDGE: what's taken. Fully left, an instant: the voltage at the trick, a plain sample and hold. Turned up, a slice of the sound just before it, from five milliseconds to two seconds, looped. Its jack adds to it.

The copy

The copy stands. The left column lights up to its height, a volt a slat, −5 V at its foot.

TURN: where it appears, from two octaves down to two up in whole semitones. A voltage is moved up or down; a slice is played higher and faster, or lower and slower.
TURN, the jack: an octave a volt, added, so a sequence can play the copy.
DOUBT: how sure the copy is. Fully left, exact. Turned up, a copy is sometimes a wrong note, and it wanders; at full every copy is wrong by up to an octave, wavering two semitones, and a slice is copied backwards. Its jack adds to it.

The tank

The original drowns. In the right column it falls through the water, bubbles rising off it, slowly at the surface, fastest half way, and settles. A voltage sinks to the floor, −5 V; a slice slows four octaves, darkens and fades to nothing. Another trick before it's gone replaces it.

TANK, the big knob: how long it takes. Fully left, ten milliseconds, a pitch falling like a struck drum; half a second at noon; thirty seconds fully right, so the two hold nearly the same note. Its jack adds to it.

What comes out

COPY: the copy, held, moved by TURN.
ORIGINAL: the original, held and drowning. Both are DC-coupled: a voltage for a pitch or a sound for the mixer.
BREATH: the original's breath, 8 V at the trick and nothing once it's drowned. On a VCA, it fades whatever ORIGINAL plays.
REVEAL: a trigger at every trick, as the copy appears.
DROWNED: a trigger when the original reaches the bottom. Patch it into TRICK and the trick performs itself, TANK setting the tempo.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 3 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

LEAD: a voltage or a sound, ±10 V
TRICK: gate, rising past 1 V
TURN: 1 V/oct, added to TURN
CVs: PLEDGE, DOUBT, TANK: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

COPY, ORIGINAL: ±10 V, DC-coupled: CV or audio
BREATH: CV, 0 to 8 V
REVEAL, DROWNED: triggers, 0/5 V, 10 ms