vacancy by daylight noise

vacancy

the sign's on the blink

20 HP

An analogue voice made of three real neon lamps. Each one charges till the gas strikes, flashes and goes out, over and over, and that flashing is the note. A loop holds them in tune. Tie them together and they fight. Take their supply away and they fail, the way a sign does.

The lamps are the sound

A neon lamp and a capacitor make one of the oldest oscillators there are. The capacitor charges until the gas strikes, the lamp flashes, the capacitor empties through it, it goes out, and it starts again. There are three of those behind the panel, and what you hear is their voltage: a raw, rough saw. A chip times each flash and steers each lamp's current to keep it on the note, and it never touches the sound.

The lamps run on about a hundred volts, behind the panel, where nothing reaches them. They're dim, because a lamp only keeps going out on a sliver of the current it's made for: it's an ember more than a light. Below about 20 Hz you can count the flashes.

PITCH, the big knob: four octaves each way, from a slow flicker to about 1 kHz.

KEY: V/OCT in, added to PITCH.

DRIFT and its jack: the loop's grip. Fully left it's tight, noon it's easy, and full it lets go and each lamp slides off to where its own gas would have it. No two lamps are alike, so they settle on a chord of their own, and it wanders.

APART and its jack: how far lamps 1 and 3 sit from lamp 2. A hair at noon, for the thickness, and an octave each way at full.

They fight

Join two lamps with a capacitor and each flash shoves the other back. Gently, they fall into step. Harder, they can't stand to flash together, and they fall into turns: one, two, three, one, two, three, pushing each other off the note. Open DRIFT and they hang on near a ratio, stutter and slip. Your thumb goes the other way: it pulls them together.

COUPLE and its jack: how hard. Under noon, hardly at all. About 2 o'clock they pull into a pack. Full, they take turns and fight.

Your thumb: the gold round each lamp is a contact, carrying that lamp's own voltage at a safe level. Lay your thumb across two and it goes through your skin into the other lamp: they bend each other's ramps and drag each other together. Across all three the note roughens, and higher up it sags under you. Past about 2 o'clock on COUPLE, the capacitors win.

It fails

The lamps need their supply to reach the voltage they strike at. Take it down to there and they don't stop neatly: a lamp fires when the gas lets it. It spits, drops out, sits dark and comes back late and hard, because a lamp left in the dark strikes high. Nothing in the module is making that up.

FAULT and its jack: how far the supply has sagged. To noon, not at all. Past it the lamps go one at a time, the worst first, and the supply starts to dip. Full, it spits, ticks and dies.

STRIKE, the lit button, and its gate: all three made to flash at once, and the supply back for a moment. A lamp that's been dark comes back with a crack. An audio-rate gate is hard sync.

NO: a gate. Held, the supply goes and the lamps go out, the real way. Let go and they come back.

The body

BUZZ and its jack: from the lamps' voltage, a saw, to their light: a small sensor behind each lamp reads the flash, so at full you're hearing the light itself.

TUBE and its jack: a resonant low-pass after the lamps. Fully left it's open. Full, each flash rings it, down low, and it doesn't follow the note, so the buzz gets a body.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 6 knobs, a lit button, three neon lamps

Inputs

KEY: V/OCT
STRIKE, NO: gates
Knob CVs: COUPLE, FAULT, DRIFT, APART, BUZZ, TUBE: added to their knobs, 10 V the whole way

Outputs

SIGN: audio, about ±5 V
Lamps: LAMP 1, LAMP 2, LAMP 3: audio, ±5 V
FLICKER: gate, 5 V