vox humana

pull out all the stops

28 HP

A pipe organ, played the way an organ is played. Draw its eight stops by hand, half way if you dare. Hold too much and the wind runs out, the pitch sinks and the reeds choke. Over it, a rose window of clear film that turns to colour as you turn its ring, and the colour is what you hear.

The VOX HUMANA panel: black, a gold cathedral nave of piers and pointed arches, and under the arch a round window in a gold tracery.

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. A stop: drag it up to draw it, as far as you like; tap its middle to pull or push it; drag it sideways, tap a side or roll the wheel to turn it; up and down arrows draw it, left and right turn it. The ring: drag it round, tap either side, roll the wheel or use the arrow keys. ALL is a button to hold.

A sequencer in A minor at 84 BPM, and a hand on the stops. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything VOX HUMANA does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser, the stops, the ring, the wind and the glass models of the real ones. The sequencer is a stand-in rack.

The stops

Each stop brings in a rank of pipes. Draw it and the slider under the rank opens; turn it to set how much. Pipes come in semitones, each with its own tuning, so a slide into a V/OCT jack climbs pipe by pipe, side to side between the chests.

BOURDON, stopped, 16 foot: the rumble. DIAPASON, open, 8 foot: the organ's own voice.
FLUTE, 4 foot. NAZARD, the twelfth: hollow, a colour more than a note.
BOMBARDE, a 16 foot reed: the weight. GAMBA, an 8 foot string, slow to speak.
MIXTURE: four high ranks at once, breaking back an octave as you climb.
VOX HUMANA: a short reed built to sound like a voice, never quite in tune with itself.
Half way: a stop stays where it's left, and a half-drawn slider starves its rank: it sinks, turns to breath, whistles at the edge and can't settle.
ALL, held: every rank at once, whatever the stops say. The wind pays for it.

The wind

A blower fills a reservoir and every pipe that speaks draws on it. It holds its pressure until it's empty. Then the flues sink and the reeds choke, and with the reeds gone there's a little wind again, so they gasp. Let go and it fills, with a sigh.

WIND, and its jack: the blower. Lower and it wheezes and dies. At full the flues leap to their next harmonic and shriek. A kick in the jack works the bellows.
TREMULANT: a valve that shakes the wind, from a slow, sad vibrato to a shake that chokes the reeds on every stroke.
CELESTE: gives every pipe a twin a little sharp. At noon a shimmer; at full every rank beats against itself.
A stuck pipe: sometimes a pallet doesn't close and a pipe sounds by itself. Its lancet flashes, and only pushing its stop in clears it.

The glass

There's no coloured light in the window. White light goes through a polarising sheet, through clear film cut into a rose, and through a second polariser in the ring. The film turns each colour by a different amount, so as the ring turns, every pane walks through the colours at its own pace.

SWELL, the ring: a sensor behind the rose's eye reads the light through the glass in eight colours, one to a rank. A quarter turn from open nothing gets through. Turn it towards open and the deep ranks come first, then all of them, then only the high ones, then nothing.
The window: the eight big lancets are the ranks, bright as each speaks; the clear lancets go white to black as the ring shuts; the lobes round the edge are the reservoir, emptying from the top.
ROOM: the nave, from dry to sixteen seconds. Shut the ring and the box shuts too.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the two chests, C on one side and C sharp on the other, as they stand in an organ.
GAUGE: the pressure, 5 V at true. It sags as you play: patch it to anything that should sag too.
CIPHER: a gate, high while a pipe is stuck.

Specs

Format

Width: 28 HP
Controls: 8 stops, a turning ring, 4 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

Notes: GREAT, CHOIR, SOLO, PEDAL: 1 V/oct; CHOIR, SOLO and PEDAL follow GREAT when empty
Keys: GREAT, CHOIR, SOLO: gates; held down when empty
WIND: CV, added to its knob, 5 V the whole way

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, ±5 V
GAUGE: CV, 0 to 8 V
CIPHER: gate, 5 V