Performance experiment · 08 / Characters

Lost Registers

A small chip instrument whose sound is intact, but whose memory isn't. Hold a chord, draw what its memory does on each 16th, and let both the chord and the pattern slowly forget — in time. Faults land on a tempo grid that starts when you strike the chord: the whole chord changes colour on the downbeat, envelopes breathe in beats and bars, voices borrow each other's instructions. Repair it without letting go.

AUDIO SLEEPING

Fault workshop

Your intended notes are still there. While a voice is held, its duty, wave and envelope registers wear out on a seeded clock — the pitch never does.

DECAY RATE50%
0%: held notes stay clean. 50%: memory fully worn after ~30 s of holding.
RECOVERY50%
At each bar line, worn registers partly heal back toward what you played. 0%: wear only accumulates (v6).
MEMORY WEAR 0%
FAULT ENGINEARMED
Clean A/B bypasses held-note decay without erasing it — switch back and the worn state is still there. It also repairs v1 note-on faults, as before.
CHARACTER · how the memory agesWorn memory
SPEED
TEMPO GRID—
90 BPM
Bar 1 begins when you strike the chord. Faults fall on 16ths — mostly the downbeat, then beat 3, beats 2 and 4, rarely off-beat — and hit several voices at once. Loops breathe in beats and bars; Repair snaps the lanes back on the next four 16ths. Free (v2) is the earlier unsynced clock, kept for comparison.
Hold chord: release the keys and the chord keeps sounding; the next chord you press replaces it. Untick an experiment to audition the others alone.
Note-on faults · v1 reference
WRITE LOSS0%
01 / Stale pitch
02 / Duty bleed
03 / Ghost envelope

Queued fault: none. Manual injections work even in Clean A/B, for a controlled comparison.

Write loss starts at 0% so held-note decay can be heard on its own. v1 shipped at 24%.

Event memory

NO FAULTS YET · Hold a chord (L), or start the 30 s drift demo.

Four voice registers

Each lane shows the note you asked for, what was latched, and the wave and envelope registers it is actually sounding. Gate-off writes are always safe, so the instrument cannot intentionally leave notes stuck.

LANEREQUESTACTUALWAVEENVELOPE
0 writes · 0 misses · 0 held faultsSEED 2309

How to play this

Turn on L Hold chord, play a chord and let go. For the first few bars nothing happens; then on downbeats the chord's pulse widths step together, envelopes start to pulse on the beat or swell over a bar, and late on, lanes borrow each other's waves and envelopes. Set the tempo (or tap B); hold C to corrode faster.

Flip Clean A/B to hear the intended chord, then back to hear the worn one. Press R to repair: pitch is restored at once, and in Tempo mode the lanes snap back on the next four 16ths (A → B → T → C) while the notes keep sounding. Switch to Free (v2) to hear the earlier unsynced decay for comparison.

What isn't in this version
No bitcrusher, no effects chain, no neural model, no samples, no claims of cycle-accurate console emulation. Every note comes from simple Web Audio oscillators; the decay only rewrites the same pulse, triangle and volume registers the instrument already had. Same seed + same held chord = same decay story.

Pattern · 1 bar

Draw what the memory does on each 16th while a chord is held. The pattern is memory too: as wear builds, steps slip late, stick, vanish or leak between lanes. Repair restores what you drew.

Register lanes · what the chord's memory does
Output lanes · what happens to the sound after the chip
drawndrawn, but forgotten or moved by memorynot drawn, but memory plays itplayheadClick or drag to draw · click a drawn step to erase · needs Tempo mode and a held chord

Progression

Chain held chords. Each holds for its bars and changes exactly on the bar line; notes shared between chords keep sounding — and keep their worn memory — while new notes are fresh writes. Export renders the whole run, wear and pattern included, to a WAV.

NEW CHORD LENGTHBARS

Export starts from fresh memory with your current tempo, swing, decay rate, pattern, reverb and seed, so it is the same take a fresh live run would give you (live gestures like Corrode and Repair aren't recorded yet).

Play the memory

Click / touch keys, or use the computer keyboard. Up to four sounding notes.

C4–C5
Computer keys: A W S E D F T G Y H U J KL hold chord · P pattern · B tap tempo · C corrode (hold) · R repair · Z / X octave · Esc panic
Listening test: Hold one chord for 30 seconds with faults on at two tempos, then in Free (v2), then in Clean A/B. Ask whether the faults now feel like something the held chord is doing in time. The chord should stay the same chord; what changes is its colour, its breathing and how the four voices lean on each other. If that is no more interesting than a slow filter sweep, the memory model needs different rules — not extra effects.