Drag its knobs up and down to turn them. Tap Tap in time, or hold it for a conjunction; hold Eclipse to freeze the planets.
Orrery
four wobbles, on an orrery
Four wobbles at once, each one a planet. Volume is a tremolo, Pitch a vibrato, Filter a sweep, and Pan moves you between left and right. They go round at different speeds, set by your tapped tempo and a ratio, so together they make a polyrhythm that slowly comes back round to where it started.
Each orbit is a ring of lights, and the lit one is the planet, with a trail fading behind it. When planets line up there’s a conjunction: the spoke at that angle lights, their effects stack and the sound swells. The sun in the middle pulses with the tempo. You can watch all of it happen.
Along the top
- Tempo
- How long the sun’s year is. Tap sets it too.
- Ratio
- Which speeds the planets keep, from simple (1, 2, 3, 4) to strange (5, 7, 11, 13).
- Gravity
- How hard the planets pull on each other. At zero they run like clockwork; at full they bunch up, slingshot and drift.
- Tone
- Darker to brighter, after everything.
- Mix
- Dry to all planets.
At the corners
- Volume
- How deep the tremolo goes.
- Pitch
- How far the vibrato bends.
- Filter
- How wide the sweep is, from a wah to a slow tide.
- Pan
- How far it swings between the two outputs. In mono it’s a second tremolo.
Underfoot
- Bypass
- On and off.
- Tap
- Tap the tempo. Hold it to line every planet up for a conjunction on the downbeat.
- Eclipse
- Hold to freeze every planet where it is, so the sound stops moving. Let go and they carry on.
The box
A Tayda 1590XX with a circuit board for a lid: black mask, white print, solid gold, and windows of bare fibreglass lit from behind. The pot and switch nuts hold it on.
Coming soon