Sheep

This card was originally styled after the Landscape Human-Controlled Tape-Transport (HC-TT) that allows you to manually move tape play heads by turning a crank. In this case the idea was that the audio would only play one sample at a time when you sent it a fast enough clock. At the time (and still) I was (am) obsessed with the Shabazz Palaces record Black Up that uses time-stretching in this super creative and unexpected way, so I wanted to try and get some of that energy.

…Then I got a bit carried away and realized that if I played more than one sample at a time I could get into granular territory. The result is a weird take on a clouds-style granular delay with a re-pitching/time stretching lilt. Incoming audio is sliced up in real-time and while the limited maximum number of grains (14) limits its ability to do some things Emilie’s (incredible) work on Clouds/Beads allow, this one has a unique focus on time stretching and digital degradation. There are 2 UF2’s to choose from. Lofi has 8-bit, 24 kHz sample rate, and has about 5.2 seconds of stereo audio in its freezable, always listening buffer. Hifi has half as much time (2.6 seconds) but the higher bit-depth means higher audio quality.