summary: "A harsh metal-percussion voice wired to a random step sequencer you can lock. Every step re-rolls pitch, decay, noise, corrosion, accent and whether it fires at all; the Steps knob freezes the last N of those rolls into a loop. The metal and the kick come out of separate jacks so each can take its own processing."
short-description: Metallic percussion driven by a lockable random step sequencer.
Name: Slag
Language: "C++ (Pico SDK + ComputerCard)"
Creator: "Jason Moore"
contact: { email: "casconed@gmail.com" }
Version: "0.1"
Status: "Released"
License: MIT
date-created: 2026-08-05
date-updated: 2026-08-10

panel:
  inputs:
    - id: AudioIn1
      name: External Source
      description: Replaces the internal white noise in the voice mixer — blend it against the metal bank with the Tone knob
    - id: AudioIn2
      name: Unused
      description: Nothing is wired to this jack
    - id: CVIn1
      name: Pitch CV / Keyboard
      description: 1V/oct, adds to the Pitch knob. With no clock patched it also plays the card — a jump of more than about a semitone is a new note, and the voltage keys the timbre as well as the pitch, so four buttons on a 4 Voltages give four repeatable hits
    - id: CVIn2
      name: Chance CV
      description: Adds to the Chance knob — modulate the density from an LFO or envelope
    - id: PulseIn1
      name: Clock
      description: One step per rising edge. Unpatched, the internal clock runs at whatever Tempo is set to (and Tempo fully anticlockwise stops it, leaving only what you play)
    - id: PulseIn2
      name: Reset
      description: Restarts a locked pattern at step 1
  outputs:
    - id: AudioOut1
      name: Metal
      description: The metal voice, rusted, with essentially no low end in it — send this to your reverb, filter or whatever else without the kick going through it
    - id: AudioOut2
      name: Kick
      description: The kick on its own jack, clean and never through the drive stage, at full scale. Nothing on the card mixes the two, so their balance is yours to set
    - id: CVOut1
      name: Step Pitch
      description: The current step's pitch as 1V/oct CV, sampled and held — the same random stream, for another voice
    - id: CVOut2
      name: Envelope
      description: The decay envelope, 0..+6V
    - id: PulseOut1
      name: Trigger
      description: Fires on every step that sounds
    - id: PulseOut2
      name: Ghost
      description: Fires on every step that was skipped — the complement of Trigger, so Chance crossfades between two rhythms

controls:
  switch:
    up:
      name: Machine
      description: Re-banks the three knobs onto the sequencer — Steps, Chance, Spread
    middle:
      name: Voice
      description: The three knobs shape the hit — Pitch, Decay, Rust
    down:
      name: Setup
      description: Held, the three knobs re-bank a third time onto Tempo, Tone and Metal — the things you set rather than the things you play
    tap:
      name: Hit
      description: Plays a hit by hand, ignoring Chance. It does not advance the sequencer, so reaching down to set Tempo cannot shift a locked pattern
  knobs:
    - when: { z: middle }
      main:
        name: Pitch
        description: Tunes the six inharmonic partials together, ~55Hz to ~1.8kHz — low is gong and anvil, high is hats and shrapnel
      x:
        name: Decay
        description: ~4ms to ~2.7s, exponential — tick to long ring
      y:
        name: Rust
        description: A Pade-tanh waveshaper, then continuous sample-rate reduction over the top half of the knob (48kHz down to 3kHz). Makeup-gain normalised, so it changes the character rather than the level
    - when: { z: up }
      main:
        name: Steps
        description: "Locks the random stream into a loop: Off (endless fresh chaos), then 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 16, 32. Coming out of Off captures the window that just played; moving between lengths re-slices that same window"
      x:
        name: Chance
        description: Overall density below halfway. Each voice takes its own share of this and rolls separately, so the kick and the metal land on different steps; a step where neither wins pulses the Ghost output. Above halfway every step fires and the knob buys an increasing chance that a step subdivides into 2-4 strikes instead
      y:
        name: Spread
        description: How far each step is allowed to stray from "everything at once". Each step draws one of eight characters — kick-driven, metal-driven, hats, ghost kicks, heavy — and each carries a separate density for the kick and for the metal, so the two voices roll their own dice and run genuinely independent rhythms rather than sharing one. One archetype is held across a phrase, with about a third of steps breaking out of it. Also scales the per-step dice on pitch, decay, rust and the attack pitch blip
    - when: { z: down }
      main:
        name: Tempo
        description: Internal clock, ~0.5Hz to ~32Hz. Overridden when a clock is patched to Pulse In 1, and fully anticlockwise it stops altogether so the card only speaks when you play it
      x:
        name: Tone
        description: Crossfades the metal bank against the noise source — or against Audio In 1, if you patch it. Spread moves it per step around wherever you leave it
      y:
        name: Metal
        description: Crossfades a clean fundamental against the inharmonic XOR cloud, and opens the partial ratios out as it goes. Anticlockwise is a struck bell with a clear pitch; clockwise is atonal scrapyard