Approved by the Production Code Administration · Certificate No. 17,428 · Running time 1 hr 12 min
Untamed Audio presents
ROBO
It has no eyes. It has no mouth. It has BLADES.
ALL SEATS
- SEE! the rotor that makes the voice — one fan, driving every part of the sound at once.
- SEE! the blades change from THREE to FOUR to FIVE, and the creature change its species with them.
- SEE! a man lean his face into the cage until the room disappears behind him.
- SEE! the monster DIE — pull the cord and hear it sag, slow, and melt into a human being again.
- HEAR! the card in the spokes. Strike the machine and it rattles like something is caught in there. Something is.
The cast, in order of appearance
- Speed — the rotor, and therefore the pitch of the whole creature. Turn it and everything moves together, because everything comes off the same shaft.
- Blades — three, four, or five. Detented, because a fan does not have four and a half blades and neither does this.
- Close — how near your face is to the cage. Depth, reflections off the blade faces, and the wind, all on one knob. Please enjoy this feature digitally.
- Fan — the slide. Cuts the machine's own noise and leaves only what it is doing to you.
- The foot — tap to bypass. Hold it down and the fan is unplugged: the rotor coasts, the voice sags, and the robot dies on its feet over several seconds.
- The jewel — press it and the stand starts oscillating: she sweeps the room while the rotor keeps turning. Completely unnecessary. Obviously we included it.
Every kid tried it
Production notes
It is one machine. The chop, the pitch, the wind and the comb are not four effects stacked up — they are four consequences of a single rotor turning. That is why the pedal moves the way a real object moves, and why nothing in it ever drifts out of agreement with anything else.
The blades are moving too fast. Blades times revolutions puts the chop at forty to a hundred and twenty cycles a second — past the point where the ear hears volume and into the point where it hears timbre. New frequencies appear on either side of every note you play, and those sidebands are the robot. There is no vocoder in here and no formant filter.
The blades move. Each one that passes throws a reflection back at you a fraction of an instant late, so the machine flanges itself at its own rate, and the direct sound combs against the returning sound exactly as it does when you put your face up to a real fan.
The motor has weight. Ask for more speed and it takes its time; take speed away and it coasts a long way down. Which is what makes the unplugging work: hold the foot and the rotor keeps turning, the voice sags, the robot falls apart, and several seconds later the machine finally dies. Play the shutdown.
Fits any pedalboard. No cage full of dust, no fan to explain to anybody, and considerably less chance of losing a finger. Turns out the box fan was an audio effect all along. Ninety-nine cents.
Now booking
ROOM
Roll it, then pick a reel — or plug your own instrument in and play the thing yourself. Drag the knobs. Hold the footswitch down and let it die.
UNTAMED AUDIO PRESENTS · “ROBO” · A FAN MODULATOR IN ONE MOVING PART · SPEED · BLADES · CLOSE · WITH A CAST OF ONE ROTOR · BLADE-OCCLUSION CHOP AT 40–120 c.p.s. · MICRO-DOPPLER REFLECTIONS OFF THE MOVING BLADE FACES · ENVELOPE-DRIVEN TURBULENCE · MOTOR INERTIA WITH TRUE COAST-DOWN · CENTERED-MONO DRY · WRITTEN AND BUILT BY JOSHUA RIDEOUT · MADE IN C++ · NO VOCODER WAS USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS PICTURE · SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES