booch #

audio-only fermented hip-hop, built bottom-up from AC instruments. the lane and its first track share a name — booch — because the name is the form: a home-brewed boom-bap base (Queen Latifah / Pete Rock golden-era warmth, SP-1200 grain) cultured with Timbaland future-funk on top (sparse stutters, tabla/tumbi accents, swung 16th micro-timing). booch = kombucha = slow-fermented mother culture. the lane studies that metaphor literally.

opens on the booch sub-format. future sub-formats (g-funk, neo-soul-rap, Phrygian dancehall-hop) land alongside if and when they earn a finished track.

the blend (decided @jeffrey, 2026-05-24) #

classic boom-bap and Timbaland future-funk live on opposite ends of "what is a beat for." boom-bap is warm and full — every 16th filled with hat, the kick fat and round, jazz horn loop sitting under everything (Pete Rock / RZA / Premier on the SP-1200). Timbaland is cold and sparse — silence as a percussion choice, syllables landing in the gaps, tabla and tumbi standing in for samples (Get Ur Freak On bhangra source). the lane refuses to average them. it switches between them on purpose:

Latifah is the foundation: ~94 BPM, swung 16ths, fat boom kick on 1 & 3, sharp bap snare on 2 & 4, swung closed hats, dusty jazz horn or Rhodes stab loop, sub bass riding root + 5th. its own canon, its own pocket.
Timbaland is the agitator: tabla/tumbi-style melodic percussion, hard-gated rest bars, stuttered ad-libs, ducked hat fills, unexpected silence where the bed would normally fill. a treatment applied to the foundation, not the substrate (that would be top-down).
the ferment is the swing — straight 16ths sucked back to ~63% triplet pull, with humanized micro-timing, so the whole bed cultures into its groove the way booch cultures into its tang. without the fermented swing this is just boom-bap with Timbaland fills.

"home-cooked aesthetic, lid pops slow." dusty + funky + a little weird.

format spec — booch #

length: ~1:30 (radio edit)
tempo: 94 BPM, 4/4, swung 16ths (~63% — between straight and triplet pull)
key: modal — D Dorian default (D E F G A B C; bluesy pentatonic-leaning D F G A C with the Dorian B for color). the Timbaland-leaning tracks may flip to F Phrygian for a darker accent.
structure: intro (4) → hook (4) → verse 1 (8) → hook (4) → verse 2 (8) → bridge (4) → hook (4) → outro (4) ≈ 40 bars, ~1:42 at 94 BPM
bed: boom kick + bap snare + swung closed hat + open hat accents + sub bass + jazz horn/Rhodes stab loop + vinyl crackle texture + (optional, Timbaland mode) tabla/tumbi melodic percussion
vocal: jeffrey-pvc via ElevenLabs (same /api/say route as big-pictures). rapped, not sung — narrow pitch range, tight to the grid, Latifah-confident on the hook, Missy-playful on verse 2. instrumental valid for sub-format experiments.
output: single mp3 in out/<slug>.mp3. no video. ID3 album pixsies.

source → track #

one AC vision per track. compressed to a hook that boasts, then verses that fill it in — Latifah's posture: state the value clearly, then defend it.

papers/arxiv-<slug>/<slug>.tex   (or any platter source)
  → pop/booch/<slug>.txt          (plain lyrics)
  → pop/booch/<slug>.np           (notepat score: per-syllable pitch)
  → pop/booch/out/<slug>.mp3      (mix)

the .np carries the vocal melody contour as primary content. verses sit close to the modal anchor (A4 / D4); the hook is the most melodic line and lands on the tonic. matches the pop/big-pictures/plork.np notation (folk-songs paper §3).

arrangement notation #

section markers as comments, so bin/render.mjs knows when to switch feel + voice routing:

# intro 4 [bed-only, vinyl-crackle, no-vocal]
# hook 4 [boom-bap-full, latifah-feel]
A:vis- A:-ua- D:-lize C:my A:booch — D:what F:you A:see A:is D:what A:i G:brewed ...

# verse 1 8 [boom-bap-full, narrow-pitch-rap]
# hook 4 [boom-bap-full]
# verse 2 8 [timbaland-sparse, tumbi-accent, gated-rests]
# bridge 4 [break-down, talky, ad-lib]
# hook 4 [full + tumbi]
# outro 4 [bed fade, hook fragments]

bracket flags tell the renderer which voices/feel to wire per section. unflagged sections inherit their block-type default.

new voices (to build) #

three new bottom-up voices, all pure-float per-sample DSP (C-portable for an eventual ac-native port). reuse the inventory: system/public/aesthetic.computer/lib/percussion.mjs already provides the kick/snare/hat foundation; pop/dance/synths/sinepower.mjs covers the additive-sine stab. the gaps:

synths/vinyl.mjs — vinyl crackle bed (pink-noise base + low-rate impulse train for crackle ticks + slow LP modulation). preset: dusty / clean / hiss.
synths/rhodes.mjs — Rhodes-y FM electric piano (sine carrier + sine modulator, slight stretched partials for bell tine, slow tremolo LFO). presets: mellow / bright / stab. C-port path: extend fedac/native/src/audio.c.
synths/sub.mjs — fat P-funk sub (single sine + light tape-style saturation; sidechain-ducked under the kick). preset: funk / clean / wide. distinct from hoover and skrill bass character.

deferred (Timbaland-mode-only, can ship the first track without): synths/tumbi.mjs (Karplus-Strong one-string drone — closely related to zitar, may just be a zitar.mjs preset).

pipeline #

bin/render.mjs — node buffer-mix, no Web Audio, every sample synthesized here. modes: bed (instrumental only), song (bed → out/booch.mp3 with section grid hooks for the vocal pass). swung-16th timing baked into the score evaluator.

bin/sing.mjs — the rap-tuned jeffrey-pvc vocal pipeline (say → whisper align → per-word snap to 16th grid → mix vocal-forward onto the bed → out/booch-song.mp3). lyric in <slug>.txt, score in <slug>.np (word order/count must match). mirrors pop/big-pictures/ posture: TTS is performance-on-composition; bottom-up posture preserved at the compositional layer.

node pop/booch/bin/render.mjs --mode song   # → out/visualize-my-booch.mp3 (bed)
node pop/booch/bin/sing.mjs                 # → out/visualize-my-booch-song.mp3 (sung)

media (beds, finals, the billable vocal stem) are backed to the assets system, not git — see ../ASSETS.md.

tracks #

visualize-my-booch — the eponymous track. AC-vision-as-fermentation: home-brewed runtime, scoby-as-mother-culture, slow ferment as the aesthetic. D Dorian, 94 BPM, ~1:30. status: scaffolded 2026-05-24 — lyrics + .np score drafted; render/sing pipeline pending.

maintained by @jeffrey