Quixotic7/ChoralRootFM1 v0.40

ChoralRoot 0.40

on GitHub

ChoralRoot 0.40 brings drums: a beat you morph rather than program, on the metronome's keys. Pick Drums
instead of Metronome in the SEQ menu and the beat is a kick, a snare that turns into a clap and closed and open hats,
from six kits, following your loop. The click now follows MASTER, the beat is off at every power-on, and two new
resource regions make room for it all. Your settings, sounds, loops and favorites come through the update.

Drums

• Hold SEQ for the beat's menu. Its first page has two tiles, Metronome (the click, as ever) and Drums.
  On every page of the menu ALGORITHM picks one (right Drums, left Metronome) and PRESETS starts and stops
  the beat (right on, left off). GLO + SEQ from anywhere and the PLAY menu's page 2, KNOB 2 (now called Beat) do
  the same as before: on and off, whichever preset is chosen.
• The beat comes from Mutable Instruments' Grids: a map of 25 drum patterns. You choose a place on the map and
  the drums play a blend of the four patterns around it.
• The sound is CoralFlower's morph drum synth (by FicusFicusov, https://github.com/FicusFicusov/CoralFlower):
  each drum has a soft and a hard setting and its Character sits between them. Six kits: Club, Deep, Lo-Fi, Live,
  Tech and Break.
• With the loop: the drums start as soon as the beat is on, on the tempo. When a loop plays they follow it: its
  start is their bar 1, and they stay in step with its bars. When it stops they keep going. They are never part of a
  loop: nothing of them is recorded into a slot.
• 3/4 and 6/8: Grids' patterns are bars of 4/4; in 3/4 and 6/8 the drums play the first three quarters of each.

With Drums, SELECT turns the menu's pages:

• Accents: where a pattern is strongest the kick and the snare play louder and the hats play the open hat, which
  the next closed hat cuts short.
• FX: each drum's send on the Mix page goes into the delay and the reverb (0 by default: the drums dry). FX off
  closes them. The drums go through the master filter, as the parts do.
• The home screen shows a small chip at the top right while the beat is on: its beats, and with Drums a roundel
  that thumps on the kick.
• The full story: MANUAL.md section 9, "The drums".

The metronome's menu

• The SEQ menu's first page is now KNOB 1 Level (the click's or the drums'), KNOB 2 Meter, KNOB 3 Kit (Drums)
  and KNOB 4 Beat. Until 0.39 SELECT (or D4, E4, F4) picked the time signature here and KNOB 1 was the click's level.
• The keys play in the menu, on every page: D4, E4 and F4 no longer pick the meter.
• ALGORITHM and PRESETS are the menu's (above), not the sound's, while it is open.
• Hold SEQ in the loop editor to open it (the editor closes under it). EDIT still switches between the editor and
  the PLAY menu.

Also

• The click follows MASTER, the count-in's too. It still stays out of the limiter and out of the recording.
• The beat is off at every power-on, the metronome's too. Everything else about it is remembered: the preset, the
  kit, the levels, the meter, the map and the drums' knobs and sends.
• Two resource regions: on the FM-1 a second one (the kerning, the factory preset lists and the FM6 voices, 12 KB
  of app space freed) and on the SMK-37 one of its own (its big fonts, 35 KB freed). The drums' kits and Grids' map
  live there too. Installed by the web installer and fm1_install.py with the firmware, as the first region already
  is. If an install is cut off and not finished, the screen says what is missing (PRESETS MISSING, FONTS
  MISSING) and the beat falls back to the click: install ChoralRoot again.
• On the SMK-37 (0.40-smk37): the drums and everything above. Its new resource region has not yet run on an
  SMK-37: SMK37.md "What to test".

What is stored

• The beat's preset, the kit, the drums' level, the Beat page, each drum's knobs and its FX send are kept by the global
  save (SAVE held), with the rest of the instrument's state.
• A settings backup does not hold the drums: they live in the session, as the FX layer and the Bass Perform do.
  A restored backup comes up on Metronome with the drums' defaults.

Installing

• The web installer's default is 0.40: press Install. Options > System > Version reads ChoralRoot 0.40.
• From 0.27 to 0.39, nothing needs doing: your sounds, loops, favorites and settings are all there. The beat
  starts on Metronome, off.
• From 0.21 or older: install 0.29.2 first and switch the FM-1 on once to keep 0.21's sounds (the installer asks;
  0.30.md).
• A Single core package: the web installer's Advanced > Hardware fallback. Options > System > Version then
  reads ChoralRoot 0.40 1-core.
• From another firmware: M-Flasher with the M-Bootloader and
  choralroot-0.40.fwsc. M-Flasher writes the firmware alone: the unit starts with PRESETS MISSING until ChoralRoot's
  own installer has run once.
• Signed builds: GitHub built these packages from the tag's source and signed them; 0.26.1.md
  "Checking a package" says how to check one (choralroot-0.40.fwsc).

Going back

• To 0.39 or older: the installer offers it under Other versions. Your settings, sounds, loops and favorites stay.
  The drums are gone and the SEQ menu is the metronome's again (SELECT the time signature, KNOB 1 the click); the
  drums' settings stay in the session, unread, for when you come back. A metronome left on is on again at power-on,
  and the click no longer follows MASTER. The second region is left where it is and nothing older reads it.
• To another firmware: M-Flasher with the M-Bootloader (MANUAL.md
  "Switching firmwares"); back up ChoralRoot's data in the installer first.
• To the stock firmware completely: M-VAVE's own updater, M-Updater.

ChoralRoot 0.40 for the M-VAVE FM-1 (identity FM-1_920).

Install from the browser at https://quixotic7.github.io/ChoralRootFM1/ (Chrome or Edge, the FM-1 connected by USB), or with the command-line installer: python3 tools/fm1_install.py choralroot-0.40.fwsc.

choralroot-0.40-1core.fwsc is the same firmware on one processor core, for an FM-1 that crashes or freezes with the standard package (the installer offers it under Advanced > Hardware fallback). Settings, sounds and loops stay when you switch between the two.

SHA256SUMS lists both packages and their apps. GitHub built and signed each from this tag's source (The Firmware Hub's shared workflow); check one with gh attestation verify choralroot-0.40.fwsc --repo Quixotic7/ChoralRootFM1 --signer-workflow zvenson/fm1-build/.github/workflows/build.yml. The package holds three JieLi AC79 SDK files (Apache-2.0); LICENSE, LICENSING.md and LICENSES.zip carry every licence. Installing firmware is at your own risk.

Full Changelog: v0.39...v0.40