sbegueria/fm1-dub v1.4.0

DUB-1 1.4.0

on GitHub

DUB-1 1.4.0 is the desk and the set. A piece can now be a song, with an intro that brings the parts in one by one and an outro that takes them away into the echo, and a set plays the pieces one after another, mixed into each other as a DJ would. The Arrangement page is a dub desk: a meter for every part, a channel strip with its sends and a filter, a throw into the echo for every part, and four dub sirens. Three knobs say how the music changes, after measuring the classic records: Vary (how much the loop changes), Motion (how much the arrangement changes) and Drift (how much the sound moves). The DJ filter is always on SELECT, every layer has its pages in the same order, and the screen is clearer, with a big ring for whatever you turn.

Try it in the browser: https://sbegueria.github.io/fm1-dub/emu/
Install from Chrome or Edge: https://sbegueria.github.io/fm1-dub/install/
Manual: https://sbegueria.github.io/fm1-dub/manual/
Cheat sheets: https://sbegueria.github.io/fm1-dub/cheatsheets/

New in 1.4.0

• Songs: an intro, the main, an outro. Set the Song mode (GLO again) to Song, and PLAY starts the piece's intro. The parts come in one by one, each fading in over two to four bars, off the phrase lines. The kick goes from the downbeat to one and three to four on the floor, and the hats come in last. The chord's filter starts dark and opens, and the echo starts wetter. Then comes the main, the piece as Endless plays it. Then the outro, the mirror of the intro: the hats leave first and the chord and the noise last, every stab thrown into the echo, then silence, and PLAY goes off by itself. Endless plays as ever, starting full, and it's still where DUB-1 starts.

• The Song page (HOME again, between Form and Key): Intro, Main and Outro in bars, a phrase (8 bars) a click (Intro or Outro can be None), and its Kind: Ambient (the noise and the chord's wash first, then the kick) or Pulse (the kick and the bass first). Each piece has its own song. The middle draws the song's shape, a row a part from where it comes in to where it leaves.

• Outro now: hold HOME and press PLAY, and the outro starts from the next phrase, in any mode (in Endless too: a way to land a piece by hand). Do it again to go back to the main.

• Set plays the pieces in turn, from the one you're on to the last (Haze), then rests. Transition (the Song mode page's KNOB 2) says how one piece hands over to the next:

  • LP, as an album: each song ends, a pause of about six seconds, then the next from its intro;
  • Segue, no stop: the old chord's dry fades out over the outro's last bars while its stabs go on into the echo, the echo is held on a last stab, and the next piece's intro starts on the downbeat under it. The echo's time glides to the new tempo, like a tape slowing down or speeding up;
  • Mix, a DJ's hand-over: over the outro's last phrase the tempo glides to the next piece's, the echo keeping time, and the old harmony is left in the held echo. The new piece's kick comes in at full level on the downbeat with its noise, its bass a bar later, then its chord, pings and hats once the old echo has gone.

• The Arrangement page (SEL; PERFORM until now) is a mixing desk. LED meters, a row a part: the chord, pings, bass, kick, hats and noise, and the master, from −48 to 0 dB in green, yellow and red. Each row shows the peak held for a second and the part's level as a white fader notch. A muted row is dark and a soloed-out one dimmed. Under them, DUCK shows the duck as a compressor's gain reduction, eating segments with each kick. A red ! in the header means the master is clipping. The knobs: Width (the whole mix from mono to wide, the piece's own, moved here from the Echo page), KNOB 2 empty, Wet and Duck.

• Six parts on white 1–6: the chord, pings, bass, kick, hats (with the rim and the clap) and noise. The kick and the hats are apart now, and the noise has its own key. A tap mutes the part (when you let go). Held, the key gives that part's channel strip on the knobs:

  • Level (the kick's and the hats' each their own fader now), Echo send and Plate send (50 as the piece sends them, 100 twice). The bass and the kick send nothing into the echo in any piece: turn the bass's Echo up for a dub bass;
  • Filter, centred like the DJ filter: left a low-pass (12 dB, down to about 200 Hz), right a high-pass (up to about 2.5 kHz), Off in the middle. It's before the sends, so the part's echo and plate are filtered too. (Asked for by KellyOffski, on GitHub.)

• A throw for every part (black 1–5, each above its part's white key: F♯3 the chord, G♯3 the pings, A♯3 the bass, C♯4 the hats, and D♯4 the kick). A tap solos the part. Held past a third of a second, the key throws it into the echo at its own level, whatever its sends, as an engineer slams an aux. The feedback climbs so the repeats stack, and they ring on after you let go. The bass goes in driven, as through an overdriven aux, so its throw is heard.

• The rest of the keys: white 7–8 are a dark gap; white 9–12, held, are the global moves (Open, Shut, Drop, Echo); white 13–16, held, are four of the effects grid's effects (Time x2, Freeze, Tape stop, Stutter).

• Four dub sirens (black 8–11): Wail (A♯4), Whoop (C♯5), Hi-lo (D♯5) and Laser (F♯5), one siren voice, into the echo. A tap plays a short one, about a bar. Held, it turns into the slow one and loops until you let go, then fades and leaves its tail in the echo. Wail, Hi-lo and Laser are tuned to the piece's key (the root, the fifth, the octave); Whoop is out of tune on purpose, as the classic siren box is. Wail and Hi-lo follow the tempo (Hi-lo tapped, a swap a corchea (8th)).

  • A siren held is its own page: Pitch, Rate (Wail's and Hi-lo's in note values, from a semicorchea (16th) up to 8 bars; Whoop's and Laser's per second), Depth and Echo (past halfway the echo's feedback is pushed too, so the repeats stack). Each siren keeps its own settings for its next tap, the same for every piece, and they're saved.

• The dub mixer: the desk rides itself, as a dub engineer's hand on the faders. Each part's level and sends, the chord's filter and the echo's feedback move slowly, to a new place every 10 to 60 seconds, starting anywhere in the bar rather than on the phrase lines. How far they go is the Form page's Drift. Now and then a part is ridden right out and back, or its echo is swelled, which is Motion's (below). The rides move around your settings, never on them, and the meters' notches and a held strip's knobs show them. They rest in Breaks and Thins, and under Lock and dub hold.

• How the music changes: the Form page (HOME; the Dub page until now): Energy, Vary, Motion, Drift. The three new ones follow what the classic dub techno records do: at 50 the records' middle, at 0 still, at 100 the most restless of them.

• Vary (in Evolve's place, on a new scale: 50 is the classic records' middle): how much the loop changes, from held to restless, every step heard. The stab pattern turns, stabs and whole bars drop out, the shaker's steps trade places, the pings change notes, the bass's and the drums' phrase plan is drawn again, and the kick's shape wanders. At 0 there's no variation at all: every stab every bar, the kick keeps its shape, the plan stays as drawn, no throws.

  • Each layer's own Vary (on its part page) is a trim on it: 0 follows the Form page, right is more restless, left is stiller, and at the far left Hold that layer never changes, whatever the Form page says.

• Motion is the arrangement alone, in three zones, each one adding a new kind of event:

  • Breathes (0–39): at 0 nothing ever leaves. From there, parts are ridden out and back (the pings, hats or noise fully out, the chord or the bass 12 dB down), echoes swell, and the kick drops out for a bar or two, off the 8-bar grid;
  • Sections (40–69): Thin and Groove phrases join, rarely at first, then often;
  • Breaks (70–100): Breaks join, the kick and the bass out for a phrase.

• Drift: how much the sound moves, one amount for all of it: the chord's and the noise's LFOs, the filter's long sweeps (a new place every 6 to 20 bars, Basic's every 4 to 14, off the phrase line), the stabs' filter, the echo's heads and feedback wandering, and the dub mixer's rides. At 0 the sound holds still; at 50 the chord's filter moves about an octave, the levels a few dB. Turning it leaves the notes and the arrangement as they were.

• Energy is on the Form page alone. It leans the arrangement but never locks it: far down a Groove comes as a Thin, far up a Break comes as a Groove.

• The zones on the screen: Motion's ring is drawn in segments, and while it turns the big ring shows the zone's name and what it adds ("Parts out and back, the kick out a bar or two"). The Drums page's Hits (Shaker, Open hat, Offbeats, Rim) and the Bass page's Density (Sparse, Pickups) show theirs the same way. Every other knob changes something at every step (see Fixed).

• The LFO pages: Chord LFO (ENV a fourth time) and Noise LFO (SAVE a third time). Each moves two ways at once: a wave, a sine locked to the bars, and a wander, slow and random, like a hand riding the filter (a new place every 8 to 32 bars, glided to). The records drift far more than they cycle. The knobs:

  • Drift: more or less of the Form page's Drift for this LFO (the far left, Still);
  • Wave: the share between them, 0 the wander alone, 100 the wave alone;
  • Rate: 1 to 32 bars;
  • Target (ALGORITHM too): the chord's Cutoff, Reso or Colour; the noise's Filter (a low-pass on the whole noise, hits and hiss), Tone or Air.
  • The picture runs across the screen: what it did at the left (the wave's part and the wander's part drawn apart), now in the middle, where the wave is going at the right, and its reach in Hz at the left edge.
  • The bass and the pings have no LFO now: the records never move a dub bass that way, and the pings' was hardly heard.

• The moving knob: the knob an LFO moves (the Chord voice's Cutoff or Reso, the Chord FM page's Colour, the Noise voice's Tone or Air) shows its reach and a white dot where it is now.

• SELECT is the DJ filter, on every page (after the volume, the control you reach for most): left shuts it, right opens it, a notch at Off, a big ring in the middle as it turns. HOME held + SELECT is still the tempo. The pages are on their buttons.

• Every layer's pages in the same order: its part (what it plays and how often that changes), its voice (how it sounds), its FM page, then for the chord and the noise their LFO. An empty place stays empty, so the same thing sits in the same place on every layer:

  • Chord (ENV): Density (now a count, 1 to 6 stabs a bar), Throws, Change (how long a chord lasts, from HOME), Vary; Chord voice: Cutoff (now centred on the piece's own), Reso, Attack, Decay; Chord FM: Algo, Ratio, Feedback, Colour (on every voice); Chord LFO;
  • Pings (ARP): Density, Vary; Pings voice: Octave, Tone, Length, Bend; Pings FM: Algo, Ratio, Feedback, Upper;
  • Bass (LFO): Groove, Vary, Density, Fifth; Bass voice: Octave, Shape, Gate, Glide; Bass FM: Algo, Ratio, Feedback, Bite (on every voice);
  • Drums (SEQ): Kick, Hits, Vary; Kick: Tune, Length, Punch, Rumble; Hats: Level, Tone, Length; Pattern;
  • Noise (SAVE): Density, Vary; Noise voice: Air, Tone, Decay, Width; Noise LFO.

• The kick's shape is a switch (the Drums page's KNOB 1): Four, Ghost (two and four ghosted), Half, One, a click a shape, heard from the next bar.

• The rumble (the Kick page): dub techno's rumble kick, a dark unpitched bed under the kick (about 30–80 Hz, mono), ducked on each kick and swelling before the next. Every piece has some.

• The Echo page (FX again): Blur, Tone, Size and Cloud (from the Pings page).

• The Key page: five Japanese scales (Hirajoshi, In, Iwato, Yo, Insen), their chords stacked in fourths, a half-step never two notes side by side in a stab (the upper one an octave up, a minor ninth); and tempos from 40 BPM (they started at 90). Under about 43 BPM a one-bar echo stays at the tape's 5.6 s. (Both asked for by KellyOffski.)

• The Chords page shows a keyboard under the slots (C3 to G5): the chord of the slot you're on, its four notes as the stabs play them, the root marked.

• The Walk page (EDIT again): the walk on the circle of fifths, the root's journey: the root a dot, an arrow from the root before fading over four bars (a close move or a far one), and dots filling towards the next chord. Its knobs: Walk (Home, Wander, Free) and Change.

• A big ring for every knob: while you turn a knob, its value shows large in the middle on a panel that darkens what's behind, its name over it and what it does under it. A centred knob fills from the top, a choice shows its name.

• Knobs without numbers: the rings under the page are bigger and the names brighter. A number shows for a second and a half when a page opens, and in the big ring while it turns. A knob with a word or a unit shows it ("LP 2.6k", "64 bars", Wander), and a choice shows its word with a dot for each option. Values: Always (the Song mode page, KNOB 4) keeps the numbers in the rings.

• The header shows where you are: the piece's name, the section (FULL, GROOVE, THIN, BREAK; INTRO, OUTRO in a song) and the phrase's eight bars as cells. The B bars are taller, the bar playing flashes on the beat, and the eighth blinks before a change. On the right, only what's on now: HOLD, LOCK, SOLO, a small disk for unsaved changes, EXT, the clip's !, the battery when it's low or charging. In a song a line along the bottom is the whole song (the intro teal, the main grey, the outro coral). The tempo is on the Key page now.

• The rule above the knobs: the page's name and its place among its button's pages at the left (CHORD VOICE 2/4), the voice, kit or character at the right.

• The lanes: seven rows (CHD, PNG, BAS, KCK, HAT, R/C, NOI), the pings' and the noise's hits new, each row with a short level meter at its left. The level strips and the duck meter have left the other pages (the Arrangement page has them).

• A layer's page shows its own lane, large: the chord's stabs (each as tall as it was struck, its tail, its repeats, a throw framed), the pings' four loops drifting against each other, the bass's notes as long as they hold, the kick and the hats, the noise's two bars. The phrase's A and B bars are marked, and turning Density, Groove or Hits shows there at once.

• Bigger pictures: the ripples spread to the screen's sides, the bass's notes are gold rings beside the chord's, and the chord's name flashes white with each kick. The scope and the spectrum span nearly the whole width.

• The tape (a new view on ALGORITHM): two reels turning with the tempo and winding through a song, the record and play heads lit. Its counter shows where the song is and the bars left of that part, the time since PLAY and a song's whole length.

• Lighter on the CPU: a piece change is spread over a few blocks (it spiked to 100%), and the engine's busiest code runs from fast memory. Measured on the FM-1, the heaviest moments fell from 4.5–5.1 ms to 3.0–4.4 ms of a 5.8 ms block, with no dropouts on the heaviest pieces. The Setup page shows the CPU's clock, the build and where the time goes.

• The pieces, measured against their records: each piece's Vary, layer trims, Motion and Drift were set from the albums it's modelled on, measured the same way on both. Basic, Chamber, Steppers and Haze change less from one 8 bars to the next (Vary 50, 31, 58, 40). Fog's chord and pings sit back, its drums and bass forward, Drift 100. Concrete and Night Drive drift further (90, 85), and Night Drive's LFOs wander more. Pressure's stabs nearly hold. The filter's long sweeps are slower, except Basic's. A piece you've changed and saved stays as you left it. A piece you haven't changed takes its new recipe.

• Fourteen cheat sheets (new, printable on A4): The panel, Arrangement, Chords, Chord voice, Pings, Bass, Drums, Noise, The space, Effects grid, Variety, Songs and sets, The pieces, The screen.

Changed

• The pages' names: HOME's first page is Form (it was Dub), FX's is Dub (it was Space), SEL's is the Arrangement page (it was PERFORM).
• SELECT no longer steps through the pages: it's the Filter. Energy moved to the Form page, Width to the Arrangement page, Cloud to the Echo page. HOME's Drift (how long a chord lasts) is now Change on the Chord and Walk pages.
• Evolve is now Vary. Its own nudges are gone: the sound moves with Drift, and a layer's button held still nudges it by hand. How loosely each piece plays (each stab's cutoff, the hats' lean, how many throws get through) is now the piece's own, on no knob.
• The chord's and the pings' Wet left their pages: their sends are their channel strips', the dry against them is each piece's own, and the Arrangement page's Wet still moves it all.
• Gone: the Noise space page (its Width is on the Noise voice, its Plate and Echo on the noise's strip), the Mix (white 6 held: each part's level is its strip's now), the FM pages' LFO, the pings' and the bass's LFO, and PERFORM's Siren key (the grid's Siren is unchanged). The Drum sound page is now the Kick and the Hats pages.
• The noise's Air runs from no hiss at 0.
• The cards (a nudge, a shake, a key on the Arrangement page) stay for about a second, fade and all (they stayed a second and a half).

Fixed

• Energy no longer locks the arrangement. Past halfway it held the phrases Thin or Full, and Motion stopped working.
• The chord's LFO no longer pulls the plate about. Since 1.3.0 the two shared one value, so the chord's LFO moved the plate's shimmer.
• Every step of a knob is heard. Some knobs had steps that changed nothing: the chord's Density (95 steps for six counts: now the count itself), Hits and the bass's Density (now each step fades in the next hit or note), the noise's Density, the hats' and the pings' Tone (now reaching both ends on every piece), the noise's Tone and Decay, the echo's Tone at the top, the Pad's Attack, Drone's Gate and Energy's ends. Motion 40, its mark, still played Full only, and the bass's pickups started at 31: both now start where marked.
• The CPU's peaks: a piece change could spike the load to 100%, and Steppers, Pressure and Haze broke up now and then (see Lighter on the CPU, above).
• A Mix into a piece with no intro (Intro None): its parts came in full on the downbeat, dropped out and came back. Now they enter as into any piece: the kick on the downbeat, the bass a bar on, the chord, the pings and the hats two bars on.
• PRESET turned fast could hand a piece the chords of the one it passed through, and the other piece lost them. Each piece now keeps its own.
• A key on a gap slot (the Chords page) gave the chord the wrong root. Now it writes a minor chord on the key's note.
• The centred knobs' notch didn't let go of 0 on a slow turn: the three clicks to leave it now count over 3 s.

Upgrading

Every project saved by DUB-1 since 1.0.0 loads (the save format is now 35), converted so it sounds as it did. A piece you never changed takes its new recipe, as it always has. A piece you changed keeps what you set, moved to its new place: Evolve becomes Vary, moved to Vary's new scale as near as it sounded, and each layer's old Vary becomes the trim that sounds the same. The LFOs' depths become the Form page's Drift and each LFO page's Drift and Wave. An old Motion becomes the new Motion, as near as it played. A chord Cutoff you set is kept as its offset from the piece's own, HOME's Drift becomes Change, the chord's Density becomes its count of stabs, and the kick's Density shows as its nearest shape. A piece you changed keeps the filter's sweeps at their old pace. The Noise space page's values are on their new pages. What's new comes from the recipe: the channel strips (the sends as the piece sent, the Filter off), the song (Intro 32, Main 160, Outro 32 bars, the piece's Kind), the LFOs' Rate and Target (Cutoff and Filter, as they played) and the rumble. The Song mode starts on Endless, Transition on LP, the sirens as they come and Values on Peek. To hear a changed piece as 1.4.0 tunes it, hold GLO on for 1.5 s on that piece: it goes back to its new recipe (save to keep it).

Installing

Use the web installer above, or download dub-1.4.0.fwsc below and run python3 tools/fm1_install.py dub-1.4.0.fwsc from a checkout of the source. To go back, use the installer's "Back to the stock firmware", or M-VAVE's M-UPGRADE. Installing other firmware is at your own risk; an FM-1 that fails to start twice comes up in a safe mode the installer can reach.

Credits

A fork of AMB-1 by Charles Vestal. The granular cloud follows JIANT's CLOUD. The noise machine follows Bahadirhan Kocer's "Using Resonators in Live". The platform is Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (Hügelton Instruments), by way of X0X, FoMni-1 and AMB-1. Thanks to @KellyOffski for the per-part filters, the Japanese scales and the slow tempos. GPL-3.0-only. M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners; DUB-1 is not affiliated with M-VAVE or Hügelton Instruments.