The FM-1, live: everything here does what it does on the FM-1, and the screen shows what the FM-1's shows. Knobs and encoders: drag up or down, or the wheel (shift: faster). Buttons: click to press; shift-click holds one down (for SAVE + FX, HOME + SELECT, SEQ + a key…), click again to let go. Click a tab to go to that page. Your computer's keys play the keys: Z S X D C… F3–E4, Q 2 W 3 E… F4–G5. The tabs above edit everything in depth.
Click to add a note, drag to move it, drag its right end to make it longer. Shift-click: accent. Double-click: slide. Right-click or Alt-click: delete.
Each pad plays a sample (yours from the Project tab, or the built-in loops) from START to END. On the FM-1 the pads are DRUM's rows and the first 16 keys. Click a pad to pick it and hear it. Pads in the same CHOKE group cut each other.
Up to 8 zones, each a sample over a range of keys, played at its ROOT's pitch. Overlapping ranges: the first zone that covers a key plays it. LOOP goes round while the note sounds; SUST while the key is held, then plays on to the end. Click a zone's row to pick it; click the keyboard to hear a note.
ALL KEYS
DX7 banks
Load a DX7 bank (.syx: 32 voices, or a single voice). Play each voice here with ▶ (the FM-1's own engine, in the browser), or on the FM-1 with FM-1 (it becomes FM's voice there; SAVE keeps it). Tick Keep on the ones you want and send them: they go into a sample slot with your samples and come up on the FM-1's PRESETS after the factory voices (★ here), in every project. What's already on the FM-1 is read and shown here when you open this tab; a new bank goes on after it, and only the new part is sent.
A six-operator FM synth that plays DX7 voices: the factory's, and the ones you keep from a DX7 bank (above). The macros go on top of the voice without changing it: BRIGHT the modulators' levels, TIME every envelope, ATTACK and RELEASE the carriers'.
A Juno-60 / 106-style polysynth, six voices. The DCO: SAW and PULSE on or off, the pulse's width moved by the LFO, set by hand or by the envelope (PWM), the SUB an octave down, NOISE, RANGE 16' 8' 4'. The HPF (BOOST, FLAT, 2, 3), then the resonant 4-pole VCF with the envelope (or inverted), the LFO, the keys and the velocity on its cutoff. One envelope for the filter and the amp (or VCA: GATE). One LFO, its DELAY fading it in after the first key, free or synced to the tempo. The CHORUS: I, II, I+II, the Juno's stereo. On the FM-1 SEL, EDIT and ENV pressed again show the page's second view.
Wavetables
Load a Serum wavetable (.wav: cycles of 2048 samples one after another, as Serum, Vital and Ableton's Wavetable save them) or a single-cycle WAV. Each is made into the FM-1's own format here (every frame band-limited for every octave, so high notes don't alias): see its frames, move POS through them and hear it with C1-C3. Send it and it goes into a sample slot with your samples, and comes up on WAVE's TABLE after the 8 factory tables (★ here). A table takes about 2 KB a frame: 64 frames are 127 KB, so fewer frames leave more room for samples.
A wavetable synth with two oscillators: A, and B (OSC B on) heard at B LEVEL and working on A by B MODE: FM, RING, AM or SYNC (A starts again with B's cycle; MOD AMT sets how far above B it plays). Each warps its phase (SYNC, BEND, MIRROR, PWM, FM, CRUSH). Then DIST (SOFT, HARD, FOLD, RECT, TUBE, BITS, RATE) into the FILTER (LP12, LP24, HP, BP, NOTCH, COMB), SAT after. Three envelopes, three LFOs (synced to the tempo or free), and the MATRIX: 8 routes from a source to a destination. The voices it can play depend on what's on (unison, B, the drive, LP24): the FM-1 keeps it within its CPU. On the FM-1 each page button pressed again shows the page's next view.
Each synth has its own four LFOs (REESE's, then SUB's), and they are part of its sound. Each goes to one place (REESE's filter, pitch, level…, the breaks' pitch, decay, crush, level, or another LFO's depth). SYNC locks the rate to the tempo. Draw on a shape to make your own (DRAW): it plays as many points a cycle as you set, SMOOTH from steps to slopes. The red line: where it is now.
The FM-1 runs DREADNOUGHT 0.8 or older: update it to 0.9 for the LFOs.
Your own loops: the breaks page uploads them and edits their slices.
The FM-1 runs DREADNOUGHT 0.11 or older: update it to 0.12 for projects.
Project
What each track plays, and how much of it goes to the effects. REESE and each break are on one track at a time: give one to another track and they swap. The patterns stay with their track.
| Track | Plays | Send A | Send B |
|---|
Song
Rows of every track's pattern, each for so many bars (– : the track carries on with its own). With the song on, PLAY plays it from the row picked on the FM-1's SONG page (GLO six times), round to the first row after the last. On the FM-1: black key 9 adds a row of the patterns playing now.
| Row | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Bars |
|---|
Save and load
A project is everything on the FM-1 for one piece: the sounds, the tempo, every track's instrument, sends and effects, all 8 patterns of every track, and the samples with their slices, plus the original sample files added here, so you can change how they're converted later. Stop the FM-1 first. Loading sends only what differs: if it's cut off, load again and it carries on.
Samples
Drop WAV (or MP3, AIFF…) files here. Each goes on the FM-1 in mono, at the rate you pick: lower rates fit more (and 26 kHz is the SP-1200's). Fit to space picks the rates so they all fit, the longest samples lowered first. A sample already on the FM-1 can have its rate changed too: pick a lower one to free space, then send. Listen with ▶ before you send. The breaks play them (ARP: the BRK page, PRESETS for the loop). DX7 banks (.syx) go here too: pick the voices you want and they go on with the samples, for FM (128 bytes a voice).
| Sample | Length | Mono | Rate | Size |
|---|
Your REESE sounds
Keep as many sounds as you like here (in this browser), or as files to share.