FORMALFRED on the FM-1
The panel works like Mutable Dreams. Each group button opens its pages; press it again for the next page. The four knobs set the four values on screen. Print this page for one leaf.
Groups and pages knobs 1 to 4
| HOME | the four lanes: hits, steps, speed, chance |
| SEQ | RHYTHM: hits, steps, speed, chance, the bar drawn as a circle. FEEL: rhythm source (Euclid, rotate with accents, cellular automaton, ratchet) and its knobs. NOTES: note source (random, walk, up, down, bounce, loop, turing, step, markov, grammar, chord) and its knobs. RANGE: scale, low note, chord follow |
| EDIT | SOUND: shape (48 Braids, 8 FM, 10 drums), timbre, colour, level. FILTER: cutoff, resonance, envelope, low/band/high. ENVELOPE: attack, release, envelope to timbre. MIX: lane levels. PAN |
| LFO | target (OFF, CHANCE, LEVEL, TIMBRE, COLOUR), rate in bars, depth, for the chosen lane |
| FX | REVERB: send, decay, bright, return. DELAY: time, feedback, tone, return |
| GLO | HARMONY: key, scale lock, chord progression, bars per chord. SYSTEM: tempo, keys octave, LOOK (seven colour schemes), SWING. MIDI: channels, INT or EXT clock. BANKS: patch, save slot, DEMO, AUTO (plays the demo songs in turn, changing a lane every 8 bars) |
Controls
| SELECT | pick a lane (in a browser: the group) |
| PRESETS | the browser: sounds on EDIT (255, by engine or by type), patches elsewhere (142 factory, 8 user). ALGO changes the grouping while it is open |
| ALGORITHM | tempo |
| PLAY | start or stop; stopping silences everything |
| SEL | mute the chosen lane |
| REC | PUNCH: while the page is up the keys are momentary effects on the mix (right) |
| SAVE | save the patch to the slot chosen on GLO > BANKS |
| ARP | held keys play one at a time in step with the clock, on the chosen lane's sound (MODE, RATE, OCTAVES, GATE). ARP again while holding keys latches them. ARP with nothing held opens QUANT: OFF, SCALE (white keys are the scale degrees) or CHORD (white keys are the current chord) |
| keys, OCT- OCT+ | play the chosen lane's sound |
ARP MODE: OFF (the keys play straight), UP, DOWN, UPDOWN, RANDOM, PLAYED (in the order pressed); RATE a note value; OCTAVES 1 to 3; GATE as a share of the step.
Punch REC, then the keys
| keys, in order | does |
|---|---|
| HALF, DOUBLE | time |
| STUTTER, ROLL, OCT-, OCT+, SHIFT, GATE, CRUSH | momentary effects on the mix, like the OP-XY's punch-in FX |
| WASH, THROW, BREAK | reverb up, delay up, all muted |
| next four | mute lane 1 to 4 |
| A4 to C5 | re-roll lane 1 to 4: a new random loop, register and automaton row, and an unlearnt chain |
| C#5 to E5 | KEEP lane 1 to 4: its last bar becomes its STEP loop, played again every bar |
| F5, F#5 | FREEZE the chosen lane, or all four: the bar it is in repeats until thawed |
| G5 | FILL, held: every lane at chance 100 with two more hits |
The knobs set the rates. Let go and the effect is gone: with no key held every effect is the identity; the gate gain fades over 1.5 ms.
Feel SEQ > FEEL, rhythm source
| feel | knobs | does |
|---|---|---|
| EUCLID | (HITS, STEPS on RHYTHM) | hits spread as evenly as whole steps
allow |
| ROTATE | ROTATE, ACCENTS | the Euclidean bar turned by rotate steps;
accents of its hits, picked by a second Euclidean pattern laid over the hits, play louder and the
rest softer |
| AUTOMAT | RULE | an elementary cellular automaton (rule 0 to 255) on a ring of
steps cells, seeded from the Euclidean bar, one generation a bar; a dead row is reseeded. Rule 90
is the Sierpinski triangle, 30 is chaos, 204 freezes |
| RATCHET | RATCHET, SUBHITS | each hit split into ratchet (1 to 4) sub-hits, of
which subhits play (the hit itself always); each sub-hit's gate is cut to its share of the
step |
The circle on RHYTHM and FEEL shows the live bar: hits in the lane colour, accents bigger, the current step white; the automaton's row changes every bar.
Notes SEQ > NOTES, note source
| algo | knobs | does |
|---|---|---|
| RANDOM | a random position in the range | |
| WALK | STEP | a random step of up to step positions, stopping at the
ends |
| UP, DOWN | climb or fall through the range and wrap | |
| BOUNCE | up and down | |
| LOOP | LENGTH, MUTATE | replay a memory of length notes; each slot has
mutate percent chance to be replaced when it plays |
| TURING | LENGTH, FLIP | a shift register of length bits; the recycled bit flips
with flip percent chance; the low byte sets the pitch. FLIP 0 is a locked loop |
| STEP | LENGTH, MUTATE | LOOP whose memory you play in: with the lane chosen and STEP on, each key writes the next slot |
| MARKOV | STYLE, JUMP | each move (-3 to +3 positions) is drawn from a row of weights picked by the last move. The weights start as a style (STEPS, LEAPS, REPEATS, ARCS) and learn from the keys you play; ROLL on the PUNCH page forgets. JUMP sometimes doubles a move |
| GRAMMAR | GRAMMAR, DEPTH | an L-system (FIBO, CANTOR, THUE, ROUND) expanded
depth levels; each symbol moves the line by a step or a third |
| CHORD | TONES, OCTAVE | climbs tones notes of the lane's scale from its bottom
note (with chord follow, the chord); OCTAVE is the chance of an octave jump |
The keys teach only the chosen lane, and only STEP and MARKOV listen.
Harmony GLO > HARMONY, SEQ > RANGE
| chord follow | does |
|---|---|
| OFF | the lane sees only the key's scale |
| 7TH, TRIAD | the lane follows the progression; chords are stacked from the key's scale, so on a table progression the lane stays in key |
| COMPL | the opposite: only the notes outside the key. Those have the scale's intervals, each shifted by the same count (Babbitt's hexachord theorem), and why BLACK KEYS still sounds like C major |
| progression | is |
|---|---|
| OFF | no progression |
| 1-4-5-1, 1-5-6-4, 6-4-1-5, 2-5-1-1, 1-6-3-7, 1-3-4-5, 1-6-2-5 | degrees: 1-4-5-1 is I IV V in a major key and i iv v in a minor one |
| WALK LR | walks the Tonnetz through all 24 major and minor triads and comes back |
| WALK PL | a hexatonic cycle of six |
| WALK PR | an octatonic cycle of eight |
Each walk move is P, L or R, which keeps two notes of the triad and changes one; the walks leave the key on purpose.
Effects FX: REVERB, FX again: DELAY
| reverb | does |
|---|---|
| SEND | how much of the chosen lane goes to the reverb (0 to 100%, kept in the patch) |
| DECAY | how long the tail rings (0 to 100%; the loop gain runs from 0.35 to 0.98) |
| BRIGHT | how dark or bright the tail is (the low-pass in each loop, 0.6 to 0.97) |
| RETURN | how loud the wet signal is in the mix (0 to 100%; 100% is a gain of 1.0) |
| delay | does |
|---|---|
| TIME | the note value of the echo: 1/32, 1/16, 1/8T, 1/16., 1/8, 1/4T, 1/8., 1/4 of the tempo |
| FEEDBK | how much of each echo goes round again (0 to 100%; 100% is a gain of 0.95) |
| TONE | the low-pass in the loop (0.2 to 1.0; 100% is no filtering) |
| RETURN | how loud the echo is in the mix (0 to 100%; 100% is unity) |
Each lane's SEND feeds both the reverb and the delay; each effect has its own RETURN.
Simulator keys sim/
| Z–/ | play from C4 |
| Q–T | play from C5, or click the keys |
| - = | OCT- and OCT+ |
| Space | PLAY |
| Esc | HOME |
| [ ] | turn Select |
| PageUp PageDown | step through the patches |
| knobs | scroll wheel, drag up or down, click the left or right half, or arrow keys when focused |
?patch=N | a link with it loads that patch at power on |
Hover a button for what it does.