HYP-1
HYP-1 turns the M-VAVE FM-1 into a hypnotic techno and acid machine. It plays from the moment it's switched on: a breathing pad, a deep drone, a generative 303 line and grain, over drums you sequence. You shape the voices like a small modular, flip patterns on the bar, break it down, build it up, and record the whole performance into your DAW.
The voices
Pad
Four breathing voices, Rhodes or sung, each on its own cycle, so the chord forms and dissolves. Env and LFO pages shape the breath and move the filter, level, pan or pitch.
Drone
Detuned saws and a sub through a resonant 24 dB low-pass, with its own envelope (on each chord, or every 1–8 bars) and LFO: a slow 16-bar sweep by default.
Acid
A 303-style line written as it plays: 1–16 steps of chord tones with accents and slides, resonant and driven. Mutate rewrites a few steps each time round.
Drums
Kick, snare, clap, closed and open hats, perc. A 16-step sequencer with six patterns per piece; a new pattern waits for the bar.
Noise
A bed of grain in eight colours (white, pink, brown, blue, violet, grey, crackle, radio hiss), with its own tone and sidechain pump.
Space
A tape echo, from an eighth to a bar, and a plate reverb, from a room to a long hall.
Styles
Hold SEL and turn ALGORITHM, and the same piece is reshaped: every voice's sound and the feel change, your patterns and settings stay. Each piece keeps its own style.
| Style | BPM | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Hypnotic | 110–145 | Deep kick, metallic 808-style hats, breathing pad, smooth drone. |
| House | 118–128 | Round kick, shuffle, wide clap, long open hats, congas; the pad stabs chords on the off-beats. |
| Techno | 128–138 | Hard, driven kick with a rumble tail, metal hats, a bell perc; dark pad, gritty drone. |
| Acid | 120–132 | Punchy 909-style kit with a cowbell and a little swing; the 303 driven and up front. |
| Breakcore | 160–180 | Distorted, crushed drums chopped live with ghosts and 32nd rolls; dirty sub; acid at half time. |
Play it
Ten pieces
PRESETS picks 01–10, each with its own settings, six drum patterns and drum sounds. On Global, SAVE stores the piece; it's written while the music is stopped, so it never interrupts a take.
Breakdowns
SAVE drops a breakdown on the next bar; tap again for a four-bar build and the drop, or hold it for the drop straight away. REC freezes the chord.
Shift
Hold SEL: white keys 1–6 jump to a pattern on the bar, PRESETS changes piece on the next bar, and in the sequencer you copy, clear and restore lanes.
Links
Patch the drums into the voices: each kick opens the drone's filter, snares flash the pad, hats accent the acid, and the perc lane can clock the acid line. SEL + SEQ turns them on and off.
Remote
Plug the FM-1 into a computer, open the emulator and press SEL + GLO: its whole panel plays the browser, lights and all. Any other MIDI controller works too, with MIDI learn.
Always different
Every power-on starts on a piece at random: as you stored it, or slightly nudged from its factory settings. Chords drift, the acid mutates, a slow tide moves between sparse and full.
Screens
HYP-1 is free, and always will be. If it's found a place in your music, a coffee keeps the updates, videos and new pieces coming.
Support on Ko-fiCredits
HYP-1 is a fork of AMB-1 by Charles Vestal, the generative ambient firmware it grew from. The platform (USB, update loader, storage, installer) is Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (@kurogedelic), Hügelton Instruments. Screen font: Chakra Petch (SIL OFL). GPL-3.0. M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners; HYP-1 is not affiliated with M-VAVE.
To go back to the official firmware, use the installer's "Back to the stock firmware", or M-VAVE's updater, M-UPGRADE, from m-vave.com/download. Installing firmware is at your own risk.