CTY-1 Experimental

a city grows and plays the FM-1: each switch-on a new town on new land (forest, desert, alpine, volcano isles, plains, beach or river lands) grows to a huge city, and every car, building and storm is a note. The same code the FM-1 would run.

Turn your phone sideways for bigger controls.

Off. Sound starts when you switch it on.

To your DAW

Audio out Stereo mix 8 channels: each voice apart

Channels 1–2 the mix, 3 Pulse A and the lead (bells, sirens, the car you follow), 4 Pulse B (arps, birds), 5 the triangle (kick and bass), 6 the noise (hats, snares, the beltway, fire), 7 the wave (the pad, the UFO), 8 the rain and the echo. The voices come dry, at the mix's level. It needs an output with 8 channels: an audio interface, or a loopback driver such as BlackHole (Mac) or VB-Audio (Windows) set as the browser's output, recorded into the DAW.

MIDI Send to MIDI in from

Remote: with CTY-1 on your FM-1 and MIDI connected here, hold SEL and press GLO on the FM-1. Its panel plays this emulator (every button, key and knob, and MASTER) and goes quiet itself; its lights follow this one. SEL + GLO again gives it back.

MIDI out sends what the MIDI out page asks for (press GLO three times): each chip channel's notes on its own channel (1–6 by default: Pulse A, Pulse B, Triangle, Noise, Wave, Lead), the drums on the Noise channel (36 kick, 38 snare, 42 hat, 45 tom, 49 crash), and with CCs the city on 7: 20 mood, 21 brightness, 22 rush, 23 daylight, 24 rain and snow, 25 the stage. Clock from a DAW: Sync on the Setup page (Clock by default); START plays from step one, STOP rests it. MIDI notes in play the lead. To reach a DAW on this computer, use a virtual MIDI port: the IAC Driver (Mac) or loopMIDI (Windows).

Pages and knobs

One page a button (pressed again, the next on it); SELECT walks them all, and the dots at the right of the knob strip show where you are. Every switch-on founds a new city; SAVE (on Setup) keeps your settings for the next.

City HOME

Speed: How fast it grows: ×¼ to ×64 (about a week a second at ×1).
Traffic: How many cars, 0–200%.
People: How many people, 0–200%.
Chats: Whether people who meet stop to talk in speech bubbles, each a chirp.

Music ENV

Tempo: 60–160 BPM (also HOME + SELECT).
Density: How many of the city's events become notes.
Swing: The off-beats late.
City bed: The drums, bass and pad under it all, busier as the city grows.

Sound ARP

Flavor: NES (pulses and a 4-bit triangle), Game Boy (a wave table), SID (saws and a filter).
Lead: The keys' voice: Square, Thin, Wave or Saw.
Echo, Crush: The echo's amount (fog and snow lengthen it); the bits.

Time LFO

Day: A day's length, 2–16 minutes, or always noon. Night closes the music's filter and lights the windows.
Season, Days each: Spring to winter, or the cycle: the trees, the crops, snow on the roofs.
Clock: The hour now. Black keys 1–4: dawn, noon, dusk, night.

Weather LFO again

Weather: Auto (by the season and the land), or one of six, each the biome's own: a thunderstorm, a dust storm in the desert, a blizzard in the mountains, a typhoon on the isles; mist, heat haze, ash haze; snow, frost, ash fall, sleet. Black keys 1–7 set it.
Change: How often Auto changes it.
Birds: How often flocks fly over (the echo shortens as they pass).
Night: The night lights (windows, streetlights, headlights) on or off.

Voices SEQ

Bells, Arps, Bass, Drums: Each part's level: the buildings' bells, the arpeggios of the roads, the bass and the drums.

Voices 2 SEQ again

Pad, Lead, Effects, Sirens: The pad, the keys' lead, the weather and the birds, the sirens and alarms.

Events FX

Lightning, Quakes, Robbery, Crashes: How often each happens. Lightning strikes only out of rain, a storm or snow, and may start a fire: the fire station sends a truck, lights flashing, along the roads (two to a station; left waiting, a fire spreads). A quake shakes the screen and gates the music; what falls is cleared at the next phrase. A robber brings the police, a crash an ambulance.

Events 2 FX again

UFOs: Very rare: one comes for someone.
The biome's own: Wildfires in the forest, dust devils in the desert, avalanches in the mountains, eruptions on the isles, tornadoes on the plains (the siren first), tsunamis at the beach, floods in the river lands. Each its own look and sound, more in its weather.
Festivals, Blackouts: A crowd and fireworks round a plaza; the whole town's power out (likelier in a storm), every instrument winding down, then back one at a time.

Events 3 FX three times

Meteors: Showers on clear nights, each a falling chime.
Follow: The camera goes to what happens and stays until it's over.
Disasters: Fires, quakes and the biome's disasters destroy, or not.
Idle: After a while untouched the city takes the whole screen and rides with the cars, each route singing the lead, and the lights play along.

On any Events page the black keys call each now: 1 lightning, 2 a quake, 3 a robbery, 4 a crash, 5 a UFO, 6 birds, 7 the biome's disaster, 8 a festival, 9 a blackout, 10 meteors, 11 the huge city's special putting on its show (the desert's rocket launch, the plains' plane, the isles' cruise ship).

Setup GLO

Key, Tune: The city's key (Seed: from its seed), or one of the twelve; fine tuning.
Sync: Internal, or MIDI clock.
Mood: Auto: the city's mood (homes, jobs, the weather, the night) picks the mode, Lydian to Aeolian; or kept Bright or Dark.

Display GLO twice

Theme: Asphalt, Neon, Blueprint, Sunset, Terminal, Mono: the frame; the city keeps its colours.
Zoom: A dial from 25% (the whole map) to 300% (close over the roofs); 100% to start.
Map: The city, its zones, or its land value.
Labels: The clock, the people, what the camera follows.

MIDI out GLO three times

Sends, Channels: Off, notes, notes and CCs, or CCs; the first of seven channels.
Lights: Off, on, or the keys only.
CPU: How busy the FM-1 is.

Buttons

Keys play the lead, in the city's scale (lit). On Time, Weather and Events the black keys do the page's work.
PLAY the music plays / rests (the city lives on). REC holds the growth. EDIT a new city: new land, a biome by luck, from a town.
SEL rides along with a car (again: another). ALGORITHM looks around: the landmarks in turn. PRESETS a new city too.
SELECT every page in turn; with HOME held, the tempo. OCT− / OCT+ the lead's octave.
SAVE on the Setup pages saves your settings; elsewhere it grows the city again from its founding; hold it to put back the biome's music.
Hold a button for a second and a card says what it does (with a mouse: Shift-click to hold it). And there's a secret behind SEL + EDIT: take the fire truck, the police car or the ambulance out on calls (white keys 1–3 pick, then 1 and 2 turn at the next junction).

Mouse, touch, keyboard

Drag a knob up or down, or use the scroll wheel over it. Click or touch buttons and keys.
White keys 1–8: Q–I, 9–16: A–K. Black keys: 1–0, -.
Space PLAY, Enter REC, M a new city (EDIT), Esc HOME, Z / X OCT− / OCT+, ↑ ↓ SELECT.

The biomes

Every switch-on founds a new city on new land. Each biome looks, sounds and storms its own way; underneath they all play the same. Forest: deep woods, the Game Boy's wave and woodblocks, wildfires. Desert: sand and red mesas, cacti, the SID over a drone and a hand drum in Hijaz, dust storms and dust devils. Alpine: a valley under snowy peaks and pines, bells and long echoes in Lydian, blizzards and avalanches. Volcano isles: palms, turquoise shallows and a smoking volcano, a clave and a steel-drum wave, typhoons, ash and eruptions. Plains: golden grass and farms, boom-chick and pentatonic tunes, tornadoes. Beach: a sandy shore, a surf backbeat and a walking bass, sea fog and tsunamis. River lands: a wide river, ponds and reeds, shakers and long bass, floods.

Every town starts with a town hall (it grows grander with the town), a fire station, police and a hospital. Each land unlocks three specials as the city grows (the desert's last is a rocket launch site), and each has its moment on its own clock, with its own sound; the town hall's bells ring the hours. Houses by the water get docks, and boats come out on it.

What you hear is the firmware running at the FM-1's 44.1 kHz, not a recording. Running FM-1 firmware in the browser comes from Groove OS's emulator, by way of AMB-1.