ECO-1 Experimental

a small plant playing the FM-1: its leaves are the voices, the weather plays it. 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 low leaf, 4 mid leaf, 5 top leaf, 6 stem, 7 weather (rain and wind), 8 reverb. 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 ECO-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 Setup › MIDI out page asks for (press GLO twice): each leaf's notes on its own channel (1, 2, 3 by default), the stem's on 4, and the plant's signals as CCs 20–31 on 5. Clock from a DAW: turn Sync to Clock on the Setup page (it is on by default); START grows the plant from the morning, STOP rests it, and the Grid makes the leaves fire on the beat. 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 (the stem is on SEL); SELECT steps through them. Each plant (PRESETS) remembers its own settings.

Plant HOME

Light: How strong the sun is. Light charges the leaves, the top one most: noon is busy, night sparse.
Day: How long a whole day and night takes, 30 s to 30 min (also HOME + SELECT). The clock is top left.
Warmth: The plant's metabolism: warmer fires faster and dries the soil sooner.
Spread: How strongly a firing runs down the stem to the other leaves, who answer a third above.

Stem SEL

Level, Colour: How loud the drone is (it also follows the soil: louder wet); Hum, Organ, Reed or Choir.
Interval, Tone: What sits over the root: nothing, a fifth, a fourth, an octave or the scale's third; dark to bright (it still opens up by day). OCT− / OCT+ on this page move the stem's octave.

Low, Mid, Top leaf ENV · ARP · LFO

Level, Voice: How loud; its voice from the bank: Glass, Wood, Pluck, Chime, Reed, Flute, Swell, Kalimba.
Octave, Tone: Two down to two up from its register; soft to bright.

Weather SEQ

Rain: How often showers come and how heavy. Rain fills the soil, drops landing on leaves make them fire. At 0 the plant slowly dries and wilts, the top leaf first.
Wind, Gusts: How hard it blows and how much it swells. Wind shakes the leaves (more chaos, wider leaps), sings a whistle that rises with it, and opens the reverb.
Sound: How loud the rain track and the wind's whistle are.

Space FX

Reverb, Size: The plate's send; how long it rings.
Wind verb: How far the wind opens the space: more send, longer tails, a sway in them.
Stem verb: How much of the drone goes into the reverb.

Setup GLO

Root, Tune: The key's root; fine tuning in cents.
Sync, Grid: Free: its own time. Clock: follows MIDI clock while it comes (EXT and the tempo show top right): START grows it from the morning, STOP rests it, Day counts in bars. Grid: the leaves fire on 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or triplets, or Free.

MIDI out GLO twice

Sends: Off, Notes, Notes+CC or CC: each leaf's notes on its own channel, the stem's on the fourth; the signals as CCs on the fifth: 20–22 each leaf's charge, 23–25 its water, 26 soil, 27 light, 28 rain, 29 wind, 30 the stem, 31 a spark as any leaf fires.
Channels, Lights: Which five channels (1–5 to 12–16); the key lights. CPU shows the audio load.

Buttons

Keys are the scale: each one adds or removes its note. The root stays.
PLAY grows / rests. EDIT touches the plant: a charge runs up it from the soil. REC freezes the day and the weather, and the reverb rings on.
SELECT the previous or next page; with HOME held, the day's length. ALGORITHM the mode, PRESETS the plant.
OCT− / OCT+ move the page's leaf or the stem an octave; on the other pages, the whole plant. SAVE saves; hold it to reset the plant.
A leaf's page button flashes as it fires. Hold a button for a second and a card says what it does (with a mouse: Shift-click to hold it).

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 touch (EDIT), Esc HOME, Z / X OCT− / OCT+, ↑ ↓ SELECT.

The plants

Each preset is its own plant, in its own place, with its own way with the weather:

Fern, on a forest floor: three fronds that curl when dry; a shade plant, busy even in low light.
Orchid, on a windowsill: two leaves and a flower spike. The weather is outside the glass, so wind barely touches it and rain only half waters it.
Moss, on a boulder by a stream: three spore stalks that puff spores as they fire. Thirsty, low, still in the wind.
Cactus, a saguaro in the desert: two arms and a crown. Nearly deaf to the wind, holds water for ages, and flowers when the rain comes.
Willow, by a lake: three curtains of strands that swing hardest of all.
Lotus, in a pond: never dry, two lily pads and a flower that closes at night; rain rings the water and lands on the pads.
Ivy, three vines up a brick wall: hardy, leaves fluttering.
Bamboo, three culms under misty mountains, bending in the storm.

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.