GRAV-1 Experimental

a star and its planets play the FM-1: each planet a voice, the drums set their years, gravity and the weather do the rest. 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 the star, 4 planets 1–3, 5 planets 4–6, 6 the drums, 7 the weather and the radio, 8 the echo and the 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 GRAV-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 planet's notes on its own channel (1–6 by default), the drums on 7 (notes 36–41, a lane each), and the system's signals as CCs on 8: 20–25 each planet's tide, 26 the star's roar, 27 the dust, 28 the Great Year, 29 a flare. Clock from a DAW: Sync on the Setup page (Clock by default); START plays from step one, STOP rests it, and the steps and the orbits follow the clock. 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; SELECT walks them all, each planet's page in turn, and the dots at the right of the knob strip show where you are. Each system (PRESETS) remembers its own settings.

System HOME

Planets: One to six; the rest go quiet (their lanes still drum).
Tempo: 30–90 BPM (also HOME + SELECT). A year is 32 bars over a lane's hits.
Wander: How much a planet's phrase changes each year.
Phrase: How many notes a planet plays round its orbit: Auto (more for the slow ones) or 3–8.
Orbit view: A minute untouched here: the orbits fill the screen and the lights play along (each planet a page button and its note's key, the drums black keys 1–6, OCT± the beats). Any touch brings the screen back.

Star ENV

Level: The star's loudness, and the ceiling its roar and flares stay under.
Colour: Its noise, and its colour: White, Pink, Brown (a brown dwarf), Blue (a blue giant), Violet, Grey, Black (a black hole, crackling), Yellow (radio hiss).
Roar, Flares: How often it builds into a low roar; how often it flares.

Planet ARP · ALGORITHM / SEL picks which

Level: Its loudness, and its size: bigger planets swell smaller ones as they pass.
Instrument: Sixteen: Drone, Glass bell, Pluck, Soft keys, Choir, Laser, Ether, Ring hiss, and the dark ones: Abyss, Dark choir, Cello, Gong, Toll, Whisper, Cold pad, Dusk organ.
Ellipse, Octave: A circle to a long ellipse: it warms and cools on every orbit. Two octaves down or up (also OCT− / OCT+).

Gravity LFO

Tide, Reach: How much a passing neighbour swells a planet, and from how far.
Wake: How loud a dormant planet sounds when a tide wakes it.
Great year: All: the outermost planet's year, dormant ones too. Active: only those that play.

Weather LFO twice

Dust: How often a dust cloud comes. A Mellow closes over the whole mix as it thickens, warmer, softer and grainy, then opens out again as it thins.
Asteroids: How often a stray rock crosses, swelling the planets it passes, rumbling.
Comets: How often one falls into the star, ringing bells, and burns up.
Events: How loud the rumble and the bells are. Black keys 1–3 call each now.

Pulse SEQ

Lane: Kick, Pulsar, Sonar, Geiger, Rim, Shaker; lane n is planet n's. The white keys are its 16 steps, black keys 1–6 pick it. Hold SEQ for the sequencer: the whole bank on screen, SELECT one of eight banks (it plays from the next bar), OCT− / OCT+ or black keys the lane.
Binding: What each hit does to the planet: Off, Pump, Blip, Flicker, Nudge.
Drums, Evolve: Their level; at each Great Year Shift moves a hit or two, Morph also adds or takes one (and the planets move to new orbits).

Drift SEQ twice

Change: The drums move to another bank: Off, Next, or Random from the Pool. A fill plays the bar before, and the planets glide to their new orbits.
Every: Great yr (with the chord; EDIT brings it) or every 4–64 bars.
Pool, Fill: The banks it uses (1–2 to 1–8); how busy the fill is.

Kit SEQ three times

Kit: The drums' sounds: Probe (kick, pulsar, sonar, geiger, rim, shaker), Deep Field (heart, static, chime, relay, drip, breath), Ritual (frame drum, block, log, shaker, clave, rain).
Tune, Decay: Every drum up or down an octave; shorter or longer.
Reverb: How much of the drums goes to the plate.

Moons FX held

Black keys 1–6, white keys 1–8: While FX is held: a planet, then an effect's moon round it, on or off (three at most): Tide, Veil, Halo, Echo, Sway, Chorus, Phaser, Ring.
As they orbit: Each effect ebbs and flows once round its planet, slower round bigger planets. A planet passing close may capture another's moon.

Space FX

Echo, Reverb: A dotted-eighth echo; the plate (more, longer). The far planets send most.
Radio, Width: A band of hiss and the odd falling whistler; how wide the planets spread.

Setup GLO

Root, Mode: The key; a scale for the keys to start from.
Tune, Sync: Fine tuning in cents; Free, or Clock: follows MIDI clock while it comes (EXT and the tempo top right). SAVE here saves all ten systems.

Display GLO twice

Theme: Deep space, Nebula, Aurora, Red planet, Phosphor, Redtail, Mono. The planets keep their warm-to-cold colours and the star its own.
Starfield, Orbits, Tide lines: How bright each is; 0 hides it.

MIDI out GLO three times

Sends, Channels: Off, Notes, Notes+CC or CC; which eight channels (1–8 to 9–16).
Lights, CPU: The key lights; the audio load.

Buttons

Keys are the scale: each one adds or removes its note. The root stays. On Pulse they are the steps, on Weather black keys 1–3 call the weather.
PLAY grows / rests. EDIT the Great Year now: the chord moves, the drums evolve. REC eclipse: the orbits and the weather hold, the space rings on.
SELECT every page in turn; with HOME held, the tempo. ALGORITHM and SEL the planet (on Pulse, the lane), PRESETS the system.
OCT− / OCT+ the selected planet's octave. SAVE on the Setup pages saves; elsewhere it starts the system again; hold it to put the system back to its recipe.
ARP flashes as the selected planet plays. 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 the Great Year (EDIT), Esc HOME, Z / X OCT− / OCT+, ↑ ↓ SELECT.

The systems

Ten, one for each of the star's colours and two more: Sol (yellow), Lumen (white), Rosette (pink), Ember (a brown dwarf, dusty, an abyss under it), Rigel (a blue giant), Veil (violet), Cinder (grey), Horizon (a black hole: the darkest and slowest, every voice a dark one, a quiet drifting planet), Kuiper (cold, slow, full of dormant worlds and comets) and Nova (quick, bright, flaring).

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.