Manual

Everything the firmware does today, one chapter per page. Start with Getting started.

  1. 01Getting startedFM-1 Groove OS turns the M-VAVE FM-1 into a small groovebox: up to eight looping tracks on a tape, each with its own FM sound or drum kit, plus a scale helper, chord pads, an arpeggiator and a step sequencer. The stock synth engine still makes every sound; Groove OS replaces the screen, the buttons and the way you move around.
  2. 02TAPETAPE is the home page: your tracks (1 to 8) of recorded notes and knob moves, each looping over its own length under its own playhead. You record here, set each track's length, add and remove tracks, and reach the tape's settings and actions. Levels, mutes and solos are on MIX. HOME always leads back to TAPE.
  3. 03MIXMIX is the mixer: one channel strip per track, with its level, mute and solo. Turn SELECT one detent right of TAPE to reach it. Lengths and the rest of the arrangement stay on TAPE.
  4. 04SOUNDSOUND shapes the selected track's voice: four macros for quick changes, the voice's algorithm and LFO, and each of its six operators. The PRESETS knob, on any page, opens the preset browser that picks the voice in the first place.
  5. 05KIT and the GROOVE bankA KIT track plays eight drum pads from one track, so a whole beat needs one track instead of four. KIT shows the pads, lets you shape each one, and edits their hits on a step grid. The GROOVE bank is the set of 32 sounds built into Groove OS that the pads, and any synth track, draw on.
  6. 06SCALESCALE decides what the keybed plays: pick a root and a scale, then choose whether wrong keys slide to the nearest right note, go silent, or whether the scale lives on the white keys alone. The setting is global: every synth track, the arpeggiator, SEQ step entry and the chord pads follow it.
  7. 07CHORDCHORD turns the middle of the keybed into eight chord pads: one key, one full chord, always in the key you set on SCALE. The left hand holds performance keys that strum, invert or split the chord; four knobs decide how rich and how wide the chords are. The chord pads work on every melodic page and feed the arpeggiator and the step sequencer.
  8. 08ARPThe arpeggiator plays the notes you hold one at a time, in time with the tape, on the selected track's sound. Turn it on with ARP, hold a chord, and shape the pattern with four knobs; record it with REC or print a whole loop of it at once with SAVE.
  9. 09SEQSEQ is a step sequencer with a pattern of up to 64 steps for every track. Write steps from the keys, one note or a whole chord per step, give each step its own length, ratchet, gate, chance, transpose, accent and slide, and the pattern plays in lock with the tape on its track's sound. Several tracks can run their patterns at once; 16 stored patterns, shared by all tracks, keep the versions you want to come back to, and a chain plays them in turn. When a pattern is right, print it onto the tape with SAVE.
  10. 10PROJECTA project is the whole session: tempo, tracks, sounds, kits, patterns, automation, scale and chord settings. The FM-1 keeps three projects in its own flash, apart from the stock presets. Turn SELECT to PROJECT, the last stop on the wheel after MIX.
  11. 11MIDIThe FM-1's MIDI connections (USB and Bluetooth) are run by the stock firmware, and Groove OS listens in. Each track has its own MIDI channel, so a controller or a DAW can play and record any track. The FM-1 can follow an external MIDI clock, Program Change picks sounds, a CC map drives the panel, and DX7 voices and banks you send become track sounds.
  12. 12Settings (SETUP)SETUP holds how the machine behaves: the recording settings, the feel of the controls, MIDI and Bluetooth, and the way to the stock settings. Press GLO to open it from any page.
  13. 13Installing and recovering firmwareGroove OS is installed as a patched copy of M-VAVE's own V15 firmware. The install uses the FM-1's USB download mode, which writes only the parts of the flash that changed, checks every one of them and keeps a full backup of the old contents. The same path brings a unit back if an install ever goes wrong.
  14. 14TroubleshootingEvery chapter ends with a table of what can go wrong on its page. This chapter collects them all, so you can search one place. Each row says what you see, why it happens and what to do. If a row sends you to a chapter, the full explanation is there.