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Groove OS 1.4

Manual

The manual for Groove OS 1.4, the release before 2.0. It is kept for anyone who went back to 1.4. The 2.0 manual is at /manual.

  1. 01· Try it hereGetting startedGroove OS turns your M-VAVE FM-1 into a groovebox: up to eight tracks of FM, virtual-analog and drum sounds, a step sequencer, an arpeggiator, chords, scenes and a performance screen, all running on the FM-1 itself. This chapter gets it installed, makes your first sound and builds your first loop. This manual describes Groove OS 1.4. New to grooveboxes? Learn on your FM-1 teaches you on the FM-1 itself, a step at a time.
  2. 02· Try it hereLearn on your FM-1Learn is six short courses that run on the FM-1 itself: no computer, no screen but the FM-1's own, no connection. Take it on a train or to the park. A card says what to try next, you play, and the FM-1 notices when you have really done it. The music you make is yours, and it keeps playing while you learn.
  3. 03· Try it hereThe controlsEvery screen of Groove OS works the same way, so you only learn the controls once. ALGORITHM is the cursor, K1 to K4 change what the cursor is on, SEL opens it, HOME goes back. This chapter names every control, explains the three kinds of screen (views, menus and editors), and covers SHIFT, undo, help and the keys.
  4. 04· Try it hereTRACKSTRACKS is the home view: your music as one lane per track, up to eight, with the tempo and the click at the top. This is where you select a track, turn its four macros, add and remove tracks, and reach each track's settings. A tap of HOME leads back here from every view but PERFORM.
  5. 05· Try it hereSOUNDEvery sound track has a sound of its own, FM or virtual analog, and you shape it three ways: with the four macros on TRACKS, in the SOUND view and its editors, and by picking a different sound in the browser. This chapter covers all three, plus the four banks A to D that hold the sounds, loading sound packs from the website, copying sounds between tracks and sending DX7 voices from a computer.
  6. 06· Try it hereKITA KIT track is a whole drum kit on one track: eight pads, programmed and mixed as one part. You play the pads from the keys, write beats on a drum-machine step grid, and shape every pad's tune, decay, level and send. Drums take one of your eight tracks, not four.
  7. 07Your own soundsYour own kick on the pads. Bring the drums you love to the FM-1: a kick you recorded, a snare from a sample pack, a clap from your phone. Build a kit of eight pads on Your own sounds on the website, press Add to FM-1, and the FM-1 plays them like its own drums, from the keys and the step grid, with every pad's tune, decay, level and sends. Your songs remember them.
  8. 08· Try it hereSEQThe sequencer writes music one step at a time. Every sound track has its own pattern, drawn as a grid: steps across, the notes of your scale down. All the patterns play together, each with its own track's sound, alongside anything you have recorded. This chapter covers the grid, stacked notes, step settings and conditions, parameter locks, DICE, stored patterns and chains. Drum tracks use the KIT grid instead, which works in much the same way.
  9. 09· Try it hereKEYSKEYS is not a screen you play on; it is a layer over the keybed. What you set here holds on every screen: the notes you play are passed through your scale and your chords before any track hears them. Set a key and a scale once and every wrong note becomes a right one. Switch the chords on and one finger plays a whole chord.
  10. 10· Try it hereARPThe arpeggiator turns a held chord into a pattern of single notes, in time with the loop, on the selected track. Hold a chord, pick a mode and a rate, and the picture shows exactly what it will play. LATCH keeps it going after you let go, and PRINT records it onto the track.
  11. 11· Try it hereMIX and FXMIX is the mixer. Each track has a strip with its level, mute, solo and two sends, and the MAIN strip is the whole mix. The effects come in two places. TRACK FX belongs to one track: DRIVE, CRUSH, FILTER and SLICER, before its level. MAIN FX is shared by every track: the REVERB and the DELAY that the sends feed, then FILTER, DRIVE, CHORUS and PHASER on the whole mix.
  12. 12· Try it herePERFORMPERFORM is the stage view: a screen for playing a song live, built to be read in a dark room at arm's length. The keys become the performance surface: white keys mute tracks and trigger punch-in effects, black keys launch scenes, and the four knobs are throws that sweep the whole mix. While the music plays, PERFORM is locked against accidents.
  13. 13· Try it hereRecording and undoYou can play a part into a track, keep the loop you just played without having pressed record, turn a pattern into a recording, and move knobs while recording so the sound moves on every pass. Everything you do on any track can be taken back: undo works across all tracks and says what it undid.
  14. 14· Try it herePROJECTPROJECT is where your songs live: three slots on the FM-1, an automatic save that brings the session back after a power cut, a clean page to begin from, and a web page that copies projects to your computer and back. Songs to start from come with every sound pack. Everything in a song is saved: tracks, sounds, kits, recordings, patterns, scenes, mix and effects.
  15. 15· Try it hereMIDI and syncGroove OS listens to MIDI over USB, Bluetooth and the wired MIDI port, as the stock FM-1 routes them. Each track has its own MIDI channel, so a controller or a DAW can play and record any track. The FM-1 can send its clock to a drum machine, or follow someone else's. A track can play an external synth instead of a sound. Control changes drive the panel, and Program Change picks sounds. Over USB, a web page can also follow the FM-1 and play its panel.
  16. 16· Try it hereSETTINGSSETTINGS is how the machine behaves: the synth's bend and glide, MIDI, the controls' timing, the hints, startup, Bluetooth, storage and the about page with the crash log. It is also where Learn opens. Press GLO to open it, and again to go back. Inside a course a tap of GLO shows Learn's card instead: hold GLO for a second there to open SETTINGS.
  17. 17Install, update and the way backGroove OS is installed from a web page, over one USB cable, from Chrome or Edge. The same page updates it, and the same page puts M-VAVE's own V15 back if you want it. This chapter explains what the install does, how to update safely, what the way back to V15 costs, and what to do if an install is interrupted.
  18. 18· Try it hereTroubleshootingWhen something looks wrong, start here. This chapter covers the three safety nets (safe mode, the crash log, reinstalling), what to do if the screen stays dark, and a table of the messages and problems you are most likely to meet. Each chapter also ends with a short table for its own screen.
  19. 19What's new in 1.4Groove OS 1.4 puts your own drum sounds on the FM-1's kit pads. Bring a kick you recorded, a snare from a sample pack or a clap from your phone to Your own sounds on the website, or start from one of six ready kits, mix and match any pad, and shape them into a kit of eight. It also brings Learn, on the FM-1 itself: six short courses, from your first groove to playing it live, offline, anywhere, with nothing to add. The rest are smaller things made better, from a steadier MIDI clock to the Sounds page, where you add sound packs and drum kits before you go. Everything here is a change from 1.3, apart from one small fix after it, in 1.4.1: scenes bring back each track's pattern, not only the mutes. The chapters it links to have the details. What 1.3, 1.2 and 1.1 brought is further down.