PROJECT

PROJECT 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, recorded notes and knob moves, patterns, scenes, mix and effects, and which samples your tracks and pads play.

The slots

SELECT turns to PROJECT, the last view. Each slot shows its name, the number of tracks, the tempo and the size, with a small thumbnail of its lanes. A square after PROJECT in the header (and on every other screen) means the session has changes you have not saved. An empty slot says SAVE HERE TO KEEP IT.

ALGORITHM moves between the slots and NEW.

The slot menu

RENAME and DUPLICATE work on the project that is loaded: on a slot that holds another project they are dimmed and say so (LOAD IT TO RENAME IT).

Naming a new song. A song you have not saved yet can have its name before its first save. On PROJECT, an empty slot's hint reads SEL: NAME IT, SAVE IT: SEL opens the slot menu, RENAME names the session, and SAVE HERE saves it into that slot under that name.

Saving

Press SAVE. Where it saves:

• On PROJECT itself, with the cursor on a slot, SAVE saves into that slot.
• On any other screen, a session you loaded from a slot goes back to that slot.
• A new session goes into the first empty slot.
• With all three slots full, PROJECT opens on slot 1 and says ALL SLOTS FULL: PICK ONE; choose a slot and save there.

A new song's first save names it. A song that was never saved and has no name of its own opens RENAME, with the name it would get already filled in (PROJECT 1: the lowest number no saved project uses), and says NAME IT, THEN SAVE. Type over the name (the first key you press starts a new one), then press SAVE or SEL to save it. HOME does not save: it says NOT SAVED and the song stays as it was. A song that already has a name, or came from a slot, saves at once.

While the music plays, SAVE waits for the stop. It says SAVES WHEN YOU STOP, the SAVE light blinks, and the save runs as soon as the music stops: press PLAY, or anything else that stops it. Press SAVE again while it blinks and the save is called off (SAVE CALLED OFF). Loading a project, starting a new page or a course takes the session, so that also calls a waiting save off. If the FM-1 is still working out where the hits are in a sample you just recorded, the save waits for that too (SAVES AFTER ANALYSIS).

Saving over a different project asks first (SAVE OVER PROJECT 2?, ITS SAVED PROJECT IS REPLACED, or REPLACED WHEN YOU STOP while the music plays). The save itself runs with the music stopped, with a progress bar and the words KEEP THE POWER ON.

A new save is written in full before the old copy is let go, so a save that cannot complete keeps the old one (SAVE FAILED: OLD SAVE KEPT). A project has a size limit that a normal song stays well under; if a project is over it, the FM-1 says PROJECT TOO BIG and how big it is.

A clean page

NEW offers EMPTY, a clean page with sounds ready: four tracks (a VA drum kit, a VA bass, FM keys and an FM lead) with their mix and effects, no notes, 120 BPM, no swing, two bars, the click on, in A minor with IN KEY on. It is also what a factory-fresh FM-1 starts on. SEL on it starts it, or asks first if the session has unsaved changes or the music is playing (EMPTY? UNSAVED CHANGES ARE LOST). Starting EMPTY never changes your STARTUP setting.

Under EMPTY, MORE says where songs to start from are: GROOVE-OS.COM/SOUNDS, where they come with every sound pack (see Songs inside the sound packs). The website's Projects page backs up your slots and puts them back (see Back up, share and restore on the web).

Autosave and resume

You rarely lose work. While the music is stopped and you have left the controls alone for a few seconds, the session is saved automatically every two minutes (when it has changed), and when you leave PROJECT, into a scratch slot of its own. At power-on, or after a power cut or a crash, the FM-1 resumes it: the loop you left is back, with its sounds. The autosave is not one of your three slots and never replaces them.

SETTINGS > STARTUP chooses what happens at power-on: RESUME (the default) or NEW (start from a blank session: four empty tracks, 120 BPM, in C major with IN KEY off, keeping only your favourite and recent sounds). The power-on message says RESUMED and the project's name when a session came back; RESUME SKIPPED: IT CRASHED means the last attempt to bring it back crashed, so it was left alone.

What a project keeps

Everything: tracks and their sounds (FM and VA), kits with all 16 pads, the samples your sample tracks and pads play, the working pattern and the 16 stored patterns, chains, parameter locks, recorded notes and knob moves, scenes, the mix, the effects chain, tempo and swing, the key and scale, IN KEY and the chord settings, track names and octaves, and your favourite and recently used sounds.

Projects with samples

A project keeps which samples its sample tracks and kit pads play, and how they play them: trim, chops, tune, level, loops, reverse and warp. A project can use up to 32 samples. The sound itself stays in SAMPLES on the FM-1 (see SAMPLES), where each sample says how many saved projects use it.

Load a project whose samples are not on this FM-1 (one from another FM-1, or from after you deleted a sample) and the FM-1 says 2 SAMPLES MISSING. The missing sounds are marked as missing where they sit, a kit pad plays a stand-in drum in its place, and the first PLAY says 2 MISSING · GROOVE-OS.COM/SAMPLES.

Careful: a project that uses samples or pads 9 to 16 of a kit opens on Groove OS 1.4 without them: sample pads play stand-in drums, sample tracks play an FM or VA sound, and only pads 1 to 8 play.

Back up, share and restore on the web

The website has a Projects page that copies projects between the FM-1 and your computer over USB. Nothing is uploaded to a server: the files go straight between the two.

1. Open the Projects page in Chrome or Edge and sign in (an account is all it needs).
2. Connect the FM-1 with its USB cable and press connect FM-1. The page shows the three slots and the autosave, with their names and sizes.
3. download saves any of them to your computer as a .groove file, named after the project.
4. upload puts a .groove file into a slot. The page names the project it will replace and asks to confirm. The FM-1 checks the whole file before it replaces anything; if anything fails, the slot keeps what it had. The FM-1 says IMPORTED and the project's name when it is done.

Two more buttons sit under the list. back up the session saves the session into the autosave as it is now, then downloads it, so unsaved work is backed up too. export all downloads every project and the autosave as separate files. refresh the list asks the FM-1 again. The FM-1 must be stopped and not busy saving: otherwise the page says the FM-1 is playing or the FM-1 is busy, and nothing is changed.

A .groove file is one project, exactly what the FM-1 stores, nothing converted: it is also the way to share a song. A project goes onto an FM-1 that stores projects in the same format it was saved in, and the page tells you when it does not. It holds the names of its samples, not their sound (see Projects with samples).

Note: when you switch between Groove OS 1.4 and 2.0, your projects come back on the FM-1, each in its own slot, with a copy in your downloads as .groove files. If one can't go back, the page says so: put it back with upload. 1.4 can't play 2.0's sample tracks. See Moving between 1.4 and 2.0.

Songs inside the sound packs

Every sound pack on the Sounds page has two or three songs made only with its own kit and sounds (CORE's are in different styles), to play, take apart or start a song from. They are listed on the sound pack's page (for example /sounds/lo-fi), under Songs inside, each playable in the browser. A song keeps its own copy of every sound, so it plays the same whatever banks A to D hold, with or without its sound pack (see Songs keep their sounds).

Add song to FM-1 connects over USB (Chrome or Edge, signed in with your Groove OS account) and puts the song into an empty project slot. It never writes over a project without asking: if all three slots are full, the page asks which one to replace, and offers to export it first.

When nothing is unsaved and the music is stopped, the FM-1 opens the song right away: press PLAY. Otherwise the song is only added, so nothing you are working on is lost: when you are ready, SELECT to PROJECT, pick the slot, SEL, LOAD, and PLAY.

The sounds are free to use in your own music, commercial releases included; don't resell or share the sound packs or the song files themselves.

SETTINGS > STORAGE

SETTINGS > STORAGE shows the free space and has RESET BANK (puts one of the sound banks A to D back to the FM-1's factory sounds) and ERASE ALL (erases all three project slots, and asks). See Settings.

Troubleshooting