Recording and undo

You 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. This chapter is about notes and knob moves. Recording sound, from USB or from the FM-1 itself, is the SAMPLER's.

Recording a loop

REC records your notes onto the selected track, whatever kind of track it is, a SAMPLE track included. Sound is recorded on the SAMPLER only, where REC takes a take of sound instead (see Recording). PLAY starts the music on the press and stops it on the release; hold it and turn K1 to set the tempo without stopping.

To record a first loop:

1. Select the track (ALGORITHM) and pick a sound (turn PRESETS).
2. Press REC. A large numeral counts the beats of the one-bar count-in. The click sounds even if CLICK is off.
3. Play. The loop goes round; keep adding notes if you like.
4. Press REC to stop recording. The music keeps playing.
5. Press PLAY to stop.

While recording:

• The left and right edges of the screen's body light up in the signal colour, the header's transport glyph is a red dot, and you cannot change track (RECORDING T1 - REC TO STOP: stop recording first).
• Recording is an overdub: what the track already has keeps playing and your new notes are added. There is no replace mode. To start over, clear the track (hold HOME+REC on it) or undo the take.
• One REC session is one take. Undo removes it as one piece.
• The track loops over its own length (set in the TRACK menu, 1 to 8 bars, 4/4).
• Everything you play is recorded: the keys, the chord pads, the arpeggiator (at its exact grid time) and incoming MIDI. While REC is on, the notes a sequencer pattern plays are written too, each onto the track that plays them, at their exact time: a pattern running on another track gets its notes on that track's loop as well. PRINT writes a pattern without a take of your own (see below). A track that plays a printed pattern has nothing more written onto it.

Pro tip: to add to a track, leave the music playing, select the track and press REC. With LAUNCH on BAR, recording starts cleanly on the next bar line.

Metronome, count-in and quantise

The click, count-in and input quantise are on the TIME row and the TIME menu of TRACKS, and on keys you press while holding HOME: A4 CLICK, B4 COUNT-IN, F4 and G4 QUANT (the toast says what it did: CLICK ON, COUNT-IN OFF, QUANT 1/16). A blank session starts with the click on, count-in on and quantise 1/16; EMPTY starts with the click on too. With QUANT on, notes snap to the nearest 1/16 as they are recorded; with it off they stay where you played them. The sequencer and the arpeggiator are never quantised: they are already on the grid.

Launch quantise

While the music plays, LAUNCH decides when REC, mutes, solos, and pattern and length changes happen.

Set it in the TIME menu, or hold HOME and press C4, D4 or E4 (the toast says LAUNCH OFF, LAUNCH BEAT or LAUNCH BAR). While something waits, it blinks. Press REC again before the line to cancel a waiting recording. A note you play up to a 32nd before the line still belongs to the new take. Stop, track select, undo, redo, clear and levels are always immediate. The SAMPLER's REC does not follow LAUNCH: it waits for the bars you chose there (see Bars).

Capture: keep what you just played

You do not have to press REC to keep a good idea. Play along with the music running, and when a pass was good, press HOME+SAVE: the last loop of the selected track, its notes and its knob moves, becomes a take on the track.

1. Select a track and press PLAY. Leave REC off.
2. Play along until you have played something you like.
3. Hold HOME and press SAVE.

You do not have to hit the loop's end exactly. Press within a beat after the loop comes round and capture keeps the pass that just ended, whole, not one that misses its first notes. Later than that, it keeps the last loop's length of time up to the press.

The toast says how long it was (T3 CAPTURED 2 BARS) and the take can be undone like any other. If it says PLAY, THEN CAPTURE, the music was stopped (capture only listens while it plays); NOTHING TO CAPTURE means no notes or knob moves were played in the last loop. Capture remembers the last 128 note events and 64 knob moves.

On the SAMPLER, HOME+SAVE keeps sound instead of notes: what the input just heard (see Capture what you just heard). Capture of notes works on every other page, on a SAMPLE track too.

Pro tip: loop the music and just play. When a pass works, press HOME+SAVE as the loop comes round: up to a beat late still keeps that pass.

PRINT: a pattern or an arpeggio becomes a recording

On the SEQ screen, HOME+SAVE prints the pattern onto the track, and on the ARP screen it prints the arpeggio of the chord you hold, or of the last chord you played if your fingers are up: one press, one take, covering the track's whole length. Right away the arp switches off on that track, so the copy plays and the arp does not double it (PRINTED 2 BARS -> T1 · ARP OFF). After a print the track plays the notes whether the pattern is on or not. If there is nothing to print, the toast says so (PATTERN EMPTY, ALREADY PRINTED, FULL).

Knob moves

Recording captures the knobs as well as the notes. With REC on and the music playing, turn a knob of the selected track and the move is written where the playhead is and replays every loop. The knobs that record are:

• the track's four macros (see SOUND);
• the track's level and its two sends (on MIX and TRACK FX), and TRACK FX's FILTER;
• seven effect values on MAIN FX: the filter's cutoff and resonance, the reverb's and the delay's LEVEL, the chorus and phaser MIX, and DRIVE's GAIN.

An effect value is global (one chain for all tracks), so a lane on any track moves it.

Touch mode. While your hand is on a knob, what the lane had under it is replaced; when you let go, the lane goes back to what it had, so the rest of the loop stays as it was. Moves play back smoothly: the knob's steps are joined into ramps.

Each track draws its moves as lanes, one per knob, in the knob's colour: hold SEL on TRACKS to see them, or open AUTOMATION in the TRACK menu (the row says how many lanes the track has).

Clearing a lane happens in one place, TRACK menu > AUTOMATION: turn ALGORITHM to the lane and press SEL. The toast names it by the knob's place, not the sound's own word for it: K1's lane says TONE CLEARED, K2's ATTACK CLEARED, K3's DECAY CLEARED and K4's CHAR CLEARED, whatever the macros are called on that sound. HOME+REC brings it back. Holding SEL while you turn a knob never clears anything: it moves the value ten at a time.

A track holds 96 breakpoints in all. If a recording would run out it thins the move harder and finally stops writing, while the knob still sounds. On FM tracks, a macro move takes effect from the next note, not inside a note you are holding. Lanes cannot be reshaped (no depth, offset or smoothing): record again or clear them.

Undo across tracks

A tap of HOME+REC takes back the newest thing you did on any track, and HOME+PLAY brings it back. They work in order, up to 16 steps, wherever you are, PERFORM included. A toast names what was undone (UNDO T3 TAKE, UNDO T3 DICE, UNDO DELETE T5), and what was brought back (REDO T3 TAKE).

After each new thing undo can take back, once the toasts before it are done and nothing is recording, a toast tells you how: HOME+REC: UNDO T3 DICE. It uses the same names as the table below and shows once for each new undo step. After an undo the toast is the usual UNDO T3 DICE.

On the SAMPLER a tap of HOME+REC is the SAMPLER's own undo instead: one step of what you did to its keys, not the tracks' undo above (see Undo, retake and delete).

Careful: pattern edits (typed notes, a DICE roll on a sound track and the pattern part of a track's CLEAR included) and lock edits keep only their newest undo each: an edit by hand after one ends it. Undo brings the notes of a cleared pattern or step back, but not the parameter locks it dropped.

Holding HOME+REC longer is not undo: held for half a second a ring fills and names the delete it will do, and at 1.5 seconds it does it (with a question). Let go in between and the toast says CANCELLED: nothing happens. What the hold deletes depends on where you are: it clears the selected track on TRACKS, MIX and SOUND, deletes a slot on PROJECT and a key's sound on the SAMPLER.

Troubleshooting