DUB-1

dub techno for the FM-1, in the browser: the same code the FM-1 runs

The FM-1

Turn your phone sideways for bigger controls.

Knobs: turn with the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down turn faster. Buttons and keys: Space or Enter presses, held as long as you hold it; Shift with Space keeps a button held until you press it again. Keys: Left and Right arrows move between them.

Off. Sound starts when you switch it on. Keyboard shortcuts

Screen reader

The screen says:

Who reads the screen out My own screen reader This page's voice Nobody

What the screen shows, in words: the page and its knobs, a value as you turn it, the piece, the chord as it moves, every message. The same words as the FM-1 Screen Reader says for the FM-1 itself. This page's voice is eSpeak NG (GPL-3.0), running in the page.

Pages and knobs

One page a layer, each on its own button. The levels are on OCT− / OCT+ (on a layer's page: 5 a press, held on; both together, quickly: the layer muted or back) and on PERFORM's mix (SEL, white 6 held). SELECT steps through the pages as their buttons sit on the panel: Space (FX), Chord (ENV), Bass (LFO), Setup (GLO), Dub (HOME), Noise (SAVE), Pings (ARP), Drums (SEQ); the page's name is top right, and the dots under it show where you are. A button with one page stays on it pressed again; one with several steps through them. A layer's button pressed again opens its sound page: four knobs that shape its voice, most 0 in the middle (the voice as it is), −50 to +50 (the chord's Attack and the pings' Bend 0 to 100, from the voice's own). On an FM voice, a third press opens its FM page: the algorithm (drawn on the screen), the upper operators' ratio, the feedback, and an LFO in time with the bars (the chord's filter, the pings' brightness, the bass's bite; on any voice). A knob centred on 0 stops there on its way through (three clicks to leave it). On a layer's page, ALGORITHM changes its voice (the chord: Saws, Keys, Organ, Pad, Bell, Tonewheel, Noise; the pings: Blip, Marimba, Glass, Wood, Drop; the bass: Sub, Punch, Rubber, Pluck, Growl; the drums' kit: Tight, Deep, Punch, Soft, Dusty). Each piece remembers its own settings.

Dub HOME

Filter: The DJ filter on the music (the kick left out): down, under water; up, thin and bright; Off in the middle, where the knob stops on its way through. For playing: not saved, kept across pieces.
Evolve: How restless and loose it is: the stab and shaker patterns turn, bars go without a stab, ping notes change, the drums' and the bass's phrase plan (A A A B) changes more often, the kick's shape wanders; at 0 it all tightens. Hold SEL to lock the groove.
Motion: The arrangement, in three regions (marked on the ring): under 40 the loop holds, Full only; 40 to 70 a Groove or Thin now and then; from 70 Breaks too. Also how far the filter sweeps, how much the echo wanders.
Drift: How long a chord lasts, 2 to 64 bars, or Hold. The thin line under the phrase's dots, top left, fills on the way to the next. EDIT moves on at the next bar.

Chord ENV

Density, Throws: One to six stabs a bar, off the beat; how often a stab is thrown into the echo (50: about one in eight; 100: one in three; 0: never).
Wet, Cutoff: The stab dry against its echo (up: mostly the echo); where the resonant low-pass sits. (Decay is on the chord's sound page.)

Pings ARP

Density, Octave: How many notes each of the four loops (13, 17, 23, 29 eighths) holds; the pings two octaves down to two up.
Wet, Cloud: The pings dry against their echo (0: up front; 100: almost all echo); how much of the reverb goes through the granular cloud.

Bass LFO

Density, Octave: How many of the groove's notes play (100: all; less, some left out, the bar's first kept); an octave down or up.
Groove, Fifth: Drone, Offbeat, Dotted, Sync or Roller, sparse to busy; how often it leans on the fifth.

Drums SEQ

Density, Hits: The kick: its shape a phrase at a time (none, the downbeat, one and three, four with two and four ghosted, four on the floor) around this, 100 always four; how many shaker sixteenths, and the open hat off the beat.
Hats, Tone: The hats against the kick (about ±12 dB); the hats dark to bright. (Duck is on PERFORM.)

Noise SAVE

Density, Air: A crackle groove ringing on the chord: how many hits in two bars; the quiet hiss under it.
Tone, Decay: The rings darker or brighter; how long each hit rings. Its level on OCT− / OCT+. ALGORITHM its character: Vinyl, Tape, Dust, Room, Machine.
SAVE again: Noise space: Width, Plate, Echo: the noise mono to wide, into the plate, into the echo; LFO: the rings' tone swept over a bar.

Space FX

Echo, Echo time: The tape echo's send; its time, an eighth to a bar (dotted eighth the classic).
Feedback, Reverb: How long the echo's tail lasts, 1.5 to 15 s (each repeat blurrier and darker than the last); the plate's send. FX again: the Echo page, Blur, Tone, Width and Size.

Setup GLO

Tune: Fine tuning in cents, for every piece.
MIDI out, Lights: MIDI out over USB; the key lights and the buttons' glow. The audio load shows top right.

Key HOME again

Tempo, Root: 90 to 140 (also HOME + SELECT, from any page); the key's root.
Mode, Swing: The scale (as ALGORITHM sets it off the Dub page); the off sixteenths late.

Buttons

Keys are the scale: each one adds or removes its note. The root stays. A lit key (a pressed one, to a screen reader) is in the scale.
PLAY plays / rests. REC tapped: dub hold, the echo and the cloud repeat what they hold; held: the effects grid, sixteen effects on the white keys (echo: Throw, Time x2, Tape stop, Swell; filter: Low, High, Wah, Phone; space: Verb, Crash, Freeze, Wash; rhythm: Stutter, Gate, Siren, Riser). EDIT a tap: the Chords page; held: the next chord, on the next bar; held on: new chords. Every long press says what it did on a card in the middle.
SELECT the previous or next page (in the panel's order); with HOME held, the tempo. ALGORITHM on a layer's page its voice, on the Chords page the walk (Home, Wander, Free), elsewhere the screen (ripples, scope, spectrum); the mode is on the Key page (HOME again); PRESETS the piece (each remembers how you left it).
SEL PERFORM: the knobs are the master actions, Filter (as on HOME), Wet (the whole music dry, or drowned in the echo), Energy (the pings, shaker and stabs thinner or busier), the first three 0 in the middle, and Duck (how far each beat pushes the rest down, the piece's own); hold white 6 (the slowly blinking key) and they are the mix (chord, pings, bass, drums). The white keys 1–5 mute and bring back the chord, pings, bass, kick and hats (their levels kept: the same mutes as OCT− + OCT+), and the black keys 1–5 above them solo them; white 7–11, held, throw every stab into the echo, push the filter open, shut it, drop the floor (the kick and the bass), push the echo. The keys that do something are lit. A page's button or SELECT leaves PERFORM: the keys are the scale again (the mutes and solos stay). Hold SEL: Lock, each phrase keeping the kick, the drums' and the bass's plan and the noise's groove (hold again: off).
OCT− / OCT+ on a layer's page (Chord, Pings, Bass, Drums, Noise, and their sound pages) its level, 5 a press (held: on); both together and let go within a second, the layer muted or back, its level kept (as PERFORM's white 1–5; held 5 s on the FM-1: the update mode). Elsewhere they do nothing. SAVE the Noise page (again: Noise space; held: a nudge to the noise); GLO held saves (held on: the piece back to its recipe).
Hold a layer's button (ENV, ARP, LFO, SEQ) for half a second: a nudge, its sound a small step somewhere new, pulled back to the piece's (with a mouse: Shift-click to hold it, click again to let go).

Mouse and touch

Drag a knob up or down, or use the scroll wheel over it.
Click or touch buttons and keys. Several fingers at once work on a touch screen.
Combinations with a mouse: Shift-click (or right-click) a button to hold it down, click again to let go.

Keyboard

Tab goes through the knobs, the buttons and the keys. A knob turns with ↑ ↓ (or ← →), faster with Page Up Page Down.
A button or key: Space or Enter presses it, as long as you hold it. Shift+Space keeps a button held (HOME, to turn SELECT for the tempo) until you press it again.
The keys are one stop: ← → move between them.

Shortcuts, while the FM-1 has the focus (switch them off above if they get in the way of your screen reader's own):

White keys 1–8: Q–I, 9–16: A–K. Black keys 1–11: 1–0, -.
Space PLAY, Enter REC (dub hold), V ENV (the Chord page), Esc HOME, Z / X OCT− / OCT+ (when no button or key has the focus).
↑ ↓ turn SELECT (when no knob has the focus).

Saving

Saving (GLO held) keeps your scale and sound in this browser, as the FM-1 keeps them in its memory. Factory reset forgets them. It is the firmware, not a recording: what you hear is DUB-1 running, at the FM-1's 44.1 kHz. The idea of running FM-1 firmware in the browser comes from Groove OS's emulator.