NACHTFAHRT

Berlin School 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

Each layer has its button and its pages, laid out alike: the main page how much, its octave and two of its own; a layer's button again, its sound page (brightness, envelope, Reverb, Echo); once more, its Move page (Width, Time, Rate, Intro: how its filter wanders around the brightness you set). The levels are on SELECT (on a layer's pages: 1 a click, a ring in the middle shows it; on HOME's Nachtfahrt page SELECT is Energy, so you can play the keys and push it; elsewhere SELECT does nothing) and on PERFORM (SEL, white 6 held); the octaves of the Sequence, the Lead and Sequence 2 on OCT− / OCT+ on their pages (a step a press, lit while away from where the piece was loaded). The page's name is top right. On a layer's page, ALGORITHM changes its voice. Each piece remembers its own settings.

Nachtfahrt HOME

Filter: On everything: down, it shuts (a low-pass); up, it opens (a resonant high-pass); Off in the middle. For playing: not saved.
Evolve, Motion: How often the sequences change a step, and how much; Motion also how quickly the arc moves from section to section (0: Flow for ever), and how often Sequence 2 goes an octave away for a section. Hold SEL to lock the sequences.
Drift: How long a chord lasts, 2 to 64 bars, or Hold. EDIT moves on at the next bar.

Key HOME again

Tempo, Root: 60 to 160; the key's root.
Mode, Transpose: The scale; how the sequences follow the chord: Parallel (the shape moved whole), Diatonic (moved in the scale) or Bed (not moved).

Drone ENV

Pedal, Reso: The root an octave under the chord; the filter's resonance.
Phaser, Attack: The slow phaser's depth; how the chord swells in. ENV again: Colour, Release, Reverb, Echo; a third time: its Move page. ALGORITHM: Organ, Strings, Horn, Saws, Glass, Choir (a choir singing a vowel: Colour chooses it, 'oo' to 'ee'; the Move page moves it).

Sequence ARP

Density, Octave: How many of the steps sound (the least important drop out first); two octaves down to two up.
Length, Grid: 3 to 16 steps; eighths or sixteenths. ARP again: Cutoff, Decay, Reverb, Echo. ARP a third time: the Repeats; a fourth: its Move page (its Width is Sweep).
Repeats: Repeat A, A time: each note played again at an echo time (a dotted eighth, as loud as the note: the Berlin echo); Repeat B, B time: a second, into the rests. ALGORITHM: 2600, Moog, Synthi, Pulse, Glass, Pluck (a plucked string: Cutoff its brightness, Decay how long it rings).

Lead LFO

Phrases, Octave: How often it plays; two octaves down to one up. The white keys play it too, in the scale; play three notes or more and pause, and it takes them as its theme: they were the call, and a beat or two later it answers them (your rhythm, its own notes close to yours, picking up a step or two from your last, ending on the chord); your notes come back whole later in the piece; its next ideas grow out of them, each straying further, until after a while (longer with more Memory) they are its own again.
Glide, Vibrato: 1 to 150 ms; the vibrato, coming in late. LFO again: Tone, Attack, Reverb, Echo (90 and 90: far away); a third time: its Move page (its tone's wander is kept gentle). ALGORITHM: Odyssey, Mini, Flute, Theremin, Synthi.

Sequence 2 SEQ

Chance, Octave: Its notes thinned at random; its octave (with Motion, at a change of section, it may go an octave up or down for that section: the knob shows it; turn it, or press OCT−/OCT+, and what you set is its octave again).
Length, Level: Often a step shorter than the Sequence, so the two drift apart and meet again (Motion never changes it); its level. SEQ again: its sound; a third time: the Pattern page (the steps written on the white keys); a fourth: its Move page. ALGORITHM: 2600, Moog, Synthi, Pulse, Glass, Sub, Pluck.

Atmosphere SAVE

Density, Width: How busy it is; mono to wide.
Drift, Air: How quickly it changes; the air under it. SAVE again: Colour, Ring, Reverb, Echo; a third time: its Move page. ALGORITHM: None, Wind, Surf, Space, Air, Tape, Rain.

Space FX

Echo, Echo time: The tape echo's send (it ping-pongs left and right); its time, an eighth to a bar (a dotted quarter to start with).
Feedback, Reverb: How long the echo's tail lasts, 1.5 to 15 s; the plate's send. FX again: Blur, Tone, Width and Size.

Setup GLO

Tune, MIDI out: Fine tuning in cents; MIDI out over USB.
Lights, Save: The key lights; saved or not (a turn saves). The audio load shows top right.

Move a layer's button, once more

Width, Time: How far its filter may wander from the brightness you set, either way (up to 2 octaves; the Lead's, three quarters of one); how long one move takes (about 1 to 32 bars).
Rate, Intro: How often a new move starts (0: never); the bars its filter takes to open from closed when the piece starts (0: open at once). The movement is always relative to the knob: turn the knob and it all moves with it. The sound pages show it: a cyan dot on the knob's ring, and "MOVING DARKER, -1 OCT" under the lanes.

Arc GLO again

Lead in: How many bars from the piece's start before the Lead may play.
Bridge: How far each layer's filter moves, darker or brighter, in the middle section, the Bridge (up to 3 octaves; 0: none): the layers part and come together again.
Arc: How long the Sequence's slow rise to a peak and back takes; it repeats (0: none). A piece never ends by itself.
Memory: How much the Lead keeps its ideas: at 100 it holds on to a motif, at 0 it changes it nearly every pair (each piece sets its own).

Buttons

White keys play the Lead in the piece's scale, from the root up; the key it sounds is lit. Play three notes or more and pause (two beats): the Lead takes them as its theme and answers them a beat or two later (your rhythm, its own notes), in any part of the piece. Black keys (lit, dark while held) play effects while held, left to right: Take-off, Supernova, Twitter, Repeat, Shimmer, Freeze, Octave, Return, Rise (every filter opens), Close (every filter shuts), Transpose (both sequences up a fourth). In PERFORM, the solos. The scale is set on the Key page (HOME again), or by MIDI notes in on channel 1.
PLAY plays / rests. REC tapped: hold, the echo and the cloud repeat what they hold; held: the effects grid, sixteen effects on the white keys (echo: Repeat, Time, Tape stop, Shimmer; filter: Low, High, Sweep, Phaser; space: Reverb, Take-off, Freeze, Wash; moves: Octave, Return, Twitter, Supernova). 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 on a layer's pages its level, on the Nachtfahrt page Energy (PERFORM's; the knobs' rule shows it while it turns), elsewhere nothing; OCT− / OCT+ on the Sequence's, the Lead's and Sequence 2's pages its octave. ALGORITHM on a layer's page its voice (the Atmosphere: its character), on the Chords page the walk (Home, Wander, Free); PRESETS the piece (each remembers how you left it, and starts its arc from the beginning).
SEL PERFORM: the knobs are Filter (as on HOME), Wet (the whole music dry, or drowned in the echo: every layer's send), Energy (sparser or busier, and the second repeat), and Sweep (how far the Sequence's filter wanders on its own, the piece's); with Motion, Filter, Wet and Energy move by themselves (Filter between Shut 30 and Open 30, Wet 0 to +50, Energy with the arc's rise up to +50; the knobs show it), a turn of yours holding until the next section, then gliding back; a piece change returns the three to 0; hold white 6 and they are the levels (Drone, Seq, Lead, Seq 2). White keys 1–5 mute and bring back the Drone, the Sequence, the Lead, Sequence 2 and the Atmosphere (their levels kept; a muted Lead or Drone is silent, MIDI too), black keys 1–5 solo them; white 7–11, held: Sweep, Open, Shut, Drop (both sequences out), Echo (pushed); the top key (G), set apart: Forget, the Lead forgets its ideas and its theme (yours too) and thinks of new ones, as at a piece's start. The keys that do something are lit. A page's button leaves PERFORM. Hold SEL: Lock, the sequences keeping their steps (hold again: off).
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 (REC, for the effects grid) 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 (hold), V ENV (the Drone 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 NACHTFAHRT 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.