Makohai

Makohai 1.3: eight new styles, 48 new sounds, MIDI both ways.

• Eight new styles: DUB (105, the one drop), TRIBAL (125), FABLE (150), PC FM (125), BOOGIE (125, the shuffle), ZEN (60), FACTORY (185, industrial) and AMIGA (135, the demo track's breakbeat), each with its drums, bass, pad, lead, arp, sfx and effects. Eighteen in all.
• HONKYTNK and SHAKU patches, the METAL kit.
• SAVE keeps VOICES LIMIT and RESET's three pictures (settings record 16; older ones load with 80 and the first three).
• MIDI: notes with velocity, the lanes' settings as controllers (volume, pan, vibrato, portamento, cutoff, resonance, reverb, expression), pitch bend for PORTA and the slides; clock and transport out; clock in (tempo and beat), CONTINUE with song position, notes in on the marked lane (SETUP, SYNC). All MIDI out now leaves from the sound engine, in time.
• A lane faded out or at VOLUME 0 starts no voices: no sound, no MIDI, no load.
• Long runs: a message no longer stays on screen after the millisecond clock wraps (49 days); voice stealing and the pictures stay right past their counters' wraps.
• SYMPHONY's lead plays CHAOS.
• OLDSKOOL's pad plays chords, struck on the one and the three; the chip arpeggio comes on a phrase's last bar and now and then.
• EDIT opens on what plays: an empty part gets four bars of what the style plays from the bar playing on.
• STYLE (SONG, LIVE) while stopped also starts a new song: MELODY at random on every lane.
• 46 new patches (68 in all with HONKYTNK and SHAKU), in families: basses, leads, struck and plucked, organs, pads, chips.
• Waveforms for the FM operators: the PC sound card's, a square, a saw, and sixteen 8-bit single cycles drawn at power-on.
• MUTATE (SOUND): each song plays the lanes' sounds its own way, and the styles pick from four fitting sounds per lane. At 0 everything plays as before. Saved settings and sets from 1.2 load with MUTATE at 40 %.

Makohai 1.2: three new pictures, on RESET's knobs, in BACK and in DEMO.

• MORPH: a wireframe that turns, wanders over the screen and melts from shape to shape (cube, star, octahedron, twisted cube, ball, pyramid).
• BOBS: shadebobs, glowing blobs that add up where they cross, in bands of colour.
• STATUE: a marble bust of a young Greek god before a copper sky, 3D chrome text running round its outline: MAKE FIRMWARE NOT WAR.

Makohai 1.1: stereo that moves, pictures in demo style, keys that show what plays, and no more cracks.

Sound

• A voice budget (SETUP, VOICES: now, peak, LIMIT). Every voice costs the audio its time; all that sounds may cost at most LIMIT, and past it the quietest voice that is fading out stops first. ECHO on every lane in SYMPHONY took the FM-1 to 109 % of its time (a crack across the whole sound); now it stays under.
• AUTOPAN and PAN RATE (TRACKER, after PAN): each new note on the other side of the lane's pan, or a slow sweep from side to side in time (8 bars to an 8th a cycle). Every lane now starts at PAN 0; the lead and the arp at AUTOPAN 20.
• CRACKLE and BITS (sfx) at a tenth of their old level: far in the background.

Pictures

• SETUP's free knobs show pictures: SCOPE, LANES, STEREO (a goniometer), SPECTRUM (a landscape), and RESET's three knobs each pick one of CRYSTAL, TUNNEL, DOTS, PLASMA, TWIRL, STARS, FIRE, LOGO, SCOPE, SPECTRUM.
• BACK (SETUP): a picture behind the whole screen on every page, dimmed (10..60 %), CYCLE to the next one every 4, 8 or 16 bars with a cut; saved with the look.
• DEMO (SEL + HOME): the pictures full screen while the music plays, cut on the bar every 4, 8 or 16 bars with flashes, blinds, wipes, dissolves, an iris, dips and pushes; a drop cuts with a flash. PRESETS steps, ALGORITHM sets how often.

Keys

• The keys light up the notes the marked lane plays, note by note (drums and sfx: their keys as they hit).
• The keys' octave follows the marked lane to where it plays, so the lights show the real notes and what you play sits in the lane's register.

Install

• A new identity, FM-1_47625642, the same for every version from now on (1.0 reported FM-1_960, as another firmware does): the FM-1 Firmware Hub tells Makohai apart by it.
• Settings and sets saved by 1.0 are read and kept.

Makohai 1.0 (formerly Espada): the first release of a generative groovebox for the M-VAVE FM-1 in the style of early-90s PC tracker music.

• Six lanes (lead, arp, pad, bass, drums, sfx) with FM voices, five synthesized drum kits of nine hits (kick, snare, hat, open hat, clap, tom, rim shot, kettle drum, crash) and eight noise effects (wash, surf, gale, crackle, bits, impact, zap, riser); notes scroll past a fixed play line.
• Ten styles: EPIC, HYPERSPACE, FUSION, OLDSKOOL, SYMPHONY, TROPIC, STEEL, DRIFT, FUNK, RAVE, each with its chords, parts, instruments, tempo and way of playing. It starts with OLDSKOOL. Queue, blend lane by lane, launch at once, lock a lane. Every change is heard at once.
• An arp lane: arpeggios through the chord that plays, each style its own pattern and sound.
• Every style plays the tracker's effects its own way, note by note: vibrato, slides, dives, cut-off stabs, volume slides, retriggered fills, swing, a trance gate, wide stereo, orchestra hits.
• Played as in a tracker: lead notes glide in, long chords swell and fade, an echo channel on the lead; strings with bow noise, darker and longer snares and cymbals.
• One screen as a mixing desk: a group button (PLAY, SOUND, TRACKER, SONG), PRESETS through its settings, KNOB 1-4 the setting for four lanes side by side; ALGORITHM slides that window over all six lanes.
• MELODY, RHYTHM, PITCH and CHANGE per lane. The lead plays 16-bar arcs of two 8-bar periods, closed on the root.
• Instruments including piano, strings, violins, cellos, brass, a supersaw, a choir (AH VOX), an orchestra hit and a chaos instrument; stereo voices and a room (SPACE).
• Density from sparse to busy, inside the chord and its scale; ENERGY for all lanes at once.