Introduction

MONO2K turns the M-VAVE FM-1 into a small Monomachine: six mono machines, a 64-step sequencer that locks any parameter to any step, and a lofi bus that breaks the sound on purpose.

Each of the six tracks plays one machine: a sine, two kinds of noise, a chip, three kinds of FM, a supersaw and a pulse, a chord, digital waves, a voice, and three FX machines that work on the track before them. Every track has the Monomachine's chain after its machine: an amp envelope, a band of filters, distortion, an EQ, rate reduction and a delay of its own, then MONO2K's bits, wavefold and XOR.

The sequencer is the Monomachine's, with the modern Elektron conditions: each step trigs the amp, the filter's envelope and the LFOs independently, carries locks, a chance or an A:B condition, and up to four ratchets.

Quick links

Status and safety

What runs where today, and what installing will mean.

Today

MONO2K is at 1.0. Its C core runs in your browser on the emulator page and, in the FM-1 build, on the FM-1 itself, on the open FM-1 platform (Felucca's, through CS-1): the same sound, sequencer and screen in both. MONO2K 1.0 for the FM-1 installs from The Firmware Hub or the installer page. On the FM-1 it keeps one project of 64 patterns (bank A the demos, B–D INIT, with room for some 20 to 30 patterns of your own beside the demos; it says when it is full) and the 128 sounds; the emulator keeps four projects of 64.

Saves are kept in your browser and can be exported as files; the FM-1 keeps its own in its flash, and the Patch Editor reads them and sends them back (The FM-1 and the Patch Editor). When the save format grows, older saves are converted as they load.

Installing

The FM-1 build installs from the Installer page, over USB, in Chrome or Edge, as Felucca does. Back up what your FM-1 holds first; installing other firmware is at your own risk. M-VAVE's own updater, or the installer's return to the official firmware, takes the FM-1 back to how it shipped; holding OCT− while it powers on always reaches the installer.

The browser emulator

The FM-1 drawn in one bit, its screen, and the firmware running underneath.

Open the emulator and press Start to turn the sound on. Click the panel first so it takes the keyboard; Esc leaves it. Drag or scroll a knob to turn it. The emulator runs at 44.1 kHz, as the FM-1 does, and saves your work in the browser as you go.

Computer keys

MIDI and saving

A MIDI keyboard or controller plugged into the computer plays the emulator as it would the FM-1 over USB (see MIDI). Under the panel, the project's tools export a project as a .m2kp file and import one into any of the four project slots.

Commands

Every button and combination on one page. On the FM-1, hold GLO, HOME, EDIT, SEQ, FX or LFO for a moment and the screen shows its own; hold any other button a second for its card.

Six rules

1. REC copies, PLAY pastes, SEQ clears. The button you hold says what: GLO the pattern (in GRID, the track's steps), HOME the patterns you pick, EDIT the track's sound, a step held in GRID that step.
2. Again undoes. The same paste or clear a second time puts things back (on one pattern; several at once stay done). GLO + OCT− undoes the last edit, GLO + OCT+ redoes it.
3. Hold the clear for INIT. Keep SEQ down a second: a ring fills on the screen and the pattern (or the patterns, or the track) goes INIT.
4. Only the flash asks. Writing a sound over another, wiping every pattern, the demos back and loading a project ask first: OCT+ YES, OCT− NO.
5. Tap for the page, hold for the layer. Double-tap GLO, SEQ, HOME or FX and the layer stays without holding (below).
6. Held is for now. Solos, PERFORM's effects and LFO's knobs last while held; mutes, tools and edits stay.

Buttons alone

Hold GLO and press

Hold HOME and press

Hold SEQ and press

The white keys 1–8 are tools for the track in view, over the pattern's length (its locks move with its steps); the knobs are the sequencer's while SEQ is held. GLO + OCT− undoes a tool.

Hold EDIT and press

Hold REC and press

Hold FX: PERFORM

The black keys play the bus's effects while held. The white keys still play the track.

Two banks: OCT− is bank A, OCT+ bank B. The window and the OCT lights show which. A held effect keeps going when you switch.

The knobs are GLCH, TAPE, ADPC and DRIV. Nothing clicks, and the repeats land on the beat even if you press late.

Below 85 BPM a quarter is too long for the memory: RPT 1/4 repeats an eighth. DUB borrows a track's delay that is off; if every delay is in use it says so.

Hold LFO

What the knobs move while LFO is held comes back when it is let go: a sweep for a bar, a filter opened for a fill. OCT+ while it is held keeps the change.

A step held in GRID

The encoders too: Patterns and steps.

Double-tap: a layer latched

Tap GLO, SEQ, HOME or FX twice, quickly: the second tap undoes the first (the page, GRID) and the layer stays as if you held it. Its button blinks and its map says LATCHED. The keys and the knobs are the layer's; the button combinations (copy, paste, clear) still want the button held, so PLAY, REC, SAVE and the octaves do their own job meanwhile (under FX the octaves pick PERFORM's bank). Tap the button again to let go; any other page button lets go too. Tapping a page button slowly steps through its pages as before.

• GLO latched: mutes, solos, the fill and the tap tempo under one hand.
• HOME latched: patterns picked and queued as you play.
• FX latched: PERFORM with both hands on the keys.
• SEQ latched: the tools and the sequencer's knobs.

Cards and lights

Hold SEL, ENV, ARP, PLAY, OCT− or OCT+ a second, touching nothing else, and the screen shows what it does alone and with the others; letting go then does nothing more.

The keys light for the layer held: with GLO, white 1–6 for the tracks heard and 9–14 for those soloed; with HOME, the bank's patterns (lit used, the open one winking, the queued one blinking) and the bank on the black keys; with FX, the effects on; with SEQ, the eight tools. In GRID, steps with a trig are lit, the playhead too.

The keys

GLO + HOME turns the keys to the next mode, a tap each: KEYS, PADS, GRID, then KEYS again. The header and a message say which.

Knobs that act

Workflows

The common jobs, step by step.

A new pattern from nothing

1. Hold HOME, press black 2 (G#3) for bank B, and tap a white key: an INIT pattern opens.
2. Press EDIT and turn ALGORITHM to choose each track's machine, or load sounds from the library (GLO + EDIT).
3. Press SEQ, place trigs with the white keys, PLAY. SAVE keeps it.

A new pattern on the same sounds

1. Hold HOME: REC copies the open pattern; tap the key of an empty one and press PLAY to paste it there.
2. Still holding HOME, press SEQ: its steps clear, its six sounds stay.

Empty one pattern, several, or all

1. One: hold GLO and press SEQ: the steps go, the sounds stay. Keep SEQ down a second for INIT. SEQ again puts it back.
2. One track: hold REC and tap SEQ: the track in view's steps go, the others stay.
3. Several: hold HOME, tap their keys (black 1–4 for the other banks), press SEQ; keep it down for INIT.
4. All: GLO > SET, turn WIPE, OCT+ for YES. On the FM-1, DEMO brings bank A's demos back.

Undo a slip

1. GLO + OCT− undoes the last copy-paste, clear, INIT, reload or SEQ tool; GLO + OCT+ does it again.
2. A paste or a clear repeated undoes itself too.

Keep a sound, find it again

1. On the track: hold EDIT and press SAVE. It goes to the first INIT slot, in the category it sounds like.
2. To file it under a category yourself: GLO + EDIT, turn CAT to one, pick an INIT slot with SLOT, turn SAVE.
3. To load: GLO + EDIT, CAT to the kind you want, SLOT through them, turn LOAD.
4. To start a track afresh: hold EDIT, press SEQ.

Put a knob back

1. Hold OCT− and turn the knob: it goes back to its machine's INIT.
2. In GRID with a step held, the same takes that knob's lock away from the step.

Play live with one hand

1. Double-tap GLO. White 1–6 mute, 9–14 solo while held, 7 fills the next loop, 8 taps the tempo; the keys light for the tracks heard.
2. Hold FX for PERFORM: a black key repeats, reverses, stops or kills the bus while held. OCT+ for bank B: freeze, filters, octaves. Double-tap FX to keep it under both hands.
3. Hold LFO and sweep a knob: it comes back when you let go.
4. Tap the latched button again to let go.

Play the tracks as drum pads

1. GLO + HOME (or GLO + ARP): PADS in the header. White keys 1–6 (and 9–14 for the other hand) hit tracks 1–6, each at its root: the note its trigs sit on most in the pattern, so a drum stays in the key it is tuned to (a track with no trigs plays the note you last played on it).
2. Press PLAY, tap REC and play: each hit is written to the nearest step of its track.
3. GLO + HOME again goes on to GRID, then KEYS; GLO + ARP or SEQ leaves PADS at once.

Add a bar

1. Press SEQ for GRID. Hold the next page key (P2 is A#4) a moment: the pattern grows by a bar, a copy of the ones before. Or hold SEQ and press white 6: twice as long.
2. OCT+ shows the new bar; change it. The footer shows the bars, the one in view solid.

Move a track's beat around

1. Hold SEQ: white 3 and 4 shift the track's steps a step earlier or later, white 2 plays them backwards, white 5 throws in a random quarter of the steps, white 7 moves a few notes.
2. To give another track the same steps: hold SEQ, press REC (copy); turn SELECT to the other track; hold SEQ, press PLAY (paste).
3. To run one track slower or faster than the rest: hold SEQ and turn KNOB 2 (3/4× against 1× for a lilt, 1/2× for a long line).

Vary the steps quickly

1. In GRID, hold a step (or several) and press a black key: 1–5 its trig type, 6–11 its condition (50%, 1:2, 1:4, FILL, !FIL).
2. Hold REC while it plays for FILL, or GLO + white 7 for a fill on the next loop.

Send your patterns to MONO2K

1. Stop the FM-1. In the Patch Editor: Start, Connect, Read from FM-1, Save file.
2. Send the .m2ks file to the author (The FM-1 and the Patch Editor).

The panel

Twenty-seven keys, fourteen buttons, eight knobs and a 240-pixel screen.

Buttons

Knobs

The screen

One grid and one typeface on every page: five bands, four knob cells, the stage. No text crosses a rule.

The screen can be light or dark: GLO > SET, SCRN. Its motion is calm by default: pages and values change at once. MOTN GLTCH brings back the glitchy transitions (GLO > SET on the FM-1, GLO > PLAY in the browser).

A message takes the header for a moment, inverted; a longer one takes the line under it too.

Power on: two seconds of MONO2K in dithered 3D. Any key, button or knob skips it.

Pages

Eight pages, four knobs at a time. A button opens its page; pressed again it turns to the page's next four knobs.

The pages and their knobs

Read off the firmware: the SYN page is each machine's own (see Machine reference).

Tracks and machines

Six tracks, each one mono machine with its own sound, chain and steps.

Choosing a track and its machine

SELECT picks the track; in GRID, the upper keys T1–T6 do. On EDIT, ALGORITHM changes the track's machine and its card comes up. A track still at its machine's INIT takes the new machine's whole INIT; a sound you have shaped keeps its chain, its LFOs and its steps, and only the eight knobs start from the new machine's INIT.

The machines come in this order: the ten that play notes first (GND-SIN, SWAV-SAW, SWAV-PUL, SWAV-ENS, FM+STAT, FM+PAR, FM+DYN, VOX-6, DIGI-WAV, SID-6581), then the drums (DRM-KICK, DRM-SNAR, DRM-HATS, DRM-CYMB), GND-PERC and GND-NOIS, and the three FX last. One step back from GND-SIN is FX-RING.

INIT: each machine's own sound

Every machine starts as a sound for what it is for, not a bare oscillator: GND-SIN a round sine bass, SWAV-SAW a wide supersaw pad, SWAV-PUL a hollow reed lead, SWAV-ENS a minor-7 pad on one key, FM+STAT an e-piano, FM+PAR a gong-like bell, FM+DYN an FM bass, VOX-6 an "aah", DIGI-WAV a pluck that scans as it falls, SID-6581 a sync lead, DRM-KICK a kick, DRM-SNAR a snare, DRM-HATS a closed hat, DRM-CYMB a crash, GND-PERC a metal hit, GND-NOIS a wind you play, and the FX the track before made wide (FX-CHORUS), punched and held (FX-DYNAMIX) or turned to metal (FX-RING). Each is levelled to sit with the others. That INIT is what ALGORITHM gives a track at its INIT, what an INIT slot of the library, EDIT + SEQ and a held clear start a track with, and where OCT− and a knob take that knob back. A new pattern is INIT too: a sine bass, a kick, a snare, a hat, the FM keys and the ENS pad.

Notes and octaves

Each track plays at home. A machine chosen or INITed puts the track's new trigs, its pad and its keys on the note its INIT was made at: DRM-KICK at C2, GND-SIN, FM+DYN and the FX at C3, the rest at C4. A pattern opened puts each track on its root, the note its trigs sit on most, or its machine's home when it has none. The keyboard's octave is each track's own, set from its home note, which sits near the bottom of the keys (a C on their first C): a kick at C2 plays as a kick, not as a high zap. OCT− and OCT+ change the track in view's, and their lights show it.

On every other page, ALGORITHM turns through the page's own pages instead of tapping its button: LFO 1A to 3B, FX's four, AMP's and FILT's two, GLO's TIME, GLITCH, VERB, SET, MIDI and IN. It stops at the first and the last.

Level, pitch and mute

On HOME, KNOB 1 and 2 are the track's level and pitch. In GRID the MUTE key mutes the track in view; GLO held with one of the six lower keys mutes that track from anywhere.

FX machines

FX-CHORUS, FX-RING and FX-DYNAMIX make no sound of their own: each takes the track before it (after that track's amp) and works on it. Put the source on track 3 and the FX on track 4; the FX hears the source before its VOL, so turn the source's VOL down to hear only the effect. The Monomachine's metal sounds are made this way: a plucky FM+PAR into FX-CHORUS with its feedback all the way up.

A sound, copied

On a track's page, GLO + REC copies the track's sound (its machine and every setting) and GLO + PLAY pastes it onto the track in view, in this pattern or another. On HOME the same two copy and paste the whole pattern.

Machine reference

Nineteen machines in eight families, in ALGORITHM's order. Each has eight knobs, A–H, on its SYN page.

Patterns and steps

Sixteen patterns a bank, each a whole song part with its own sounds; six tracks of up to 64 steps.

GRID

SEQ turns the keys into steps. The sixteen lower keys are the steps of the page in view; OCT− and OCT+ turn the page (four pages, 64 steps). A key on an empty step puts a trig there with the last note you played; a quick tap on a trig takes it away, with its locks.

1. Press SEQ: GRID shows in the header.
2. Pick the track with SELECT, or with the upper keys T1–T6.
3. Tap the lower keys to place trigs. Hold one to edit it.
4. Press PLAY.

A held step

Hold several steps at once and the edit goes to all of them.

Bars: pages of 16 steps

A pattern is one to four bars of 16 steps, the four pages. In GRID the lower keys are the steps of the page in view; on HOME the four boxes under the lanes are the bars, the one in view solid, the playhead running in it while it plays, and every page's footer shows them small.

A page past the end says so when you tap its key, and which length holding it makes.

Choosing patterns

PRESETS picks the pattern: at once when stopped, at the end of the bar while playing, so patterns chain as you play.

An accent plays the step harder (GLO > TIME's ACNT says how much); a slide glides into the next note without trigging again.

Parameter locks

Any knob, locked to any step: the Monomachine's way of making one track sound like many.

Hold a step in GRID and turn any of the four knobs, on any page: the value is locked to that step, and plays for that step alone. The knob shows the lock in reverse, and the step's cell turns checkered (with a condition as well, a mark in its corner). A step can carry locks on as many parameters as you like, up to the pattern's pool of locks.

Locks can change a machine's knobs, the chain, the LFOs, anything with a knob on a track's page. Taking the trig away takes its locks with it.

While recording live, a knob turned just after a trig plays locks its value to that step; between trigs it changes the sound itself.

To lock without trigging anything, give the step the trig type NONE: it moves the pitch and applies its locks, and restarts nothing.

Trig types

The Monomachine's magic: each step trigs the amp, the filter's envelope and the LFOs independently.

A synthesizer usually restarts all its envelopes on every note. On MONO2K, as on the Monomachine, a step can restart some of them and leave the others running: change the pitch under a filter sweep that keeps going, restart only the LFO for a new wobble, or move the note with no new attack at all.

The eight states

Hold a step in GRID and turn MASTER (in the browser, press /) to step through them.

Every type moves the pitch to the step's note and applies the step's locks. The machine's own envelopes (an FM+ operator falling from the trig, GND-SIN's pitch drop) restart with the amp, as on the Monomachine. Without AMP the note's gate runs on as it was: if the amp has already died away, a FILTER or LFO trig changes a sound you cannot hear. NONE is a trigless step: a pitch change and a set of locks, with nothing restarted.

Only the LFOs set to restart on a trig restart (LFO page, TRIG). Ratchets repeat the step with the same type. Notes played on the keys or over MIDI always trig ALL.

Ideas

• A bass line with one long filter sweep: ALL on the first step, AMP on the others.
• A held pad whose chord changes under one envelope: NONE on the chord changes.
• A wobble that starts again on the off-beats: LFO on the steps between the notes.

Conditions and ratchets

After the modern Elektron sequencers: steps that play by chance, by loop, or on FILL; steps that repeat.

Conditions

Hold a step and turn PRESETS. The strip draws a step on a condition framed, its block inset; the held step's card names the condition.

Ratchets

Hold a step and press OCT+ or OCT−: the step plays one to four hits, evenly through its length, each with the step's trig type. The strip marks the extra hits along the cell's foot.

Grids

Mutable Instruments' topographic drum sequencer, on any track.

Press ARP again for GRIDS, then LANES. A map of 25 drum patterns; X and Y pick a place on it.

• A track on a lane plays its trigs, not its steps: its own sound, at its root, Grids' accents.
• It runs at the track's speed. CHAOS is the same at every PLAY.
• Stopped, OCT+ on GRIDS or LANES writes the lanes into those tracks' steps and lets go of the lanes.

Mutes on the bar

GLO > PLAY's MUTE: BAR (the default) holds a mute made while playing to the next bar's first step (steps 1, 17, 33, 49); NOW mutes at once. Stopped, always at once. The key blinks while it waits.

Recording

Live while the pattern plays, or step by step while it is stopped.

Live

With the keys playing notes (not GRID), press PLAY and tap REC. Notes you play land on the nearest step; a hard key records an accent. Knobs turned while recording lock their value to the step just played. Tap REC again to stop recording. A take you don't want: hold REC and tap SEQ, and the track's steps are gone (SEQ again brings them back).

Ready: the first note starts it

With the sequencer stopped and REC on, tap PLAY: READY in the header, PLAY blinks, and nothing moves yet. The first note you play (a key, a pad, or a note over MIDI) starts the pattern from its first step and is recorded there; play on as the pattern loops. PLAY again starts it at once; REC off stops waiting. Following a MIDI clock (SYIN on), PLAY plays as ever.

Step entry

With the keys playing notes and the sequencer stopped, tap REC: STEP ENTRY. Each note you play is written to the next step and the cursor moves on. EDIT leaves a rest; PRESETS moves the cursor back and on. Tap REC to leave.

FILL

Hold REC while playing for FILL: steps with the FILL condition play, steps with !FIL rest.

The track chain

Every track has the Monomachine's chain after its machine, then MONO2K's destroy effects.

Amp

ATCK, HOLD, DEC and REL shape each note, and each shows the time you hear: ATCK to full level, DEC and REL down to silence (60 dB under). The attack swells as the square of its time, so it grows evenly to the ear instead of jumping up in its first milliseconds; 0 is the Monomachine's percussive 1 ms. The knobs spend their travel where the times are useful: ATCK is 20 ms at 16, 67 ms at 32, 0.4 s at 64, 2 s at 96 and 10 s at 127; DEC and REL are 0.14 s at 32, 0.8 s at 64, 4 s at 96 and 20 s at the top, and DEC at 127 holds while the note is held. A note played over one still sounding rises from where that one is. The picture draws the same curves. HOLD keeps the note at full level before it decays, so most sounds need no note-off; it counts in beats at the pattern's tempo (32 is a beat, 8 a sixteenth), as on the Monomachine. DIST drives the machine into a clip of its own, VOL sets the track's level into the chain, PAN places it, PORT glides between notes.

Filter

A high-pass and a low-pass as one band: BASE is the bottom of the band, WDTH its width (at the top, BASE alone is a high-pass; at the bottom, WDTH alone is a low-pass), HPQ and LPQ their resonance. The filter follows the note. Its envelope (ATCK, DEC) moves the base and the width by B-OF and W-OF.

FX

EQF and EQG are one band of EQ; SRR reduces the sample rate; the delay (DTIM, DSND, DFB, DBAS, DWID) is the track's own, in 8-bit mu-law. DSTR: BITS crushes, FOLD folds the wave over itself, XOR mangles the samples, VERB sends the track to the bus's reverb. Both sends, DSND and VERB, are straight in level: half way is 6 dB under the most, so a little is already heard. MOD is a chorus, a flanger or a phaser across the stereo.

LFOs

Three per track, two pages each: TRCK and DEST say which track and parameter it moves (any track's), WAVE its shape, TRIG what a trig does to it (FREE runs on, TRIG starts it over, HOLD samples it until the next trig, ONE runs one cycle, HALF half a cycle), MULT and SPD its rate in time with the tempo, PHAS where it starts, DPTH how far, either way.

SPD shows the time one cycle takes, in bars and notes at any tempo, slow at the bottom and fast at the top: 0 stands still, 1 is 30 bars, 12 is 16 bars, 60 a bar, 84 a quarter note and 120 a 1/32 note. Every twelve steps it doubles; seven steps slower than a note is that note dotted, seven faster its triplet. MULT multiplies it (x1 to x128), and past a 1/64 note it shows hertz at the pattern's tempo. The LFOs run on MONO2K's own clock, 1.5 % slower than the bars they are named after, as they always have: a FREE LFO drifts slowly against the pattern, and TRIG starts it with each note.

DPTH is squared around its middle, so the first steps away from 64 are fine (66 swings an eighth of a step, 72 two steps, 80 eight) and the ends sweep the whole range; the screen shows it as a share of full. The picture stacks all three LFOs: destination, rate, wave, a live cursor; the one you edit drawn heavy. Whatever an LFO moves glides between the knob's steps, with no zipper. A little DPTH on PTCH is a vibrato (66 is about 12 cents).

Arpeggiator

On ARP: MODE (OFF, UP, DOWN, U/D, RND, ORDR, the order you played them), SPD (1/32 to 1/4), RNG (one to four octaves) and GATE. Hold keys and it plays them in turn.

HOLD: tap ARP twice (or press a sustain pedal, CC 64) and the notes keep playing after you let go; a chord played after your hands leave the keys replaces them. ARP twice again stops it. Its LED pulses while it holds, and HOLD shows in the header and on the ARP page.

The bus

Where the six tracks meet: a reverb, a glitch, tape, ADPCM, hiss and a drive into the soft clip.

The glitch

GLCH is one knob for how much. Low, it is a ghost: now and then (one in sixteen bars at 1) a short slice, at most a thirty-second, comes back twice under the music, 18 dB down, the music left whole. Turning up, the repeats come more often (half the sixteenths at 127), louder (as loud as the music from three quarters up), longer (up to eight times round) and with SIZE's whole slice; past a third the music gives way under them, and the other kinds come in one by one: reversed, gated, an octave up, an octave down, a roll that halves each time round, a slice slowing to a stop. At the top it is wild. Every repeat fades in and out and its joins are crossfaded, so nothing cuts. The screen's value is the chance a sixteenth has; the tag under the scope names what is playing.

The reverb

Four delay lines feeding each other through a matrix, at 22 kHz, two of them turned slowly into each other so a long tail does not ring. DCAY sets its length, RT60 from 0.3 s (a small room: the lines are made shorter with it) to about 24 s, a ratio a step; 0 turns it off, its tail fading in 6 ms. DAMP sets how much sooner the top dies: 1/1 keeps the top as long as the bottom (bright), 1/30 lets it die thirty times sooner (dark), and darkens what goes in with it. Short and bright, long and dark, short and dark, long and bright: each is its own space. The first reflection keeps the sound's top; each pass after is darker. Each track sends to it with DSTR's VERB.

Patterns saved before this reverb load on it at the setting that measures nearest (each part of the old decay matched), their sends carried at the level that keeps the reverb as loud.

The bus's settings belong to the pattern, so each part of a song can be worn differently.

Saving and projects

Four projects of four banks (A–D) of sixteen patterns, and a library of 128 sounds. On the FM-1: one project of four banks, A the demos and B–D INIT.

Patterns

SAVE keeps the pattern as it is; GLO + SAVE goes back to the last saved version. What you play is your working copy: you can change it freely and keep it or not.

Projects

Hold SAVE to keep the whole project. GLO > SET picks a project (PROJ) and loads it (LOAD, then OCT+ for YES). The first project, DEMO, holds the factory's bank A.

Copy, paste, clear

A new pattern on the same sounds

Clearing takes the steps away and leaves every sound: the machines, the knobs, the chain, the LFOs; holding the clear a second makes the pattern INIT, and clearing again puts it back. GLO + OCT− undoes any of them. Holding HOME does the same to several patterns at once (Workflows).

The sound library

128 sounds, S001 to S128, kept apart from the patterns: a sound saved there can go onto any track of any pattern. A sound is a track's machine and every setting (the machine's knobs, the amp, the filter, the FX, the LFOs), a category (KICK, SNARE, HATS, PERC, BASS, LEAD, PAD or FX) and the note it was made at: the track's root when it was saved, the note its trigs sit on most. Loaded, it is ready to sound as it did: the track's keys, pad and new trigs go to that note and its octave (a kick saved at C2 plays at C2). The library starts with the demos' 24 sounds, each in the category its part gives it and at the note it plays there, then 104 INIT slots; it is saved with the rest. (Sounds kept before their notes were: a kick at C2, a bass at C3, the rest at C4.)

Press EDIT until the footer says SND (the page after SYN, and after BANK on DIGI-WAV), or GLO + EDIT from anywhere.

Held EDIT does it in a hurry: EDIT + SAVE keeps the track's sound in the first INIT slot, EDIT + SEQ starts it afresh, EDIT + REC and EDIT + PLAY copy and paste it.

The factory's bank A

Four parts, each a 4-bar pattern that plays as a 16-bar form: what comes in after the first pass, what alternates, what arrives on the third and fourth. Every sound in them was picked by ear from sound sheets of random settings, then written into parts and fixed by measurement until it sat in the tempo and the harmony. A05–A16 are blank, ready for yours.

The FM-1 and the Patch Editor

Read the FM-1's patterns and sounds over USB, edit them in the browser, send them back, keep them as a file.

The Patch Editor talks to an FM-1 running MONO2K over its USB cable, in Chrome or Edge. It edits the FM-1's patterns as their own session, apart from this browser's saves, which stay as they are.

1. Connect the FM-1 by USB and open the Patch Editor. Press Start, then Connect, and allow MIDI with SysEx when the browser asks. Close the Installer if it is open in another tab.
2. Stop the FM-1 (PLAY). Press Read from FM-1: it saves what it holds and sends its 64 patterns and 128 sounds (a few seconds). The pattern list shows them as the FM-1 has them.
3. Edit: every parameter of every track, heard as you move it, the FM-1's own patterns playing in the browser.
4. Press Send to FM-1 and confirm: the FM-1 takes them, plays them, and keeps them in its flash.

Files

Save file keeps what is being edited as a .m2ks file: the FM-1's patterns and sounds (mono2k-fm1- and the day) or this browser's projects. Open file reads one back: an FM-1 file as the FM-1's session, ready to send. Back to this browser's saves returns to the emulator's work.

Safety

The parts of a transfer arrive in order, each answered, and the whole is checked against its CRC before the FM-1 uses it. A transfer that fails, stalls or is cut off leaves the FM-1 with what it had. While the FM-1 plays it neither sends nor takes. A transfer touches only the patterns and sounds, never the firmware.

MIDI

Each MIDI channel plays its track, and the Monomachine's controller numbers turn its knobs.

Notes

Channels 1–6 play tracks 1–6; any other channel plays the track in view. Every velocity sounds alike, as on the Monomachine; notes trig ALL.

Controllers

These are the Monomachine's numbers, so a controller set up for one plays the other. MONO2K's own parameters (the destroy effects, MOD, the arpeggiator, pitch) have no controller: set them on the panel or in the Patch Editor.

Clock and sync

GLO > MIDI. SYIN (sync in) follows a MIDI clock: its tempo, start, continue, stop and the song position, from the input you pick: OFF, USB, TRS or BOTH; the other input's clock and transport are ignored. SYOU (sync out) sends MONO2K's clock, 24 pulses a beat, with start and stop; following a clock, it passes that one on. NOTE (notes out) sends each track's trigs on its channel. With SYIN off, start and continue still play and stop still stops, at MONO2K's own tempo, from where the notes come (NOTE on GLO > IN).

The clock comes in over USB, from a computer, phone or iPad, or on the TRS jack from any MIDI device. The FM-1's USB port is a device, like a keyboard's, and its TRS jack is an input only, so two FM-1s cabled to each other don't hear each other. Put a host between them: a computer or an iPad with a DAW or a MIDI router, or a USB MIDI host box. The one that leads must send a clock: MONO2K does (SYOU on); set the other's SYIN to USB.

USB and TRS

GLO > IN keeps the FM-1's two inputs apart. NOTE (notes in) picks where notes, controllers and mutes are taken from: BOTH, USB, TRS or OFF. THRU sends what comes in on the TRS jack out over USB as it came (notes, controllers, programs, the clock, start, stop and the song position), so the FM-1 is also a MIDI interface for the device on its jack; what comes in over USB never goes back. With SYOU on, the jack's clock, start and stop are not passed (MONO2K sends its own, or passes on the one it follows), so the computer hears one clock.

A DAW over USB and a keyboard on the jack, for instance: SYIN USB follows the DAW, NOTE TRS plays MONO2K from the keyboard alone, THRU on records the keyboard in the DAW too. On the page each input's square lights as MIDI comes in, and what it feeds is filled. In the emulator, the computer's MIDI comes in as USB.

Every parameter

Every page and its knobs, read off the firmware. A machine's own A–H are in the Machine reference.

Credits and licence

Free software, built on the open FM-1 work.

MONO2K is by Sequencist, and free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 only. Its source, the tools that measure it and this site are on GitHub.

It is built on the open FM-1 work: Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (Hügelton Instruments), whose platform the FM-1 build adds and whose installer it follows; CS-1, X0X, FoMni and the others. The FM-1's panel geometry is the one measured for CoralFlower's emulator. Orbitron and Inter Tight are under the SIL Open Font License. The digital waves are the author's own. The DRM- drums' voice design is after the Erica Synths LXR drum voices (its desktop app's source, GPL-3.0-only; originally Julian Schmidt's Sonic Potions LXR): their laws, measured against a model of them, not their code or samples. GRIDS is Émilie Gillet's Grids (Mutable Instruments), its pattern map and its rules ported from its source (GPL-3.0).

MONO2K's machines were measured against a Monomachine running in Joe Landers' Monomachine emulator (gearmulator-md-mm, a fork of Gearmulator by The Usual Suspects), with the owner's own OS image: measurements only, none of the emulator's code or data and none of Elektron's code, waves or samples are in MONO2K. Monomachine and Machinedrum are trademarks of Elektron; M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners. MONO2K is not affiliated with Elektron or M-VAVE. If MONO2K is useful to you, you can support it on Ko-fi.

Change log

What each update brought, newest first. Pick a kind to see only those changes.