Guide

01

Installing

Steps

1. Use Chrome or Edge on a computer. Switch the FM-1 on and connect it by USB. Close other MIDI software.
2. On the install page, pick a version from the menu. The newest is first, and each has a line on what it changed. Press Use this version.
3. Press Connect and allow MIDI access. The page says what the FM-1 runs now, and names the Viscera version if it's one.
4. Press Install Viscera. Keep the cable in, the FM-1 on and the tab in front until it restarts, which takes one to three minutes.

Going back: on the install page, Put M-VAVE's V15 back installs M-VAVE's original firmware. M-VAVE's workbench can too.

1.1.0 note: on the FM-1, 1.1.0 overloads the CPU when RESON is on, with clicks even at zero volume. Use 1.1.1 or later.

02

Quick start

1. Send sound in. Pair a phone over Bluetooth and play something, or play into the FM-1 from a computer over USB (see Getting audio in).
2. Press HOME for HANDS. The screen shows track A.
3. Tap REC to start catching, then tap again to end. The gap between the taps is the loop length. A full buffer ends it by itself.
4. Turn the knobs. STRETCH slows or speeds it without changing pitch, PITCH shifts it, and POS and SIZE pick the window it plays.
5. Try FX (SHARDS) and SEL (SPECTRA) on the same capture. Opening one of these pages also sets the track to that mode.
6. Press PLAY to run the sequencer and modulators, and ALGORITHM to change track (A–D).

03

Getting audio in

The FM-1 has no analogue input. Sound gets in two ways, and Viscera can use both at once.

AUDIO IN (GLO → SETTINGS, second view)

Everything about input in one place:

• whether Bluetooth is waiting, connected or playing, and whether USB is connected;
• a level meter for each input;
• the selected track's INPUT (BT, USB, BT+USB, another track, or the main mix), its GAIN, and MONITR (hear the input through the FM-1).

PRESETS picks the track, and REC opens its SOURCE page. If a capture comes out silent, check here first: the meter moves, the track's INPUT is right, and its SOURCE is CAPTURE.

Samples

Samples in the FM-1's flash sample bank also play (SOURCE → REEL → a slot S1–S16). Write them with the Samples section of the install page or M-VAVE's workbench.

04

Signal path

Four tracks, A to D, in two pairs: A+B and C+D. A pair can bounce sound between its two tracks, cross spectra, and move together under your hands.

• SOURCE: what the track holds. Your capture, the reel or a sample, or the live input passing through (THRU).
• PUTTY: one of three ways to work it (HANDS, SHARDS, SPECTRA).
• RESON: an eight-band resonant filterbank, on one track at a time.
• COLOR: noise, drive, crush, compression and tilt.
• SPACE: a shared delay and reverb, fed by each track's SEND.
• DISSECT listens to a source and drives things from what it hears: hits, bands and pitch.
• Modulators, robots, macros and scenes move any of it.

05

Controls

The bottom line of the screen shows a page's gestures for a moment when it opens.

06

Capturing: SOURCE (EDIT)

LONG and SPLIT

• LONG (the default, 1.1.1 and later) puts the four buffers end to end as one capture the tracks share: about 1.3 s at HI, 2.6 s at MID, 5.2 s at LO.
  • Any track on CAPTURE plays it, each with its own playhead, mode and settings.
  • One track records at a time.
  • A track on THRU keeps one buffer for its ring, so the long capture gets the rest.
• SPLIT gives each track its own buffer (0.33 s HI, 0.65 s MID, 1.31 s LO), so the pairs can bounce and PING sound between two separate captures.

BUFFER is a setting of the FM-1, not of a project.

Recording

• Tap REC to start and tap again to end. A full buffer ends it.
• Hold REC to overdub over what plays (SOS sets how much stays).
• Hold REC and turn a knob to record a robot: up to about two seconds of the gesture, looping on its own after you let go. Each track has four, and a fifth replaces the oldest.
• REC + PLAY clears the capture and the track's robots.

The reel

SAVE + REC keeps the capture on the reel in flash, as a splice that survives power-off. That's about 2.6 s at MID in all, 16 splices at most. Writing to flash pauses the sound for a moment. The first KEEP asks twice, because the reel takes the place of any projects the stock firmware kept there. GLO → SETTINGS → PANEL → REEL shows the room left; turn it and press REC to erase the reel.

07

The putty pages

Each mode reads a window of the source, from POS to POS + SIZE, with a playhead moving through it.

• STRETCH sets the playhead's speed (0.25× to 8×; at the top it freezes) without changing pitch.
• PITCH shifts it ±24 semitones.

HANDS (HOME)

Two overlapping grains follow the playhead: smooth stretching and pitching.

SHARDS (FX)

Up to eight grains broken from the window. SHAPE runs:

• smooth;
• swell (reverse decay);
• expodec;
• glass: sharper and shorter, and at the top it shatters into denser shards an octave up.

SPECTRA (SEL)

A phase vocoder: the sound taken apart into its spectrum and put back.

Two tracks can be SPECTRA at once; a third plays as HANDS and says so.

08

RESON (ENV, twice)

An eight-band resonant filterbank at 200, 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 2400, 3200 and 4800 Hz. It runs on one track at a time, after PUTTY and before COLOR. Opening the page puts it on the track you're on, and ENV goes back to COLOR. Each band is two resonators:

• one the sound passes through;
• one that rings with a decay of its own, excited by pings, dust and droplets.

Modes (SETUP → MODE)

The vocoder

Set MODE to VOCODE on SETUP (HYBRID vocodes too). Then pick MODSRC on the VOCODE view:

For the classic voice-over-synth sound, put a sound on the track and set MODSRC to INPUT.

Pings, dust and droplets

• TRIG picks what pings the ringing bank:
  • HIGH, FULL or LOW: a transient detector on that band of the modulator (SENS sets how easily);
  • HITS: DISSECT's hits;
  • NOTES: keys, steps and CAROM on RESON's track;
  • REC on the page pings by hand.
• QUANT holds pings for the grid: the steps' when playing, the tempo's when stopped.
• HARD runs from a soft burst to a sharp click.
• DENS throws dust, specks that each ring one band. COHES gathers them around the hits.
• DROPS plays tiny grains of the wet sound. MIGR sends them into other bands instead of out.
• LIQUID lets tuning, decay and level drift slowly. FDBK returns the wet sound into the bank.

RESON is the heaviest thing on the FM-1. Under load the CPU guard thins it to its loudest bands.

09

COLOR (ENV) and SPACE (GLO)

COLOR

Noise, drive, crush and compression in that order, then a two-band tilt.

SPACE

A shared bus with a tempo-synced delay and a reverb. Each track feeds it with SEND on MIX.

REC freezes SPACE; holding REC clears it.

MIX (EDIT, twice)

Every track's LEVEL, PAN, SEND, FILTER and MUTE, then MAIN, master COMP and the input MONITR.

10

DISSECT (GLO, twice)

One listener for the whole instrument. It hears its SOURCE and finds:

• hits (set by SENS and FOCUS);
• three bands;
• the pitch, with its first eight partials.

Its hits can throw CAROM balls, clock the steps, burst SHARDS (TRIG HIT) and ping RESON (TRIG HITS). FOLLOW modulators can follow its bands, hits, pitch or brightness. The second view sets the track's shards as the hits drive them. REC on DISSECT opens SHARDS with TRIG HIT.

11

Modulation (LFO)

Each track has four modulator slots. PRESETS changes a slot's type:

LFO opens the first modulator: RATE, AMOUNT, PHASE and OFFSET, then SELECT for SKEW, FOLD, CURVE and SHAPE, then SYNC. Each LFO press goes to the next modulator. After the fourth comes the MATRIX, a list of every route:

• PRESETS picks a row.
• The knobs set SOURCE (any of the sixteen modulators), DEVICE, PARAM and AMOUNT.
• REC switches the row between bipolar and unipolar.
• On the last row, NEW, turning any knob makes a route.

The fast way: hold LFO and turn any knob on any page. The track's modulator then moves that parameter, and the direction you turn sets the amount.

12

Perform, temp and scenes (ARP)

• Macros: eight per project, each moving up to eight parameters on any track. Hold ARP and turn a knob to map the selected macro (hold ARP and turn PRESETS to choose it).
• Scenes: eight per project, each a snapshot of every track's sound and the macros. ARP + a pad recalls a scene, and ARP + SAVE + a pad stores one. MORPH glides toward the TARGET scene. MIDI program change recalls them too.
• TEMP: hold OCT− and OCT+ together, tweak anything, and it all snaps back when you let go.
• Two hands: hold OCT− and turn a knob to move both tracks of the pair; hold OCT+ to move them apart.

13

Sequencer (SEQ)

One pattern per track. PRESETS switches between STEPS and CAROM.

STEPS

• 16 to 64 steps. Each holds:
  • a SLICE: the playhead jumps to that sixteenth of the window, or OFF to play on;
  • a PITCH;
  • a LEN, in eighths of a step;
  • a PROB;
  • a velocity and a parameter lock.
• PRESETS picks the step and the pads switch steps on and off.
• REC records live, quantised to the step.

CAROM

Notes bounce around a box and play when they hit a wall. The knobs are:

• SPEED, GRAVTY, LOSS, SPREAD;
• QUANT (snap the hits to the grid);
• the number of balls and WALLS;
• JITTER and GATE.

Play notes to throw balls.

Tempo is internal (30–300 BPM, with swing) or MIDI clock.

14

Projects and sounds (SAVE)

• PROJECT: eight slots, each holding every track's sound, the sequences, scenes and macros.
  • PRESETS picks a slot.
  • REC loads it, or saves into an empty slot.
  • SAVE + PLAY saves over.
  • Saving happens only while stopped, with a moment of silence.
• SOUNDS (SAVE, twice): sixteen slots that belong to the FM-1, not to a project. A sound is one track's SOURCE, PUTTY and COLOR settings and its modulators. REC loads one onto the selected track.

Captures themselves aren't saved in projects: KEEP them on the reel.

15

MIDI

MIDI arrives over the MIDI jack, USB and Bluetooth MIDI alike.

• Notes: channels 1–4 play tracks A–D.
• Clock: CLOCK AUTO follows MIDI clock when it arrives, MIDI always does, and INT never does. Start, continue and stop run the transport.
• MIDI learn: hold SAVE, turn a knob, then move a controller. Mappings belong to the FM-1 and pick up: the parameter doesn't move until the controller passes its value.
• KNOB CC: CC 110–113 turn knobs 1–4 of the page on screen (switch it off in SETTINGS → PANEL).
• Fixed CCs on a track's channel:
  • 7 level, 10 pan, 11 send, 12 filter;
  • 14–19 the hands;
  • 20–28 SHARDS;
  • 70–76 SPECTRA;
  • 80–87 COLOR;
  • 102–105 the modulators' amounts.
• Channel 16: main, master compressor, SPACE, morph, the macros and swing.
• Program change recalls scenes.

16

Settings (GLO, three times)

17

Trouble

Clicks and glitches

Clicks and glitches, even at zero volume, mean the FM-1 is out of CPU. A guard eases things in two steps when rendering takes over 90 % of the time: the reverb rests, then shards and RESON thin out. If that isn't enough, it rests the sound for about a second. GLO → SETTINGS → PANEL shows the load per track. Turn RESON off (SETUP → TRACK 0) or use fewer SPECTRA tracks.

Safe mode

"SAFE MODE" on the screen means the last three starts never ran for four seconds. Press PLAY to start Viscera anyway. Leaving it on for four seconds also clears the count, so the next power-on starts normally. Installing a new version starts the count afresh. In safe mode the sound is off and the install page still connects, so you can always reinstall. Hold OCT− + OCT+ while switching on to enter safe mode yourself.

A dark FM-1 after an install

If the FM-1 stays dark (no screen, no lights), Ravel's install page → Back to the stock firmware with a V15 file puts M-VAVE's firmware back.

Silent captures

Check GLO → SETTINGS → AUDIO IN. The meter should move, the track's INPUT should be right, and SOURCE should be CAPTURE.

Trying it without an FM-1

The browser emulator runs the same code, with an audio file, your computer's sound or a microphone as the input.