AURORA

an ambient instrument for the M-VAVE FM-1

AURORA

Vast. Slow. Alive.

The sky is the sound

An ambient instrument for the M-VAVE FM-1. A sound module for a dawless rig: your sequencer sequences, AURORA sounds.

PAD eight voices of twelve sine partials, tilting, spreading, detuned into pairs
SWARM five saws under it, through a filter that tracks the note
AIR wind and crackle over it, breathing with the pad
MOVE a random walk, a Lorenz attractor and a tide, bending it all, slowly
SPACE a plate with a shimmer, a tape delay, a freeze that holds the moment in grains, a master filter
MACROS the Circuit Tracks' eight knobs as eight named controls

Every page is a picture

Each part of a picture is drawn in the colour of the knob that moves it. EDIT, ENV, LFO and FX step through their groups.

TONE: the twelve partials as bars — **TONE**The partials as bars: TILT the slope, SPREAD odd against even, BRIGHT the ceiling, DETUNE the pairs.

TONE 2: the partials along a frequency axis, stretched — **TONE 2**Where the partials sit: STRETCH moves them apart from string to bell, SUB an octave under, TUNE a transpose, DRIVE a soft clip.

SWARM: five saws under a filter curve — **SWARM**Five saws under the pad, through a low-pass that tracks the note.

AIR: a wind trace under a band-pass hump — **AIR**Wind and crackle through a band-pass, breathing with the pad.

SHAPE: an ADSR envelope curve — **SHAPE**The envelope, with the loudest voice riding it.

TOUCH: bloom stairs, swell lift, velocity line — **TOUCH**BLOOM staggers the partials' entry, SWELL the reach of pressure, VELO how much velocity counts, GLIDE slides a note in from the last.

MOVE: four sources scrolling — **MOVE**The four sources scrolling, dim as they are and bright as MOVE lets them through.

SOURCES: the movement matrix — **SOURCES**The matrix by its rows: a random LFO, a random walk, a Lorenz attractor, a tide over bars.

TARGETS: the movement matrix, by column — **TARGETS**The matrix by its columns: how deep the movement goes into TILT, COLOUR, PITCH and SPACE.

SPACE: a decaying tail — **SPACE**The plate's tail, the highs under it falling faster, sparks for SHIMMER.

DELAY: a note and its repeats — **DELAY**The repeats: TIME, FEEDBACK, MIX, and TAPE leaning them over.

FREEZE: grains on the delay line — **FREEZE**The delay line held, and the grains playing off it, live.

MIDI: channel and expression — **MIDI**The channel, what swells the pad, the clock, a light for every message.

Twenty places to start

The PRESETS encoder, or a program change. Sixteen USER slots follow them.

AURORAthe opening sound: wide, echoing, shimmering, half frozen

DEEPsix seconds to arrive, half a minute to leave, everything moving

TIDEthe tide driving the space over minutes

CHOIRdetuned pairs, a little swarm under, wide

ICEbright and hollow, the air crackling, a shimmer an octave up

STORMthe air at full, chaos into the tone, tape echo feeding back

SWARMthe saws loud and resonant, every partial drifting

SUBthe fundamental alone over a low swarm

ORGANinstant on, instant off, full even partials

GLASSa struck bell, odd partials, falling while held

MALLETdarker and shorter, with a tape echo

BELLa struck bell, its partials stretched, ringing long

GAMELANstretched to metal, an octave up, with an echo

PIANOa soft electric piano: a string's stretch, a sub under it

MONOLITHa sub and a drive under a slow, sliding drone

SLIDEa gliding lead over its echo

GRITdriven hard, the swarm open, the lows cut

RADIOa high-pass, crackle and tape echo: a small speaker far away

ABYSSan octave down, the sub at full, under a low-pass

PLUCKthe shortest, swarm-bright, an echo behind it

The panel

KNOB 1..4the page's four controls, each in its colour

PRESETSthe presets, on any page

EDITTONE, TONE 2, SWARM, AIR

ENVSHAPE, TOUCH

LFOMOVE, SOURCES, TARGETS

FXSPACE, DELAY, FREEZE

HOMEthe sky; FILTER, TILT, AIR and MOVE under the knobs

GLOMIDI

ALGORITHMthe group's other pages; on HOME, a pitch bend that springs back

SELECTpressure, with no aftertouch to press: the swell

PLAYlatch: keys stay held; press one again to let it go; move octaves to add notes from elsewhere

RECheld, FREEZE at full: catch the moment, let go of the keys, play over it

SEQthe autopilot: nine controls wander slowly round where they are set

ARPmorph to scene B over four seconds, and back; held, PRESETS picks B

SELcut to the other scene

SAVEkeep the sound: SAVE, PRESETS to a USER slot, SAVE

OCT− OCT+the octave; both at once silences everything

Over MIDI

CC 80..87	the eight macros, in the Circuit Tracks' order: MOVE SPACE AIR TILT WIDTH DRIFT FREEZE BLOOM
Channel pressure, or an expression CC	swells the pad open, as far as SWELL allows
Velocity	the level, as much as VELO says
Program change	a preset
Clock, start	the delay's sync, and the tide's bars
CC 74	the master filter, high-pass to the left of centre, low-pass to the right
Sustain, pitch bend, CC 7	as you would expect

Install

From the install page in Chrome or Edge over USB, or from the FM-1 Firmware Hub. The rescue, OCT− held at power-on, is always there, and any other firmware installs over AURORA the same way.

In a dawless rig

Sequencer MIDI out into the FM-1's TRS jack (type A). Set the channel on the MIDI page or leave it OMNI, hold chords, send the macros, let the movement do the rest.

Credits and licence

By twochannels, GPL-3.0, on the platform of CS-1: Dinghy (Sven Trogus), Felucca and SLOOP's hardware layer (Leo Kuroshita, Hügelton Instruments), FM-106's dual-core worker (PattF), Felucca's web installer.