FRASIL 2.0

FRASIL 2.0 is a major upgrade release. Since 1.0, the instrument has grown a second sequencer, a way of playing its buttons that was rethought from end to end, scenes of your own with names and tempo, envelopes you can see, and a home for your scenes on the web. Your scenes from 1.0 and 1.1 come over as they were.

Highlights

• Two sequencers on one grid. GLINT's 32 steps, and the bass's own: 16 steps of NOTEs, CUTs and HOLDs, each from 1/16 to 16 BARS, written step by step or played in live (quantized, overdubbed round its loop), PULSE striking the bass again on the beat. Both start together from their first step when PLAY starts, and with every scene you load.
• LFOs at the heart of the sound. Three LFOs, seven shapes, from a turn of over three minutes to a sixteenth on the beat, each moving up to four of forty settings around the values you gave them. Hold LFO and turn any setting: it joins one. Synced, they start again with the beat; every scene keeps them.
• The buttons, rethought. A tap for the white word, a hold for the amber one; a page button held with SELECT walks its pages; KEYS follow the section you are in; SWELL on ENV, where the drone is; pop-ups answered with SEL (yes, OK) or FX (no), only those buttons lit; plainer words everywhere (LOAD, KEYS, BODY, KEY MODE, SEQ STEPS).
• OCTAVE, the voice's own. BASS's and GLINT's OCTAVE move every note the voice plays (keys, MIDI, arpeggio, sequences), the notes sounding included, at once.
• Envelopes you can see. BASS ADSR and GLINT ADSR, drawn on the screen as you turn them, every note riding its curve; GLINT has a RELEASE.
• Scenes of your own. Names of up to sixteen characters (NAME IT), NEW SHARD to start fresh, a TEMPO kept in each scene, and seven factory scenes made on the FM-1 that play the moment they load.
• The River. Back up and restore over USB, and river.frasilsynth.com: keep your scenes ("shards"), share them, send them back to the FM-1, several at once.

Everything new since 1.1

• Seven factory scenes, all new, each playing something with its own TEMPO: NORTH RIVER (F# minor pentatonic, 90 BPM), LUMIERE NOCTURNE (A major, 60 BPM), RESILIENCE (F# minor pentatonic, 90 BPM) and LONG NIGHT (A Phrygian, 60 BPM), made on the FM-1 by FRASIL's author and kept as it stored them; OPEN WATER (D Dorian, 118 BPM), WHITEOUT (C# minor, 72 BPM) and THAW (D# major, 78 BPM). They are slots 1 to 7 until something is stored over them; 8 to 16 are empty.
• A new FM-1 (no settings saved yet) starts on NEW SHARD; NEW SHARD's GLINT is on ARP.
• A scene keeps its TEMPO: STORE saves it, LOAD SND+NOTES sets it. Scenes stored before 2.0 take the TEMPO the settings had. (The store: the basses' record is FRBT, a shard FRSn; the earlier ones are made over at power-on and at a restore, and the River and its server read them.)
• OCTAVE (BASS II's K2, GLINT II's K1) is the voice's own transposition: every note it plays, a key's, a MIDI note's, the arpeggio's and the sequences', those sounding moved at once as it turns (the sequencers keep their notes without it). It was the keys' offset before.
• PULSE keeps the beat: a bass note changed by hand (a key, a MIDI note) while one sounds, or in PULSE's gap, isn't struck off the grid; the bass goes to it and PULSE strikes it on its next division.
• The bass's STEP LENGTH goes up to 8 BARS and 16 BARS. BASS SEQ II's K1 is SEQ STEPS.
• An empty sequence leaves the keys their notes: GLINT's or the bass's, RECORD OFF, with no note in it, plays nothing to transpose, so a key (or a MIDI note) plays its glint or the bass, as with the sequence off.
• A scene loaded starts its sequences from the top, the beat beginning there, as PLAY does: GLINT's and the bass's from their first steps, PULSE on the NOTEs, none struck twice.
• PLAY held with nothing playing brings the scene back: its drones, arpeggio and bass, and every sequence it has from its first step (RESTORED). Held while something plays, it is RELEASE ALL, as before.
• The bass's swell in the river is drawn in lamp, the bass's colour; pressure brightens it.
• The River sends shards to an FM-1 running 2.0 (an earlier FRASIL is asked to update first); it still reads the backups of 1.1 and makes their scenes over. Each shard keeps its TEMPO.
• The site: LISTEN, on the front page, plays the factory scenes live with FRASIL's own engine (the first one on arrival); the cheat sheet has USEFUL TIPS (a page button held and SELECT, LFO held and a K, HOME held) and a plainer first line.

Install: https://frasilsynth.com/guide/install/. Your scenes from 1.0 and 1.1 are made over at power-on; back them up first if you like, at https://river.frasilsynth.com/.

Everything new in 1.1 (released earlier, also new since 1.0)

• BASS has its own step sequencer (SEQ's two new pages, BASS SEQ and BASS SEQ II): 16 steps, each a NOTE, a CUT or a HOLD and as long as you want it (1/16 to 4 BARS); written step by step or live (REC with the keys on BASS), transposed by the keys; each scene keeps it with its SEQUENCE, STEPS and TRANSPOSE; PLAY starts and stops it with GLINT's, on the same grid. Its sequences are kept apart (a new store object at 0xD8000): the scenes stored before load as they are, their bass's sequence empty.
• PLAY restarts the beat: when it starts the transport, and when it is held (RELEASE ALL, then RESTORE), the grid starts again from its top there, as a MIDI Start does: OCT's blink, REC's flash and the metronome, the LFOs on the grid, PUMP, the arpeggio, GLINT's and the bass's sequences (from their first steps, at once) and PULSE all begin together. Following a MIDI clock, PLAY leaves its beats (the sequences start on its next step, as before). A tap that stops changes nothing.
• SCENES: SELECT scrolls the list as K1 does (NEW SHARD, then 01 to 16), and no longer changes KEYS there; a page button held with it still turns that button's pages.
• BASS ADSR (SEQ's third page, BASS III before) is the bass's envelope in ADSR's order: ATTACK, DECAY (new, 10 ms to 10 s, while the note is held), SUSTAIN (new, the level held: 100 %, as it starts, keeps the bass as it was, DECAY doing nothing until it is lowered), RELEASE. Each note played rises again from where the bass is.
• PULSE (BASS II, K4: OFF, 1/8 BEAT to 4 BEATS): the held bass note let go a moment and played again on each division of the grid (MIDI clock, else TEMPO), from its ATTACK, the same note and velocity, no glide, its pressure kept. The gap: a quarter of the division, 8 to 60 ms. With the bass's sequence, inside its NOTEs only (never in a CUT; a step beginning with a NOTE is its own attack). Scenes and settings stored before come over at power-on (or restored from a backup) with SUSTAIN at 100 % and PULSE OFF, a CC learned on a setting kept on it; the River makes earlier shards over the same way.
• GLINT's pages, redone: GLINT II is OCTAVE, RATIO, PING, VIBRATO; GLINT III is GLINT ADSR, its envelope in ADSR's order: ATTACK, DECAY (to silence, or while the key is down to SUSTAIN's level), SUSTAIN and RELEASE (new, 20 ms to 6 s: how long a glint rings on once its key is let go; DECAY set it before). Scenes and shards from before get the RELEASE their DECAY made (DECAY's time up to 0.6 s, else half of it, 0.6 s at least) and sound as they did; RELEASE starts at 600 ms, and the GLINT presets set it too.
• SCATTER is gone (it was on GLINT III): each glint's place in the stereo field and a slight detune, at random, inaudible on the FM-1's mono speaker. Each glint keeps its default spread, fixed: a little apart in the field and in tune. A CC learned on SCATTER is forgotten.
• BASS ADSR and GLINT ADSR draw the envelope in place of the river: ATTACK up to the top, DECAY down to SUSTAIN's level, SUSTAIN's plateau, RELEASE down to nothing, each part as wide as its knob is turned (the plateau what is left), its time across it, A D S R under it, the part being turned lit. Each note sounding is a glint riding it (the bass's in lamp, up to four of GLINT's in ice), waiting at the plateau's end while held, then down RELEASE once let go.
• SWELL is ENV's hold now (ENV is the drone's page, and SWELL swells the drone's voices): held 0.4 s, every drone voice swells together (1.5 s up, 1.5 s down once let go), ENV lit while it lasts. SEQ held no longer swells (with SELECT, it still turns its pages); the help says ENV HOLD: SWELL. GENERATIVE FX's SWELL and CC 11 as before.
• The bass's RECORD LIVE takes what you play as you play it: each note's start and length to the nearest sixteenth, over the time it covers and nothing else, the steps written again around it in as few as the STEP LENGTHs make it (a 5/16, a NOTE of 1/4 and a HOLD of 1/16); a note sounds at once, the sequence's own steps silent under it, and the strip draws it as it is held. Over a sequence the take goes round its loop, the loop's length kept; on an empty one it makes the loop, from the first note's bar to the bar line nearest REC again (the metronome high on each bar line meanwhile), STEPS set. Sixteen steps at most: a note that doesn't fit goes in legato if that is enough, else not at all (BASS SEQ FULL).
• Recording LIVE, REC's metronome counts the sequence's own beats from its first step, the higher tick as it comes round to it (not the grid's bar any more), and REC flashes on them; on STEP, no metronome, REC lit. RECORD on STEP, as on LIVE, turns the keys to its track at once (RECORD OFF gives them back); the bass's STEP carries the STEP LENGTH on from note to note (K3 shows and sets it). While a sequencer records, its strip is ruled, faintly: a line each whole tone, a column each step, the one being written lit.
• Back up and restore over USB (fm1-base's backup, turned on): the 16 scenes and the settings to a file and back, never the panel's calibration. In the browser, the River (https://river.frasilsynth.com/, Chrome or Edge): each slot a card (what plays, GLINT's sequence or arpeggio, every page's settings as the screen writes them); download everything or the scenes you select; put a backup back whole, or scenes into the slots you choose, several at once. From a terminal, fm1-base's fm1_backup.py. A restore waits until nothing plays (hold PLAY; STOP FIRST otherwise), checks the whole file before anything changes, then asks on the screen: RESTORE FROM USB? SEL yes, FX no.
• A backup's start saves scenes and settings still kept in an earlier FRASIL's layout in this one.
• The store: the scenes' record is FRSl, a shard FRSm, the settings FRSJ; the earlier ones (1.0's too) are made over at power-on and at a restore, and the River and its server read and convert them.
• While a backup is sent, STORE doesn't happen (a pop-up says so); a metronome or a CC learned meanwhile is kept for after.
• After a restore from USB was tried, the screen comes back where it was.
• FRASIL River, redone: its own header (FRASIL River, the community shard library) and three parts, Your Private River, the Community River and Tools (Quick Backup), and a profile; shard names of sixteen; its words say what they do (SELECT, Download everything, Save to my River). The main site's header: Overview, Guide, River library (a page on what the River is), Play, Install on FM-1, the same on every page.
• Scenes have names of your own, up to sixteen characters: right after STORE, NAME IT (OCT−/OCT+ the cursor, K4 letters, K3 digits; SAVE or SEL stores it, FX leaves the proposed one). Scenes kept in an earlier layout come over with their names.
• SCENES, redone: the whole screen a list of five slots around the one K1 picks, each with its name and what it holds; the river gone from it; its two actions, PLAY LOAD and SAVE + REC STORE, in a box of their own.
• NEW SHARD, SCENES' first line, above slot 01 (K1 below slot 1), framed in lamp: not a slot, a sound to start a new shard from, fresh. A calm drone in A minor, SEVENTH open (Am7 on A): CUSTOM, BODY and MOTION at half, the three LFOs on (slow sines, two settings each), GLINT's SINE dim, a SUB under it, no notes. PLAY loads it as any scene (the header then says NEW SHARD); nothing is stored into it (CHOOSE A SLOT): STORE from another page puts it in the first EMPTY slot, then NAME IT.
• Hold a page button (FX, SEL, ENV, LFO, EDIT, GLO, HOME, ARP, SEQ) and turn SELECT: its pages, both ways, round, the first detent from another section's page setting KEYS as a tap would; let go, the button does nothing more. Its hold, if it acted first (FREEZE, ARP LATCH, COMPARE, SWELL), is undone.
• KEYS follow the section, when you come from another section: ARP's pages put the keys on GLINT, SEQ's on BASS, EDIT's, ENV's and HOME's on DRONE, by a tap, a page button held and SELECT, or HOME; the others (FX, GLO, HARMONY, LFO's pages with DRONE MOTION, SCENES) leave them. Within a section they never change (ARP again, HOME's MIXER and logo, SELECT with the button held), so KEYS turned by hand stay until another section; SAVE back from SCENES comes back as it left. The keys' badge shows it, with no words over the page's name; a recording keeps them.
• GLINT's sequence, RECORD OFF: on GLINT SEQ's pages the keys play glints, as with SEQ OFF (try a line before you record it; the sequence goes on, TRANSPOSE untouched). On any other page a key transposes it as before and, while it plays, starts it again from its first step on the nearest beat: in a beat's first half from the beat just gone, transposed at once, catching up; in its second half on the next beat, transposed then. Stopped, it only transposes.
• ARP's first page is GLINT I (it was GLINT PARAMS).
• ARP held turning LATCH on puts GLINT's SEQ (GLINT I, K2) on ARP too, if it was OFF or on SEQ, as turning it there would (the header: ARP LATCH, ON, SEQ ON ARP); turning it off leaves SEQ as it is. SELECT turned with ARP held undoes that change with the LATCH (its sequence and RECORD as they were).
• GLINT I's TYPE is SEQ (K2: OFF, ARP, SEQ), the switch that puts GLINT's sequencer on.
• SCENES' UNDO is gone (K4 is empty): STORE, NAME IT and NEW SHARD stay as they were.
• MORPH is back on CUT at every power-on (LOAD is still kept).
• MIDI CC 120 (All Sound Off), on any channel, lets everything go and stops the sequences, as PLAY held (hold PLAY again: RESTORE); 123 stays the track's notes off. The River sends it before it restores: no more hold PLAY first.
• The play page's strata: their badges' digits inside the discs, the rows apart.
• While NAME IT or a pop-up is up, a turn of an encoder never reaches the page under it: on SCENES, K3 could turn LOAD.
• Clearer words: SCENES' KEEP is now LOAD, SND+NOTES (the sound and the scene's notes) or SND ONLY (the sound alone, what plays goes on); KEYBOARD is KEYS, FULLNESS is BODY, and GLOBAL's KEYS is KEY MODE; GLINT SEQ II's LENGTH is SEQ LENGTH, BASS SEQ's (a step's) STEP LENGTH; GLINT SEQ III's UNDO is UNDO TAKE.
• SINK on the screen: a clear blue veil from the top, smooth and see-through, fading at the sides, and as faint as the river behind a page (it was a dark block over it, as strong on every page).
• The logo's screen: its frasil no longer leaps ahead as a pad comes in, nor races back as it fades; the water under the logo a colour a row, without the flickering grain (mauve dots as its swells went through).
• The play page's header: the scene's name alone, as large as it fits (its number gone); beside a long name, FREEZE is a flake of ice. The four strata's badges no longer touch.
• Pop-ups: a warning (STOP FIRST, NOT RESTORED, NOT STORED, MIDI LEARN: TURN ONE FIRST) or a restore's result takes the whole screen until SEL (its one button, OK, and the only light left on), which only closes it; the keys and MIDI play meanwhile, the other buttons and the encoders wait. The gestures' words (STORED, FREEZE ON …) stay in the header.