Daurade
Grooves in chrome for the M-VAVE FM-1: filtered, pumping, robotic. Press PLAY and Daurade plays a groove: a filtered loop that opens over sixteen bars, a mix that pumps on every kick, a robot voice singing the hook, and very crisp drums. Ten styles on two sides, CHROME and SESSION. You steer it with four knobs, drop it, set off a solo, play the lead yourself on the keys. Built on Tuna and Felucca.
Version 0.1. Runs on the FM-1. Built with no warranty. Felucca's or Tuna's installer, or the official V15, takes the FM-1 back.
Install
Open delirioux.github.io/daurade in Chrome or Edge on a computer, connect the FM-1 with a USB data cable and press Install (allow MIDI when the browser asks). The page checks the package in the browser and writes it over USB-MIDI, as Felucca's installer does. Daurade keeps its settings and its eight sets in Felucca's first two song slots: back up anything you made in Felucca first.
Or try it in the browser first: delirioux.github.io/daurade/try runs the same firmware, compiled to WebAssembly on Felucca's browser emulator (Chrome, Edge or Firefox; the computer keyboard plays the keys).
Test builds: the newest from dev installs from delirioux.github.io/daurade/dev;
every run also leaves its package in the artifact daurade-firmware. From a terminal: python3 tools/fm1_install.py daurade-X.Y.fwsc.
The four knobs
| SWEEP | The low-pass on the loop. The knob is its ceiling; over each sixteen-bar cycle the filter breathes up to it and falls back (the footer's sixteen dashes are the cycle). A build opens it all the way, a drop closes it. |
| PUMP | How deep the whole mix ducks on each kick and breathes back. The drums never duck. |
| VOICE | How much of the robot voice: off, the hook in every second half of eight bars, or singing all the way. |
| ENERGY | Density and drive together: from a bare groove to ghost notes, sixteenth hats and extra chops. |
Ten styles
| CHROME: filtered, pumping, robotic | SESSION: played, warm, humanized | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| FILTER HOUSE · 124 | stab loop, long sweep, heavy pump | DISCO · 116 | walking octave bass, muted plucks, string swells |
| ROBOT POP · 112 | the robot sings the melody over EP chords | SEQUENCER · 112 | sixteenth-note bass, its filter opening over the song |
| SHRED · 123 | a distorted guitar-like solo, fast runs | FUNK · 108 | clavinet, slap bass, tight hats |
| NIGHT DRIVE · 105 | minor key, dark pads, a pulsing arpeggiator | BALLAD · 88 | EP and strings, sparse drums |
| SLOW JAM · 98 | mellow EP, long filtered pad, a soft robot | FINALE · 120 | string runs, brass hits, crescendo |
A style brings its own tempo, sounds, key, chord loop, groove, drums and space; your MIX, ARC, SOLO and MENU stay. A new style or song comes in on the next bar line, so a groove never changes mid-bar. ALGORITHM picks another song in the same style: a new chord loop, bass line and hook, the same each time you come back to its number.
With ARC on (the default) a song shapes itself: an intro that brings the parts in one by one, the main groove, a build with a snare roll and the filter opening, a drop, a solo, a breakdown, and round again with a new hook.
The controls
| SELECT | tempo |
| MASTER | volume |
| PRESETS | the style (the list shows while turning; it comes in on the next bar) |
| ALGORITHM | a new song in the same style (on the next bar) |
| KNOB 1-4 | the four cards on the screen (PLAY: SWEEP PUMP VOICE ENERGY) |
| PLAY | start (with the intro) / stop |
| REC | DROP: tapped, everything but the filtered loop drops out for two bars and slams back on the bar line; held, it stays dropped until you let go |
| SEQ | SOLO: a solo from the next beat, over SOLO's bars; again, it stops. Shows the SOLO page |
| keys | the lead, live, snapped to the scale: whatever you press is in key. The keys only ever play music |
| OCT- / OCT+ | the keys' octave |
| HOME | PLAY; hold it: MENU (COLOR, LOOK) |
| FX | SOUND (the four parts' sounds), again: TONE (RESO DRIVE PHASER CRUSH) |
| LFO | VOICE (VOWELS SHIFT TALK GLIDE) |
| SCL | KEY (KEY SCALE CHORDS BARS) |
| ARP | GROOVE (SWING HUMAN HATS FILLS) |
| EDIT | DRUMS (KIT KICK SNARE SNAP) |
| GLO | MIX (the four levels), again: SPACE (REVERB DELAY TIME WIDTH) |
| ENV | ARC (ARC BUILD DROP SOLO) |
| SAVE | SETS: eight sets on the knobs (SET, LOAD and STORE turned right, CLEAR turned right three times) |
The keys' LEDs glow on the notes of the chord playing: the ones that fit right now. MIDI out: STABS on channel 1, BASS on 2, LEAD on 3, the drums on 10 (General MIDI notes). The settings and the sets save themselves while stopped. docs/MANUAL.md goes through every page.
The sound
Four parts on Felucca's engines, ten sounds each (STABS: CHROME, EP, REED EP, STRINGS, BRASS, CLAV, GUITAR, ORGAN, RAVE, PAD; BASS: FM BASS, SQUARE, ACID, SUB, SLAP, FRETLESS, FAT, WOW, DISCO, UPRIGHT; LEAD: ROBOT, TALKBOX, SAW, SYNC, GUITAR, STRINGS, BRASS, CHIP, SINE, ORGAN), evened out so a new sound does not jump out of the mix. The robot is Felucca's VOICE engine, a formant synthesizer, at full buzz and a high Q: it talks through two vowels on every note, in time with the tempo.
The drums are Daurade's own: seven one-shots (two kicks, snare, clap, closed and open hat, crash) synthesized by
tools/da_drums.py, every hit at full level on its first sample, stored at 44.1 kHz so the hats
keep their air. They are dedicated to the public domain (CC0). The KIT card: CRISP (these), SESSION or MACHINE (Felucca's DRUM
engine).
Colours: NEBULA, Daurade's own (deep indigo, electric blue, hot magenta), and all of Felucca's.
Building
As Tuna and Flyfish (see BUILDING.md), with FELUCCA_DAURADE=1 ./build.sh. GitHub Actions builds
every push to main and dev, and publishes the site from either: main's release at the root, dev's test build
under dev/ (web/da_make_site.py; the repository needs Settings > Pages > Source: GitHub Actions, and dev
allowed in the github-pages environment). sh tests/da_tests.sh runs the host tests;
sh tests/da_felucca.sh OUTDIR renders a groove through Felucca's engines to a WAV; sh tests/da_audition.sh
measures every sound's loudness; web/emu/da_build.sh builds the browser version (Emscripten, or clang with a WASI
sysroot). Design notes and the plan: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.
Credits and licence
GPL-3.0-only. Daurade by delirioux, written with Claude; a fork of Flyfish and Tuna (delirioux), forks of Felucca by Leo Kuroshita, Hügelton Instruments; the web installer is Felucca's. The drum samples are CC0. See CREDITS.md and LICENSING.md.