Forge Five
A synthesizer firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1, based on Clipper (isod89 / 3dSam), which grew out of SLOOP and Felucca (Leo Kuroshita / Hügelton Instruments). Where Clipper offers 23 engines, Forge Five will offer five, each tuned to one kind of music and given a real front panel, on two parts that layer or split the keyboard, played from Ableton Move or any MIDI sequencer:
| Engine | Style | For |
|---|---|---|
| LADDER | three oscillators, a four-pole ladder, overdrive, glide (a classic 1970s American monosynth) | Berlin School bass and leads |
| CHORD-D | one DCO, a sub, a 24 dB low-pass, a stereo bucket-brigade chorus, chord memory | dub techno chords |
| BRASS | two oscillators, hard sync, poly-mod, a 2-pole state-variable filter that sweeps low-pass → notch → high-pass, or 4-pole; per-voice age | pads and brass |
| RIBBON | two layers a voice, a pitch ribbon on a knob, brilliance and resonance | the big film synth sound |
| WAVE-P | wavetables with a stepped (uninterpolated) mode, two oscillators, a 24 dB filter | digital wavetable pads and bells |
Voices share a budget of eight units (an engine's voice costs what it costs); a part can be capped. Four macros per engine on CC 16–19, the arpeggiator (no step sequencer: Forge Five is played from Move or a DAW), Clipper's effects, modulation matrix, web editor and installer.
Status: in development, first measures on the FM-1 done (23 Oct 2026). The current build (FF 0.1.1 DEV) is Clipper
trimmed to the four engines the five are built on (ANALOG for its filter models, HYBRID, WAVE, DCO: Clipper's
one-DCO poly) plus the five Forge Five engines: LADDER (three oscillators, the ladder filter, 14 presets), CHORD-D
(one DCO, the stereo bucket-brigade chorus, chord memory with LEARN, 5 presets), BRASS (two oscillators, sync,
poly-mod, a 2-pole filter sweeping low-pass to notch to high-pass, 4-pole and band-pass, per-voice AGE, 13 presets),
RIBBON (two layers a voice, a pitch ribbon on K4 that springs back, brilliance from the touch, ring and sub, 8
presets) and WAVE-P (eight 8-bit wavetables of 64 waves made by formula, STEP and SMOOTH, two oscillators, a wave
envelope, a 24 dB filter, 9 presets). Their voices run on both cores; the voice budget's weights come from the unit
(docs/INSTALL.md). FF 0.1.1 DEV adds the screen mirror: an iPad or computer app can show the FM-1's screen over
the same USB-MIDI port (the FORGE extension, shared with the other Forge firmwares; web/EDITOR_PROTOCOL.md). Install at
your own risk, with a way back ready.
- Install: docs/INSTALL.md — GitHub builds the package, one script sends it to the FM-1.
- Play: docs/USER-GUIDE.md — getting around, the two parts, the voice budget, every engine's pages and every preset.
- Build it yourself: BUILDING.md (Linux x86-64 natively, macOS through Docker, Windows through WSL).
- Clipper's own documentation (everything Forge Five has not changed; its step sequencer, recording, song mode and drum track are not in Forge Five): docs/CLIPPER-README.md, docs/midi.md, the Felucca wiki.
- Issues and ideas: https://github.com/kkasemsa/Forge-Five/issues
Roadmap
| Phase | Release | What |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | — | the fork builds and passes its tests on GitHub ✅; CPU measured on the unit ✅ (23 Oct 2026) |
| 1 | 0.1 DEV | trim, rebrand, two parts with a split point, the voice budget, the macros, the per-part engine patch |
| 2 | 0.1 alpha | LADDER |
| 3 | 0.2 | CHORD-D |
| 4 | 0.3 | BRASS, AGE |
| 5 | 0.4 | RIBBON (the ribbon on K4, TOUCH from velocity and the time a key is held) |
| 6 | 0.5 | WAVE-P (STEP / SMOOTH, BITS, the wave envelope; tables from formulas, no import yet: Phase 7) |
| 7 | 1.0 | MORPH A/B, the presets, the editor (and WAVE-P tables sent from it), a Thai manual; and, moved here from Phase 5: the encoder turned while a key is held as a per-note expression, the 8-slot modulation matrix (spec v0.2 section 4) |
The earlier Forge Five, built on Felucca 1.6.1 with four parts (FF 0.2: the LADDER engine, the engine patch, a MULTI page),
is kept on the branch archive/felucca-base and the tag ff-0.2-felucca; its LADDER, voice budget, macros and engine
patch are being ported here.
Credits and licence
Free software, GPL-3.0-only (LICENSE): the whole source, the web editor included. Forge Five is built on Clipper by isod89 / 3dSam, on SLOOP, and on Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (@kurogedelic), Hügelton Instruments; the bundled fonts and ported DSP keep their own licences (LICENSES/, LICENSING.md). Algorithms, not code or data, are borrowed from the classic instruments: no ROMs, wavetables or samples of any real instrument are used, and no manufacturer's or model's name is.
M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their respective owners. Forge Five is not affiliated with or endorsed by M-VAVE, nor by the Clipper, SLOOP or Felucca projects.
Copyright (C) 2026 Khantipol Kasemsant.