NOCT FM

MIDI controller firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1, made for FL Studio and Ableton Live.

Keys, one-finger chords, a phrase generator, an arpeggiator, mixer knobs and DAW transport — on one fixed MIDI preset. The FM-1's built-in synth is switched off: your DAW makes the sound.

Install from the browser · Русская версия · Changelog · Emulator

Experimental firmware. Keep the official M-UPGRADE tool and the recovery steps for your FM-1 at hand before installing (see Safety and recovery).

Contents

• What it does
• Install
• Connect your DAW
• Controls
• The generator
• Lights and screen
• Safety and recovery
• Development
• Credits and licences

What it does

Install

1. Open https://joolo09.github.io/noct-fm/ in Chrome or Edge on a computer.
2. Close your DAW, connect the FM-1 with a USB data cable and press Connect.
3. Press Load (or choose a downloaded .fwsc), tick the checkbox and press Install.

The installer checks the SHA-256, the size, the device model and, after the restart, the firmware identity. It only accepts the NOCT build published with it. Settings from older NOCT versions are migrated automatically.

Connect your DAW

Download the scripts from the site (or use integrations/). They pass tempo, transport, record and FX state; notes need no script.

FL Studio — copy integrations/FL Studio/NOCT to Settings/Hardware/ in your User data folder, restart FL, pick NOCT FM-1 → Controller type NOCT FM, and give its input and output the same Port number. For clock sync enable Send master sync on the output. Two-way tempo needs FL MIDI scripting API 38+.

Ableton Live 11/12 — copy integrations/Ableton Live/NOCT to Remote Scripts/ in your User Library, restart Live, choose Control Surface NOCT with Input/Output NOCT FM-1, and enable Track on the input and Sync on the output.

Hold HOME for 0.6 s for MIDI MAP: K1–K4 then send CC24–27 for your own mappings (FL Link to controller, Live MIDI Map).

Three instruments from the generator — on the SYNC page set K4 to SPLIT: melody on channel 1, chords on 2, bass on 3. In FL give three channels MIDI input channels 1, 2, 3; in Live make three MIDI tracks with input NOCT FM-1 and Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3. The keyboard always plays on channel 1.

Controls

The screen shows a page; the four knobs edit what that page shows. PRESET flips pages, HOME returns the knobs to the DAW. Nothing on a settings page sends CC.

There is no autosave: an orange square in the screen header means unsaved changes.

The generator

Press SEQ to play a looping 4-bar phrase. With the DAW stopped it previews locally; with the DAW playing it starts on the next bar and follows MIDI Clock. Changes apply from the next bar (NEXT BAR on screen).

• Phrase. Motif, answer, contrast and a cadence that ends on the tonic. Each variation picks a form (AABA, ABAB, AAAB, ABAC, ABBA), answers the motif as it is, inverted or backwards, and shapes the line as an arch, rise, fall or wave. Strong beats land on chord tones; nothing is out of key.
• Melody characters (STYLE K4): flow, arpeggio, riff, sequence, pedal, leaps, call and response, runs, ostinato, hook, turns, octaves, echo — or AUTO, a different one per variation.
• Harmony. 8 scales (major, minor, minor pentatonic, dorian, harmonic minor, major pentatonic, mixolydian, phrygian), 24 progressions per scale family — some change chord at beat 3 — or AUTO. Chords are voiced close to the previous one, without crossed voices.
• Modes. MELODY, CHORDS, BOTH, BASS (a bass line with chromatic approach notes) and FULL (bass + chords + melody).
• Browsing. Turn ALGORITHM to step through 1000 variations of the current seed; turning back returns the same phrase. EDIT picks a new seed. The variation number and all settings are kept by SAVE.

For the widest variety: COMPOSE K4 → AUTO, STYLE K2 → MIXED, STYLE K4 → AUTO, then turn ALGORITHM.

Lights and screen

• Bright keys are notes actually sounding (keyboard, chords, generator, arp or MIDI coming in on channel 1). A key waiting for the next arp step glows dim. In in scale mode the scale glows dim.
• Buttons: steady bright = active, dim = available, a short pulse = the page you are on. PLAY is green while playing and red while recording.
• Screen: page tabs, BPM, a beat indicator, MIDI in/out, the transport state (STOP / LOCAL / PLAY / WAIT / ARMED) and an animated scene per page; COMPOSE shows the chord names of the phrase and a piano roll.

Safety and recovery

• The bootloader, USB, OTA and flash code from fm1-base are not modified; NOCT is an application on top.
• Flash is written only when you press SAVE. Unknown or invalid settings fall back to defaults.
• Every release is built in CI with the device image checks (RAM, interrupt-safe code, register access) and the site publishes only a build that passed them.
• If the FM-1 does not start: hold OCT− and OCT+ for 5 seconds for update mode and restore the stock firmware with the official M-UPGRADE from M-VAVE. If even that is not reachable, see FM-1-transporter.

The firmware is tested in a simulator that runs the real C code (including 200 random fuzz sessions per build) and against mocked DAW APIs. That does not replace a test on a real FM-1 with a DAW.

Development

sh build.sh --host --no-ble                     # simulator build (Linux; Windows: tools/build-host.ps1 -NoBle)
for t in tests/test_*.py; do python3 "$t"; done  # scenario tests on the real C app
firmware/app/build/host/noct-usb_host tests/noct.ctl test-output
node tests/installer.test.mjs
python tools/emulator.py --port 8766            # interactive emulator at http://127.0.0.1:8766/
sh build.sh --no-ble --release 0.9.2            # device image (needs the JieLi pi32v2 toolchain and AC79 SDK)

• Firmware: firmware/app — composer.c (generator), midi_engine.c (clock, arp), note_bus.c (note ownership, chords, scales), midi_ui.c (controls), afterglow.c / control_screen.c (screen), project.c (settings and migration).
• Site and installer: site/ (English and Russian). DAW scripts: integrations/.
• Improving the firmware: docs/IMPROVE_PROMPT.md — no-brick rules, an audit checklist and a definition of done.
• MIDI protocol on channel 16: CC7 master; CC20–23 knobs (CC24–27 in MIDI map); CC110/111/112 play/stop/record; CC113 FX; CC114 + CC115 BPM×10 (14-bit, always as a pair); CC116/117 playing/recording feedback; CC119 value 2 preset handshake.

Credits and licences

Built on CTL-1 by Charles Vestal, fm1-base and felucca-bsp (Felucca by Leo Kuroshita, Hügelton Instruments). The application and its changes are MPL-2.0 (LICENSE); see upstream/LICENSING.md and upstream/LICENSES for the base. Terminus font: SIL OFL. Sonivox EAS stays in the sources under Apache-2.0 but is not linked into the MIDI build.

NOCT is independent of M-VAVE, Image-Line and Ableton; their names identify compatible products.