Every synth machine you need, in a tiny box. Switch Blade is the versatile FM-1 firmware: a powerful polysynth, a wavetable monster, a subtractive synth with an acid 303 inside and a lush chorus poly, all running at once in your pocket.
Plug in the USB cable, open Chrome and press the button. No drivers, no apps, no account. It takes about two minutes, and one click puts the official firmware back.
The FM-1 is a brilliant little groovebox. Switch Blade is the versatile firmware that rips out the stock engine and drops in four powerful synthesizers, one on each track, all playing together. Each machine has its own sound and its own screen design.
Sequence an acid line on one track, stack lush chorused strings on another, hit a fat polysynth lead on the third and a growling wavetable bass on the fourth. Then push the drive until the room shakes.
This is the real firmware, compiled for your browser: the same code that runs on the FM-1. Power it on, load the demo song and press PLAY, or play the keys with your computer keyboard or a MIDI controller.
Every track can run any of the four machines, and each one comes with 32 presets ready to play.
Wide, warm and powerful.
A powerful polysynth for brass, strings and leads. A morphing state-variable filter sweeps from low-pass through notch to high-pass, a 4-pole mode goes thick and creamy, and analogue slop keeps every voice drifting a little out of line.
Straight from the Void Wave plugin.
The voice of my free Void Wave plugin, squeezed into the FM-1. Scan through wavetables, bend the waveform with WARP, sweep the VOWEL filter until the bass starts talking, and stack six-voice unison for walls of sound.
A 303 inside, and a periodic table besides.
NANO is a powerful subtractive synth: two anti-aliased oscillators with a sub and noise, a resonant filter (low-pass, band-pass or high-pass), its own envelopes and LFO, and four voices. It also emulates a 303: its first two presets are an acid bassline voice with accent and slide on every step. The other 30 are chemically inspired voices, from Rubidium and Bromine basses to Xenon pads and Tungsten leads.
That shimmer, on tap.
A lush, powerful poly: a sharp DCO with pulse-width modulation, a smooth ladder filter, a four-position high-pass and a deep stereo chorus in modes I, II and I+II. On the screen you get real faders, not knobs.
The home screen is a rack of four synths, complete with rack ears and screws. Each unit shows its machine, preset and a red LED track number, and lights up when it plays. Open a machine and it gets a panel of its own: wood cheeks, brushed silver, faders or glowing wavetable rings.
Values show on red seven-segment LEDs, and the colours change with each machine.
Four synths are only the start. Switch Blade adds a full set of effects and sequencing tools.
One knob per track takes it from gentle warmth to full overdrive. The tone darkens as you push it, and it is light enough to run on every track at once.
One per track: soft and hard clip, wavefolder, fuzz, bitcrusher, phaser, flanger and chorus, with dry/wet.
Shared chorus, tempo-synced delay and reverb (room, spring or hall), with a master limiter so it never clips.
Rhythmic gate and stutter per track, locked to the tempo from 1/8 down to 1/32 triplets.
An arpeggiator with up, down, random and repeat modes; one-finger chords with voicings; and scale lock so every note fits.
LFOs, envelopes, velocity, mod wheel, aftertouch and more, routed to pitch, filter, drive, pan and the effects. Record knob moves as motion.
Poly, mono, legato and unison on any track, with glide, from one shared pool of eight voices.
USB MIDI in and out, clock in over USB or TRS, clock out, and per-track channel routing to drive your other gear.
The installer checks the firmware before it writes anything, and you can go back to the official firmware whenever you like.
Switch Blade installs straight from your browser over USB. Nothing to download and nothing to unzip.
Plug the FM-1 into your computer with a USB data cable and switch it on.
Use desktop Chrome or Edge and go to the flasher page.
Press Install and allow MIDI access when Chrome asks. That is how the browser talks to the FM-1.
The FM-1 restarts into Switch Blade. Pick a track, pick a machine, make noise.
Yes. The flasher page has a "return to official" option: download the official FM-1 firmware from M-VAVE, choose the file, and the FM-1 goes back to stock.
The installer talks to the FM-1 over Web MIDI with system-exclusive messages, which Chrome and Edge support on desktop. Safari and Firefox do not support this yet.
Power-cycle the FM-1 and press Install again. If the device is still in update mode, the installer picks up where it left off.
No. Switch Blade is free, and its source code is open (GPL-3.0).
Free, open source, and two minutes away.
Flash Switch Blade from ChromeSwitch Blade is free, always. If it brings your FM-1 to life, a small contribution helps keep this and future tools free and independent.
Switch Blade is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by M-VAVE. All product names and trademarks belong to their owners. Install at your own risk.