I play music by sight (poorly) and can improvise a little bit on guitar, and would love to understand music theory better but so far do not.
Is this a useful device to get a feel for creating music, or is it only really useful if you already understand music theory or improvisation?
Additionally, understanding theory and improvisation is certainly a great thing to know if you're trying to make music, but you can understand a ton of things in the abstract and also be pretty terrible at applying it in the moment.
So if you want to get a device you can throw some hacked firmware on and have some fun, I'd say don't let your lack of theory hold you back.
This is such a cool hardware meme/software/ai dev thing that makes me very happy for the world.
I am just about to start learning. If anyone could drop firmware knowledge aside from Baud Girl (cool af) ... I would appreciate it. I am mostly excited about Obervave, but I will have two FM-1's shortly... what is the best step sequencer firmware at the moment? LOOM-8?
I learned computing and software music concepts on a C64, this feels like the 2026 equivalent.
seems theres a few in there that make it more a DAW
If anyone can teach me about FM, I am so in.
Think this bodes well for the future of Chinese consumer electronics. They have really been punching above their weight. Even the "cheap" guitar pedals are better than what you'd find with American/EU equivalent companies while being 60-80% cheaper.
Just a shame that Chinese workers are too often exploited.
Many of them work in browser too, which is essential for choosing what to try next!
Some faves:
NACHTFART: https://fartypants.github.io/fm1-nachtfahrt/emu/
DUB-1: https://sbegueria.github.io/fm1-dub/emu/