ZEN-1 禅

Ambient firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1 that turns it into a small living window. A cherry tree drops petals on a river, koi circle a pond, fireflies blink over a summer stream under a real moon, and every movement you see is a note you hear.

Switch it on, set it down and let it play: soft, slow and never quite the same. It is made for listening while you read, work, wind down or fall asleep. When you want to, reach in: the keys play along with the scene, and the knobs shape every part of it.

Sakura in the morning: a cherry tree over a misty stream, cherries along its stone-walled far bank — Sakura · Morning

Sakura in the afternoon sun, the far bank mirrored in the stream — Sakura · Afternoon

Sakura at golden hour, the blossoms warm — Sakura · Golden Hour

Sakura at night: the tree lit up, lanterns along the far bank, their light on the river — Sakura · Night

Sakura in the pixel-art style — Sakura · pixel art

The koi pond by day, seen from above: koi among lily pads in a ring of stones — Koi · Natural

The koi pond at feeding time, the koi near the surface — Koi · Feeding

The still pond, the koi deeper and slower — Koi · Still Pond

Rain on the koi pond, rings where the drops land — Koi · Rain

The koi pond at night, a stone lantern lit and the moon on the water — Koi · Night

The koi pond in the pixel-art style — Koi · pixel art

Fireflies over a stream at dusk — Hotaru · Dusk

A full moon rising over the firefly stream — Hotaru · Festival

A quiet night over the firefly stream — Hotaru · Quiet Night

Deep night: the Milky Way and many stars — Hotaru · Deep Night

Rain over the firefly stream, rings on the water — Hotaru · Rain

Mist over the firefly stream, the moon hazy — Hotaru · Mist

Version 1.1.

It installs and uninstalls the way Felucca, X0X, FoMni and FuMi-1 do, and the installer can put M-VAVE's own firmware back.
Your FM-1 should be on M-VAVE's V15 before any custom firmware.
Installing is at your own risk: read the notes on the install page first.

Just listen, or make it yours

Made for listening

There is nothing to do. Pick a scene and it plays on its own for as long as you like, its music unhurried and gentle, the light slowly turning from morning to night. A soft drone breathes underneath, notes come and go like rain, and every few minutes the music pauses for a breath. It is calm on purpose: no beats, no sudden sounds, no flashing lights, nothing that jumps.

Yours to tweak

Every scene has the same four pages of knobs:

Scene: the mood, how busy, the instrument, the room
Volume: the notes, the drone, the air, the water
Nature: which sounds those are, and the scene's own touches
Music: echo, warmth, phrases and the tide

Pick a mood to set them all at once, then adjust anything you like. Every mood remembers your tweaks, so your Morning stays your Morning.

Three scenes

Sakura 桜

A pale cherry leans over a narrow city stream, its far bank lined with more cherries, all mirrored in the water.

Each petal that lands plays a koto note, pitched by where it lands.
Gusts shake loose a shower of petals with a harp run.
A bush warbler sings; spring showers come and go.
At night the tree is lit and paper lanterns glow along the far bank.

Koi 鯉

Koi of the real varieties glide, hover and follow each other in a garden pond, a new shape with each picture.

Every bite of food is a note: low in the deep middle, high near the edge.
Play a key and they come over to you.
Japanese pond frogs hop onto the lily pads, and a bamboo shishi-odoshi knocks.
Rain rings the water; at night two stone lanterns light the pond.

Hotaru 蛍

Fireflies drift over a summer stream, each blinking on its own clock, until the whole field falls into one shared pulse, as real fireflies do.

Each blink is a soft note.
The moon, from NASA's lunar map, takes the path its phase really takes.
Frogs call and an owl hoots.

What makes it deep

Music that comes from the world

Nothing is a loop. Every note comes from something happening on screen: a petal landing, a koi biting, a firefly blinking, a pebble dropping. Where, how fast and how near decide which note and how loud.
A breathing drone of three voices, each swelling and fading on its own cycle, so the bed under the notes is always shifting and never stops.
Tide: a slow ebb and flow, three to six minutes end to end, from sparse, dark and echoing to full and bright. Every few minutes the notes rest for a breath, and the world goes on without them.
Phrases: notes can come from four loops of unequal length that slide past each other, so melodies recur but never line up the same way twice.
Japanese scales, chosen so every key you play sounds right over the music:
- Yo (bright) by day
- Min'yo (warm) from golden hour through the night
- In (dark) only for Hotaru's Deep Night
- Natural follows the light, and now and then at dawn lets the key drift a fourth or fifth.
Sixteen keys, sixteen notes: every white key is its own note, rising left to right, and all of them glow softly. Any key sounds right: notes outside the chord being played come as gentle passing notes.
Real FM synthesis (Dexed's DX7-class engine): koto, harp, bells, a glass furin, water drops and mallets, with echoes, reverb and a Warmth control that mellows the whole sound.
Sounds are heard where they happen: a raindrop landing on the left of the pond is heard on the left, and a firefly high in the sky sounds higher.

Moods and time

Natural runs a whole day or night in half an hour, and the music follows the light: livelier by day, quieter and warmer at night.
Four moods per scene, each with its own time and character:
- Sakura: Morning, Afternoon, Golden Hour, Night
- Koi: Feeding, Rain, Still Pond, Night
- Hotaru: Dusk, Festival, Quiet Night, Deep Night
Nothing jumps. Changing mood glides the scene there over thirty seconds: the light turns, lanterns light one at a time, the moon slides across the sky while its shadow sweeps to the new phase.
Every mood remembers your tweaks:
- Adjust a mood and it stays yours, marked with a small dot, even after a power-off.
- Switch moods and come back, and it is as you left it.
- A tweaked Natural still runs its whole day.
- Turn just past a tweaked mood onto "Reset" and it goes back to how it was made.

Small things worth noticing

Six real Japanese frogs visit the koi pond, each in its own colors and markings, each as common as it would be at a garden pond, and each croaking at a pitch to match its size. The koi turn to look when one plops in.
A real moon: Hotaru's moon is drawn from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter map, with its true seas.
- Full, gibbous, half or crescent.
- A full moon rises at dusk and is highest at midnight; a crescent sets early.
- A full moon makes the music brighter; a crescent makes it darker, with longer echoes.
Fireflies that really synchronize: each nudges its neighbors toward its own timing, so the field drifts into one gentle pulse, holds it, and drifts apart again.
Stars as they are: scattered in loose clusters, a few faintly blue or warm, the brightest first to come out, dimmed near the moon and low in the haze. Shooting stars pass with a chime, and on a Deep Night the Milky Way appears.
Weather:
- Mist rolls in over Hotaru's field in soft fog banks.
- Rain on Hotaru rings the stream and splashes on the reeds, and the fireflies shelter on the reeds, glowing slowly.
- Rain on the koi pond is seen and heard drop by drop.
- Rain begins with a few drops and builds, and when it stops the last drops still fall.
Recorded nature, all public domain: a brook, a breeze in the trees, crickets, a bush warbler's song, a frog, an owl and a bamboo knock, mixed with synthesized wind, water and rain.
The pond remembers: food a full koi leaves can sink and come back later as a soft bowl note.
Painterly or pixel art, at the press of a button, for every scene.
Calm by design:
- The panel's lights glow softly, and only where a button does something.
- The screen shows only the scene until you touch something.
- A tap on HOME shows the battery, the scene and the mood for a moment.

Play along

White keys play the scene's instrument, and the scene answers:
- Sakura: the blossoms shake, and two petals land later with your note.
- Koi: the koi find the food you dropped and play your melody back in their own order.
- Hotaru: a firefly rises to your note's height and joins the rhythm.
Black keys are each scene's own:
- Sakura: a harp whose notes ring out anywhere on the river.
- Koi: pebbles on singing bowls, and the shishi-odoshi's knock.
- Hotaru: firefly flashes, and a breeze that carries the fireflies away.
FuMi-1's koto instrument is still there as a mode: hold HOME.

Credits

Built on FuMi-1 by cartesive, FoMni by Charles Vestal and Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (Hügelton Instruments). The FM engine is Dexed's msfa.
Ideas (no code) came from:
- Charles Vestal's AMB-1: the breathing drone, rests, loops and the slow arc
- Leo Kuroshita's Avonlea: moods
- keremimo's Melodee: sending the screen only what changed
- ambalek's fall and Dillbo's KoiBoi2
Recordings: CC0, from Freesound, by BurghRecords, Anya_Media, Defelozedd94, shaunhillyard, warukunai, afleetingspeck, Breviceps and thegoosington.
The moon: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio CGI Moon Kit (LRO, public domain).

Going back to the official firmware: use the installer's "Back to the stock firmware", or M-VAVE's updater, M-UPGRADE, from m-vave.com/download.

M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners; ZEN-1 is affiliated with none of them. Site from commit 566dec0.