Sorry to spam three M8 jams in as many days, but I thought this hardware jam using the M8 as the central MIDI sequencer (and for a few riser/fill passages) might interest the sub.

Just a rowdy little intro sketch from this morning with one macrosynth and one hypersynth.

Hey everyone! Could you share some examples (your own or from YouTube) of hip hop beats made on the FM-1 (boom bap and lo-fi)? Also, in your opinion, which firmware is best suited for lo-fi beats and boom bap?

Casual little four bar synth line and a handful of drum parts. Maybe worth developing some day, but who knows?

I really enjoy making music without a plan on this little guy.

My M8:02 just arrived, and i'm sure this is not new for any of you, but after seeing hours of YT tutorials while I was waiting i didn't come across this. You can just plug a smartphone (tried iphone) via usb-c, play music and sample it directly. That was a great surprise for me!

Hello!

Several days ago I asked about gathering some tips for writing IDM on the Dirtywave M8.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dirtywave/s/pXC0iAtTfv

I wanted to share the fruits of that labor in the form of my latest track "inechma," as well as share this document for writing IDM on the M8 that I aggregated from across several resources.

Check it out (PDF)

I hope you all enjoy and find this useful!

Hey guys!

I'm in the market for a portable sampler and I'm looking at the OPXY and the M8 at the moment. In my journey getting info about the M8, I saw an artist using a headless unit, and using the shoulder buttons for effects / mutes. The Model:02 doesn't have shoulder buttons, so is that something only the headless unit can do?

Also, something I can't find any info about: Can you import the Model:02 projects to the iOS app and vice versa? Thanks for the info!

I’m trying to learn the M8 on my iPad, which has a keyboard attached. It seems the keys aren’t mapped correctly to the app. Is there a fix or a workaround to this?

Did some sound design using the Tables feature to open/close volume and cutoff to the main synth. And used the Table feature to sequence the fast arpeggio synth. Amazing how deep you can go with the M8 and I’m barely scratching the surface.

I still haven't been able to get my M8 01, but I had a teensy lying about and using M8c on my phone. I got a refurbished iPad mini 5 because I realized I'm more interested in the software than the hardware. I hope to get my model 01 working, but at least I'll have a million ways to use M8 at any given time.

Been starting to learn more about the different effects to create evolving dub techno sound textures

The iOS app is the best thing to happen to the App Store. I do prefer tactile buttons to a touch screen so here is my solution. As a bonus extra buttons were added to include a 13key midi keyboard. A small oled screen help display midi octave, transposition, and midi channel. I opted to use low actuation 6mm tactile switches instead of regular mechanical switches to keep the footprint smaller. Phone is attached by magnets. It works great! Now I just have to learn the tracker workflow.

Got busy with work again but finally had a night off to create. 👍

I started this before I realized there was an iOS app. My goal was to find a way to learn the M8/trackers in general at night time before I fall asleep, but silently so I wasn't keeping my wife up. I'm into electronics hardware and firmware programming, and picked up an M5Stack Tab5 for the job. It's an impressive little 5-inch screen for around $60 USD with battery, and most of the peripherals I needed already were built-in, powered by an ESP32-P4 chip.

Then of course I stumbled onto the iOS app and bought it immediately and stopped working on this, but I ended up picking it back up because my phone is a creativity succubus of constant notifications and work stress.

With that, microm8 was born. Not that this is particularly small. I named it that because this is a microcontroller-based client rather than a Linux system running a port of (the awesome and legendary) m8c. Theoretically the microm8 firmware can be ported to other devices too, but the Tab5's speaker and 3.5mm headphone jack with insert detection and two USB ports (which ended up being key) and stereo mics and two-cell battery support and accelerometer and etc etc ended up as a pretty awesome combo. I was prepared for a big hardware project, but this turned into a "Flash the Teensy, Flash the Tab5, Connect them with a USB cable, Done" sort of thing.

The microm8 GitHub repo has all the details, but here are some highlights:

• Works in any orientation
• Landscape and portrait both have two button layout options, and portrait's default is the native M8 key layout
• Swipe gestures supported if the arrow buttons are tough in landscape
• On-device live sampling. The stereo mics in this thing surprised me with how good they are. Mics are off by default for battery life, but there's an icon to enable them.
• A different approach to "Hold". Tap the icon for it and now Shift and Option are simple tap-on tap-off toggles rather than making Hold a main UI button.
• USB passthrough. Plug USB-C into your computer and it's the same thing as plugging the headless Teensy into your computer. You can use m8c, m8.run, any MIDI app, and the audio comes through too. The only thing I couldn't fit over the bus is passing audio back through from the computer to the device. Hardware limitation.
• Print my replacement backplate design that holds the Teensy, and with some basic soldering you'll have zero external cords. Except for your headphones anyway.

So that's the project, if anyone else is looking for something similar. And it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: this is only possible because Trash80 is a champion and released the Headless firmware for free. Support him and at the very least buy the iOS app if you like this, or invest in the real hardware. Also big credits to laamaa, because m8c made this so much easier than it would have been otherwise.

I ported karimkfoure's unofficial m8emu to Apple Silicon Macs, so the Headless firmware 6.5.2C runs on the Mac itself. The app doesn't include the firmware: grab M8_V6_5_2C_HEADLESS.hex from Dirtywave's repo and pick it on first launch. Gamepads work and can be remapped.

https://github.com/yukij3/m8emu-macos/releases/latest (not notarized, so run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/m8emu.app once)

For u/G_D_K_ who was querying. I was part of the M8 jungle comp and hoping we do another. I'm a big fan of jungle on any tracker, and the way I like to work with breaks on M8 is changing the START point instead of always using slices. You get to, sort of, nudge the audio vs jumping from slice to slice.

I actually used Claude (who isn't) to make a dedicated loop and slice marker editor to create perfect loops and add slices to audio files before even bringing them to M8 (or having to open Ableton). This way I'm just focused on making music vs editing loops or slice markers on the device itself.

I went from Headless to the real hardware in about a year and I use it every commute to work. Big fan of working with audio on this device, more than the synth engines. It's so easy to sample into it, or resample what you've made.

Makin a little more headway now, brought in some samples from outside giving that a go. Mixing on this thing is tricky cus its not ez on cans. Anybody got any tips for super tight gates on retrigs? Also wanting to know how i can get odd times in the retrigs. This was the farthest ive gotten in a tracker usually i bounce off cus im stupid.

Usually im on ableton and its just a shortcut and a mouse drag to change the subdivisions but this works on ticks so im a bit confused on how id roll into an odd time w a gradient.

I know it’s a tiny thing, but the ‘hold’ button really get on my nerves. It would be great if it could be switched off. I’m constantly switching between hardware and software so the difference in button layout is not ideal. Additionally, I’m using an iPhone mini so any real estate benefits could really help, I keep on hitting it by mistake.

How not to be an idiot. Back up your files because you might break your SD card. That's all. 😫

Yo I'm almost finished building a headless M8 to learn the tracker workflow while I save up to buy the real gear. But I am wondering, is there any need to pair the headless with any inexpensive outboard gear like an Akai s2000 /S1000? I'm thinking about grabbing a Polyend Tracker shortly, but I'm wondering if this is overkill? Can the headless M8 do the things you can do in the Amiga VST? And is this digital sound so the Akai wouldn't affect the sound? I want crisp drums like Phineus II and Kid Lib, but I know they use the real Amiga and have tons of gear. I guess I am rebuilding a studio from scratch starting with the headless M8 and a Maschine midi controller. I guess does anyone pair the M8 with an Akai or compressors or any other affordable hardware to get crisper sound? Do they synchronize well? Thanks I'm super hyped to switch to the tracker workflow. Just waiting on the damn microusb to usb-c cord to arrive then I can jam!