Wildwood Soundworks provides frequent firmware updates as new features and bug fixes become available.

Existing Lightning and Express users can upgrade to the latest firmware using the WIFI-based over-the-air update feature. For more information see Network Menu in the documentation.

June 6th, 2026

Wildwood Soundworks is pleased to announce a major firmware update that includes a new version of WildOS, the firmware operating system that powers Wildwood Soundworks devices.

This new version features a web-based development environment that make it easy to manage and program your device from a standard web browser.

It includes a File Manager, a JavaScript Editor and Interpreter, a Console Pane with Command Line Interface, and a Device View.

For more information, see Developer Tools Quick Reference Guide.

To get started programming your device, see Developer Tools JavaScript Examples.

May 19th, 2025

• Capacitive Touch Sensor Velocity - In general, the harder you press a capacitive touch sensor, the higher the capacitance reading because the increase in pressure increases the surface area in contact with the sensor.

  Previously, Express used this range to create a "velocity" value for the MIDI note-on event by scaling the touch sensor value and adding it to a base velocity value of 50% (e.g. a MIDI value of 64).

  Unfortunately, this base velocity of 50% proved to be limiting in terms of the available headroom for the capactive touch sensor velocity and you couldn't really use it to improve expressiveness.

  Furthermore, Lighting didn't previously support capacitive touch sensor velocity at all. With Lightning, the MIDI note velocity was always 100% (e.g. a MIDI value of 127).

  With this firmware update, both Lightning and Express provide improved support for capacitive touch sensor velocity.

  There is a new menu item called Velocity Sensitivity in the Settings menu that controls the base velocity value and headroom. It defaults to 50%. Increasing it increases the effect of capacitance on MIDI note-on velocity. Decreasing it decreases the effect of capacitance on MIDI note-on velocity. Previous Express behavior was equivalent to 50%. Previous Lightning behavior was equivalent to 0%. For maximum sensitivity, set it to 100%.

  It's worth noting that the Foreground and Background Volume items in the Settings menu also have an effect on MIDI note-on velocity because they scale the velocity into the specified range. For the highest degree of expressivity set the Foreground and Background volumes to 100% (and reduce the downstream amplifier volume).

May 15th, 2025

• FM Synthesizer Improvements - This minor release contains a number of fixes and improvements to the FM synthesizer, including: a new set of default parameters, proper reset of operator envelopes on note-on, handling note-off for strum when amplitude envelope decays to zero and improvements to voice allocation and initialization.

May 3rd, 2025

• FM Synthesizer - Lightning and Express now feature a two-operator FM synthesizer in addition to the original sample-based synthesizer.

  A two-operator FM synthesizer is capable of producing a wide variety of interesting and useful sounds, and it's considered a good starting point for exploring FM synthesis. While more operators offer greater complexity, two operators provide a solid foundation for creating a variety of timbres and textures.

  You configure the FM synthesizer using a new FM synthesizer menu. The first step is to enable the FM synthesizer by selecting a channel from one of the 16 available channels. Then any notes that play on that channel will be synthesized using the FM synthesizer instead of the sample-based synthesizer. This lets you use both synthesizers simultaneously to achieve a wide range of effects.

  The FM synthesizer menu provides options for setting the carrier / modulator ratio, as well as the ADSR envelope and gain for both the carrier and the modulator.

• MIDI CC Mapping - Working initially with only the new FM synthesizer, you can now map controls on an external USB MIDI keyboard or controller to menu items on Lightning or Express.

  This lets you change the value of parameters on features like the FM synthesizer while you're playing, using just the external MIDI controller.

  Setup is easy: plug-in an external MIDI controller, go to the FM synthesizer menu and select an item. Then adjust a control on the MIDI controller. The MIDI controller sends a MIDI CC (control change/continuous controller) message for each control and Lightning or Express maps the controller number to the selected menu item. These mappings are part of the profile and can be saved and later restored at startup.

• Lightning Web Browser Support - Up until now, Lightning used the Express web browser support, with its keyboard-centric popup help menu and function keys.

  With this release, Lightning has it's own web browser support that uses the Lightning softkeys and Chord Wheel / Note Wheel views. It also works with both mouse and touch events so you can use it with a desktop web browser or a web browser running on a phone or tablet.

• Limited External USB Hub Support - This is an experimental feature that is still under development. It's included in this release so that you can try it out and see if it works with your gear.

  Previously Lightning and Express were limited to handling a single external USB device at a time, including a USB MIDI controller, a USB UAC 1.0 audio device (like a headset) or a USB flash drive.

  Now Lightning and Express provide limited support for an external USB hub. Internally, Lightning and Express have eight USB channels. An external hub uses two channels and each attached USB device uses two or more channels, depending on the features it supports. This means that you may be able to connect two MIDI keyboards or a MIDI keyboard and a USB audio device to your external USB hub.

  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to know in advance how many USB channels each device uses, so you have to try and see if it works. The number of available USB channels is now displayed on the bottom row of the memory report. You can see this by selecting Memory Usage from the Settings menu.

  For best results with this experimental feature:

  • Power up Lightning or Express without the external USB hub connected.
  • Power up the external USB hub without anything connected to it (or switched on).
  • Plug the powered external USB hub into Lightning or Express.
  • Check Settings -> Memory Usage to see how many USB channels are available.
  • Plug an external USB device into the hub (or switch on) and wait for it to be recognized.
  • Check Settings -> Memory Usage again to see how many USB channels are available.
  • If free USB channels are still available, try repeating with another device.
  • Watch for error messages indicating insufficient free channels. The firmware generates these where it can but there are a few scenarios where it doesn't get notified.
  • Test out your devices. If they work, celebrate!

  Known problems: powering up Lightning or Express with an external USB hub and devices attached, or rapidly plugging and unplugging the external hub with devices attached, can cause it to hang. For best results do one operation at a time until these problems are resolved.

February 12th, 2025

• Chord Voicing for Channel - Chord voicing is now an attribute of the channel instead of a global setting. This makes it easy to maintain separate chord voicings for different instruments.

February 9th, 2025

• Chord Voicing - Lightning and Express now support an alternate chord voicing for guitar. This means that in addition to the standard piano chord voicing (where the notes in the chord appear in the order of the notes on a piano keyboard) you can also select guitar chord voicing (where the notes in the chord appear in the order of the notes in guitar chord open fingering). This makes strumming chords in guitar voicing sound more like the way they sound on a guitar. Standard voicing is the default and the way it worked previously. You can change the voicing using the Settings menu, or as a directive in a Tablature File.
• Tablature Note Counts - The tablature view now includes the number of notes in the chord. Generally when you strum more notes than the number of notes in the chord, the additional notes repeat the chord an octave higher. With the new Tablature View and Guitar Chord Voicing you may instead want to stay within a single chord and use various strum patterns or arpeggios. For this, it helps to know how many notes are in the chord.

January 28th, 2025:

• Tablature View - This new view displays Wildwood Tablature (.tab) files containing lyrics and chords. As you play chords the current position advances automatically. You can create your own .tab files using a text editor like Notepad, TextEdit or vim. In addition Wildwood Soundworks is pursuing a licensing agreement to provide .tab files for a collection of popular songs. In the interim, you can try out this sample: House of the Rising Sun and use it as the basis for creating your own tab files.
• Softkeys for Lightning - The Lightning popup function keys have been replaced by softkeys that appear over the header and footer when you touch the display. This makes it easier to interact with views and menus without obscuring them. The top row of softkeys lets you select a category. The bottom row lets you select an action within that category.
• External MIDI Input Channel - In previous versions of the firmware, Lightning and Express set their current channel to the channel supplied in MIDI messages from external USB MIDI controllers. That remains the default behavior in this update, but you now also have the option of keeping the channels independent or mapping the external MIDI controller to a specific channel number. This lets you play and record notes from both the local device and the external controller at the same time, as well as making it easier to work with external MIDI controllers that send messages on multiple channels (e.g. sequencers).
• Improved USB Audio - Although you may not notice it, the USB audio stack has been extensively rewritten to provide better performance and reliability.
• Express Touch Sensitivity - This firmware update improves Express touch sensitivity and enables Express to work with a USB battery power bank.

September 1st, 2024

• Global ADSR Override - While the existing Articulation Menu lets you specify the articulation parameters, including ADSR envelope for any zone (combination of sample and note range), the ADSR Menu lets you globally override the ADSR envelope for all notes.
• Key Signatures - Set the current key. This simplifies playing sharps and flats. For example, recall that F Major is a scale with a single flat, B flat. If you set the key signature to F Major (1 flat) and press B, it will play B flat instead of B.
• MIDI Networking - Connectionless MIDI Networking allows you to send and receive notes you play with other Wildwood Soundworks devices. You can use this feature to configure multiple devices for your own use, or you to play with others. You can define your role, which specifies what you want to send or receive on the MIDI network. MIDI Networking supports up to 128 unique networks so that your network doesn't accidentally conflict with others.
• Metronome - Lightning and Express now provide a metronome feature. When you enable the metronome, it starts as soon as you press Record to enter Record Ready mode. Pressing a note begins recording. The existing Set Tempo menu item sets the metronome tempo. You can also specify the metronome sound and volume.

June 14th, 2024

• Log View - The Log View displays information on any errors or crashes that may occur. The information in the log view is useful for fixing bugs. Please take a photo of the screen (or copy the text) and send it to me, as described in the error message. Next, read the message to see if pertains to a crash or an error. Unfortunately, crashes are not recoverable and are displayed after the device reboots. Errors may be recoverable. If it's an error, save your work promptly and restart the device.
• Log View Control - You can scroll the Log View up and down using the rotary encoder. You can clear the Log View by pressing on the rotary encoder button. You can switch between the Log View and other views using the Next View and Previous View functions. The Log View is only available if something (e.g. error information) has been written to it.

March 25th, 2024

• Sampler - The sampler lets you create, view, zoom, select and save samples, set loop points and assign samples to the touch pads on the keyboard. You can set one or more samples per channel or instrument or even multiple samples per note. The pitch of any note that doesn't have an assigned sample is adjusted automatically based on the closest note that has a sample.
• Sample Handling - You can override the existing builtin samples or create totally new sample banks, and custom samples work just like the builtin samples so you can use them with the sequencer and synthesizer to create your own music.
• USB Audio - You can use the new USB audio support to record samples from a USB microphone, headset or audio adapter and play samples or synthesizer output on a USB speaker, headset or audio adapter. You'll need a USB UAC 1.0 compatible audio device and a USB-C to Type-A cable for the Express USB loopback configuration.
• WAVE Files - You can also create samples from standard WAVE files or the builtin instruments. There are some limitations on sample size and sample rate, so be sure to check out the limitations section below for complete details.
• Articulation - With this release, you can now control the amplitude, pitch, and timbre of your sample to produce more expressive musical notes using the new articulation menu. You can set a variety of parameters, including Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release (ADSR) as well as vibrato, modulation effects and more.
• Sample Groups - You can save your new samples and articulation parameters in a sample group file and then define startup sample groups in your profiles. This makes it easy to switch between sample groups based on the kind of music you want to make.
• More - Other new features include rotary encoder velocity to navigate large data sets more quickly, channel volume to highlight specific instruments, and instrument banks that allow you to group your new samples together and create multiple drum channels.