Nota 0.41.5

Nota 0.41.5 🎛

A redesigned clip editor, bounce-through-effects in one shortcut, and live input monitoring on audio tracks.

✨ New

🎧 Paste Bounced Audio (⌘⇧V). Select a range on any track, pick an audio track and press ⌘⇧V. The range is rendered through the instrument and every effect, then pasted as a new audio clip. It renders in the background, and one Undo removes it. Just like Ableton Live.

🎙 Input monitoring. The headphones button on an audio track lets you hear your mic, interface or another track live through the track's effects, even with the transport stopped. The setting is saved with the project.

🎹 A new clip editor. MIDI and audio now share one layout: a header with the name and modes, an inspector on the left, the canvas on the right.
• A dark keyboard so the notes stand out, with selected notes in brass.
• Clip Tools previews draw as outlines over your notes, and Apply lights up only when there's something to apply.
• Envelopes draw over the notes instead of replacing them.
• Audio clips get switches instead of On/Off buttons, an Envelope tab, and their own warp-marker strip.

⚡️ Importing audio no longer freezes the app. The file appears right away as a "Processing…" track, the waveform fills in as it loads, and tempo detection runs in the background. Re-importing the same file is instant: the analysis is kept in the project's analysis/ folder.

📂 The browser folds down to a slim icon rail. Click an icon to reopen that tab; the state is remembered.

🎼 Piano roll
• Drag a note's left edge to resize it too.
• Chord notes no longer hide each other's velocity: grab a stem by its cap, or drag all selected notes at once.
• ⌘D on notes replaces whatever the copy lands on, like in the arrangement.
• When you zoom out, everything past the clip's end is darkened.

🔧 Changes
• Record and Metronome are now ⌘R and ⌘M, so they can't flip by accident while you play. The Mixer moves to ⌘⇧M.
• Preferences → Audio: a 440 Hz test tone and a CPU check for your current buffer size.
• The audio engine now has its own version, shown in About.

🐞 Fixes
• ⌘D places a clip's copy right after it, not at the end of the track.
• A note already held under the playhead now sounds when you start mid-note or loop back into it. Notes no longer hang when you drag the playhead.
• Sidechain and source pickers name tracks the same way the arrangement does.
• Right-clicking empty space on a track always opens a menu.

Nota 0.41.0

Nota 0.41.0 — a big sound update

Drum kits grow up, four new effects arrive and the instruments are redesigned. Almost every effect now shows on live graphs what it does to your sound.

🥁 Drums — the headline
• Nota Rhythm and the Drum Rack share one library of 25+ kits, so a note plays the same sound in either one
• Every pad has its own effects: saturation on the kick, a short plate on the snare, a room on the clap, ping-pong delay on the hats
• Eight ready-made macros per kit: Tune, Decay, Hats, Drive, Room, Echo, 808/Sub
• Rhythm: an effect chain on every voice, a new editor, a Glue compressor on the whole kit, quiet steps, fills, banks A–D
• 29 kits (was 6), from classic drum machines to glitch and ambient
• Factory kicks, snares and claps are reworked: deeper, tighter kicks, and snares with real wires and crack

✨ Four new effects
• Chorus — Classic, Ensemble (the string-machine shimmer) and Vibrato · 34 presets
• Phaser — 2 to 12 stages, tempo sync · 35 presets
• Flanger — from jet whoosh to metallic ring · 31 presets
• Lens — spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope and spectrogram in one device, with no effect on the sound and no added latency

🎹 Redesigned instruments
• Sampler — Sample / Pitch / Env / Filter tabs, Glide and Mono legato, Trim silence, root note detected from the file name · 30 presets
• Pendulum — watch the balls swing and see why each note plays · 28 presets
• Physical — Mono mode, a mix between its two resonators, the real partials on the graph · 32 presets

🎛 Effects that show what they do
Every effect now has live graphs and around 30 presets. The highlights:
• Auto Shift — a full vocal tuner: keeps the voice's character, detects the key and can follow a MIDI part
• Level — an automatic loudness leveler with LUFS targets (streaming, podcast, EBU R128) and a true-peak limiter
• EQ-8 — slopes up to 48 dB/oct, Mid/Side and L/R per band, auto gain
• EQ-3 — a DJ isolator with band kills that now leaves the sound untouched at flat settings
• Dynamic EQ-8 — each band has its own sidechain key
• Compressor & Ceiling — look-ahead with delay compensation, true peak, LUFS metering and a loudness target
• Forge — each stage gets its own distortion shape; Orbit syncs to tempo
• Crush, Beat Repeat, Shutter, Utility, Valve, Vintage and Auto Filter also get new graphs and features

🧩 Smaller comforts
• Choose presets right in a rack device's GUI window
• A welcome-screen banner when a new version is out
• Dozens of new MCP tools let an AI assistant read and control nearly every device, including sidechain routing

🐞 Fixes
• A rack device's GUI no longer shows a frozen picture
• Rack macros stay mapped when you reorder effects
• Tempo-synced effects inside racks now follow the song tempo
• Rhythm sample voices play in stereo without a hidden filter
• Auto Shift no longer lags by ~16 ms
• Physical's 1→2 structure no longer clips
• …plus fixes in Sampler, Crush, Ceiling, Beat Repeat, Shutter and Dynamic EQ-8

⚠️ Compatibility
Old projects open and sound the same, except:
• Forge in M/S and Multi routing sounds slightly different
• Level with Auto off: press MATCH once
• Valve with a fixed cabinet or off-axis mic: you'll now hear the cabinet's resonances
• Beat Repeat: presets saved with the old Latch now turn on the new Latch switch

Nota 0.40.0

✨ Highlights

• 🛠️ Clip Tools. A new Tools rail in the piano roll writes and rewrites notes — rhythms, chords, Euclidean patterns, arpeggios, ornaments, strums and more. Hear every change before you commit to it.
• 🎹 Every built-in instrument, redesigned. Synth, Volt, Aurora, Operator, Bass, Flux, Grain and Drum Rack now share one sleek, compact interface with tabs, live graphs and a status line. Most gained pitch-bend and mod wheels plus new controls — and every synth now ships 25 presets.
• 🥁 25 drum kits + a step sequencer. Drum Rack synthesizes factory kits right on your machine, adds a kit picker, named pads, and a new Pattern tab for programming beats step by step.
• 🗺️ Song sections & a Snap switch. Mark Intro, Verse and Drop over the ruler to jump, loop and select by section. Flip Snap off to place clips freely.
• 🪶 A lighter, cleaner workspace. A new light theme (Ember Paper), a single-row transport, a compact browser, and calmer clips and groups give the arrangement more breathing room.
• 🎮 Simpler automation & gamepad control. Hit Record and move a control to write automation — no modes needed. Plus, map a game controller like a MIDI device (macOS).

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🆕 Added

🎛️ Synths reborn

• Nota Grain: brand-new card UI with a Dry/Wet knob and a live grain cloud rendered right on the sample graph. Now with 25 factory presets (up from 6).
• Nota Flux: leaner 700×260 card, each "world" in the vector carries its own adaptive unison, and a status strip reads the patch back in plain words. Now with 25 presets (up from 6).
• Nota Bass: pitch-bend & mod wheels, a Legato switch, output pan, and a fresh compact layout. Now with 25 presets (up from 6).
• Nota Aurora: pitch-bend wheel, 8 macros (up from 4) reaching 12 destinations, a switchable FX chain (drive/chorus/reverb), and stereo unison with real spread. Now with 25 presets (up from 8).
• Nota Volt: pitch-bend wheel, macros now reach 12 destinations (up from 6), vibrato can ride the mod wheel. Now with 25 presets (up from 8).
• Nota Operator: pitch-bend wheel, mod wheel on FM index, keyboard tracking on the filter. Now with 25 presets (up from 6).
• Nota Synth: oscillator gains pulse width, detune, octave and a 1/2/4/7-voice unison stack with stereo spread; filter gets a type selector and Env→Cutoff; voice section adds Poly/Mono/Legato, glide and pan. Now with 25 presets (up from 4).

🥁 Drum Rack glow-up

• Brand-new card UI with a kit picker built right into the header.
• 15 new kits, 25 total — everything from jungle breaks and warehouse techno to disco glitterball and 90s boom bap. All synthesized on your machine on first launch.
• Pads can now be named — shown on the pad, in the mixer, and in the Pattern grid.
• New Pattern tab — a classic step sequencer, tied directly to the same clip as the piano roll.

🧰 Clip Tools

• New Tools rail in the piano roll: 6 generators (Rhythm, Seed, Stacks, Euclidean, Melodic Steps, Shape) and 9 transformations (Arpeggiate, Connect, Ornament, Quantize, Recombine, Span, Strum, Time Warp, Velocity Shaper).
• Every tool previews live before you apply it, is seeded for repeatable results, and comes with a "New seed" button to roll again.

🎼 Arrangement & workspace

• Song sections — mark Intro/Verse/Drop above the ruler, jump and loop by section.
• Snap toggle in the transport — freely place clips without holding ⌥.
• MIDI input light on the MIDI Learn button.
• View ▸ Clip names — control how many clip names are shown.
• Gamepad mapping (macOS) — map buttons, sticks and triggers like a MIDI controller.
• Light theme, Ember Paper — switches instantly, no restart needed.

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🔄 Changed

• 🎚️ Aurora's unison dials finally do what they say — detune is now in cents, and spread actually widens the stereo stack.
• 📏 Top chrome is now one row instead of two — transport, position and toggles live in a single 60px bar, freeing up 22px for the arrangement.
• 🔊 Master now shows the applied gain in dB next to its fader.
• 🏝️ Arrangement and modular canvas are now floating "islands", and track groups collapse into a tidy 26px bar.
• 🎨 One colour per group — ungrouped-colour tracks inherit their group's hue.
• 🎨 Clips now show a colour band instead of a name strip — repeated patterns read as a single block.
• 📂 Browser is more compact — single-line rows, BUILT-IN/PLUG-INS sections, and a new ⋮ menu for view options.
• 🎯 Panel splitters are now invisible — just thin transparent grab strips.
• 🖊️ Automation has no more modes — just hit Record and move a control. The per-lane REC button is gone.
• ✋ Touching an automated control outside of Record now overrides its lane — a "Re-enable Automation" button restores it with one click.

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🐛 Fixed

• 🔧 Nota Grain: Position is now truly live — turning the knob affects held notes immediately.
• 🔧 Nota Grain / Flux / Bass: a repeated note no longer cuts itself off — note-off now releases only the oldest matching voice.
• 🔧 Nota Flux: React no longer listens to itself when no source is assigned.
• 🔧 Nota Bass: fixed dropped notes in tight passages and quirky legato/glide behavior.
• 🔧 MIDI mappings to switches (mute, solo, transport) no longer flutter when a CC sweeps past — they now fire only on the actual crossing.
• 🔧 Nota Volt's mod matrix now drags vertically as documented (was horizontal).
• 🔧 Filter-response graphs (Volt, Aurora, Bass, Operator) now show each instrument's real frequency range and cutoff instead of Volt's generic scale.

Nota 0.38.0

Added

• 🎹 Nota Pentad — a 5-voice Prophet-5-style synth with Poly-Mod and per-voice vintage drift.
• 🎹 Nota Consort — a paraphonic 4-oscillator Moog-style synth with a 42-point patch bay (wire by dragging), a step sequencer, and a bucket-brigade delay.
• ✨ Nota Chamber — a hybrid reverb: 16 impulse responses (or load your own) blended with 4 algorithmic modes, plus Freeze and a shimmer pitch shifter.
• ✨ Nota Prism — multiband dynamics: compress above one threshold and expand or lift quiet detail below another, per band.
• 🔍 Overview — a single navigation strip above the arrangement. Drag to scroll, drag up/down to zoom, click to jump anywhere in the project.
• ⌨️ ⌘J Consolidate — merge a time range or a handful of clips into one clip per track. Notes are merged; audio is rendered with gain, transpose, warp, fades, and envelopes baked in.
• ⏪ Reverse audio clips — play a clip backwards from its right-click menu or the clip editor. Nothing is re-rendered, so it's instant and free to try — both waveform views flip to match what you hear.

Changed

• Freeze, Live Freeze, and adding instrument/audio/return tracks are now available in the arrangement's right-click menus.
• Device cards now step through presets with ‹ › and keep their preset names.
• Knobs support ⌘ or ⇧ for fine-step adjustment.
• The clip editor now follows clips as you resize or move them in the arrangement.

Fixed

• A long list of smaller fixes and stability improvements (see the issue tracker for details).