nota-daw/nota v0.40.0 on GitHub

✨ 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).

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).

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.

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.

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.

🎚️ 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.

🔧 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.