nota-daw/nota v0.56.1

Nota 0.56.1

on GitHub

🎛 Nota 0.56.1 is out

Nota 0.56 is about playing. The piano roll sounds as you edit it and its keys play like a keyboard; recording keeps the sustain pedal, the wheels and every other controller with your notes; the transport learns Pause and a loop region you can shape by hand. And Nota Volt now does what Nota Bass and Nota Synth did — one synth where there were three.

1. A piano roll you can play
With the speaker switch in the clip editor's header on, a note sounds on the track's instrument while you place it, click it or drag it, and re-sounds at each new pitch as you drag. Click a key on the left to play it, ⇧-drag down the keys to glide through them, and ⌘-click (Ctrl-click) a key to select every note of that pitch. Click the piano roll's ruler to put the playhead there or drag along it to scrub; rows zoom taller and shorter (⌘⌥ + wheel, Ctrl + Alt on Windows and Linux) with Fit to notes (⇧F) to frame the whole clip; and a note you draw takes the length and velocity of the note you last touched, so a run of quarter notes is one length change and then double-clicks.

2. Recording keeps everything you play
With the pedal down, released keys keep sounding on every built-in instrument until it comes up. Recording now keeps that pedal, the pitch and mod wheels, channel pressure and every other controller with the notes, and the clip plays them back to the instrument. Starting playback in the middle of a clip first sets each controller to where the clip has it; when a clip ends or you stop, its pedal is released and the wheel centred, so no note hangs. In loop recording, a pass replaces a controller only where you moved it, and a new Overdub / Replace switch (⌘⇧R / Ctrl+Shift+R) decides whether each pass adds to the take or replaces it. Notes appear the moment the key goes down and grow with the playhead; a pickup played on the count-in lands in the take where it actually started; and a key held across the loop seam keeps sounding instead of being cut.

3. Nota Volt is the one synth
Each of Volt's oscillators has a Shape knob that morphs its wave toward the next one (sine → triangle → saw → square) and a Pulse Width for the square; a Drive sits in front of both filters and another on the output; Unison stacks up to seven detuned voices with Spread panning them across the stereo field; Poly / Mono / Legato covers the playing modes, with Mono falling back to a key you are still holding; and Wheel → LFO opens each filter's LFO onto its cutoff as you raise the mod wheel. The 49 Nota Synth and Nota Bass factory presets are now Volt presets. New tracks, projects and racks start on Volt, and Bass and Synth leave the browser — but projects and presets that use them still open, play and show their own card.

4. Pause, and a loop region you can shape
⇧Space stops with the playhead left where it is, and the next Play carries on from there — Space still stops and goes back. P scrolls the Arrangement to the playhead when it's off screen, and Follow now pauses when you scroll away during playback instead of snapping back. Drag either end of the loop brace to move just that end, drag the brace itself to move the whole region, double-click it to turn the loop off and on, and right-click the ruler to loop the selection or clear the region.

5. A Devices panel that fits more
Double-click a device's header to fold it into a 28 px strip with its name and on/off switch, so a long chain fits the panel. Every instrument now has that on/off switch: off silences the instrument without muting the track and uses no CPU, while a reverb tail rings out. The preset list starts with Init, which puts every parameter back to its default, and double-clicking an instrument in the browser swaps the selected track's instrument, keeping its clips and effects — try instruments on a part one after another. Turning a knob, flipping a switch or typing a value is now one undo step, in order with note and clip edits.

Also
• Hosted plug-ins get every MIDI controller, and the pedal arrives with its real value, so a piano plug-in can half-pedal
• What's New shows each version's release notes, and the version number in the status bar opens it
• Horizontal sliders drag sideways, with the handle under the pointer
• A Session take shows its notes the moment recording stops, and recording into a slot from stop counts in first
• Send faders stay in step between the Devices panel, the Session mixer and the Mixer window; the clip editor follows a playing Session clip's playhead
• Export audio: a Custom range typed as bars.beats, and Loop exports the real loop region
• Drum Rack no longer crashes when a kit is built while audio is running; in Aurora, every unison voice goes through the filters
• Linux: the AppImage runs on RHEL-class distros (glibc 2.28 and up), and the benign IBus errors no longer fill the system log
• Undo covers arrangement sections, a tempo set over MCP shows in the transport bar and is saved, and un-warped clips resize live as you change the tempo
• MCP: read and replace the arrangement's sections, read and set clip controllers, the loop record mode, a start beat for exports

Install

First launch: Nota isn't signed with a paid certificate yet. On macOS, if it says Apple could not verify Nota, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway — step-by-step guide. On Windows, click More info → Run anyway in SmartScreen.