Nota Grain
Nota Grain chops a sample into tiny overlapping grains and plays a cloud of them from a read position that you move, freeze or sweep. A voice becomes a pad, a word becomes a drone, a guitar note becomes a shimmer. It ships with a default sound, so it plays before you load your own.
Getting a sample in: drop a file from the browser onto the card, or drag an audio clip from the Arrangement onto the track.
Signal flow: sample → read position → grain cloud (size, density, spray, pitch, spread) and a dry read head → Dry/Wet → filter → amp envelope.
The graph shows the sample, the Spray band around the dashed read position, each voice’s read head and every grain playing (teal dots — high for left, low for right). Drag across the sample to move Position.
Read (the rail)
Section titled “Read (the rail)”| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scan / Freeze / Key | The read position moves at Scan speed, stays put, or follows the key you play |
| Position | Where in the sample the grains are read |
| Scan speed | How fast the position travels |
| Spray | Random scatter of each grain around the position |
| Volume · Dry/Wet | Output level · the plain sample against the cloud |
| Tab | Controls |
|---|---|
| Grain | Window shape (Hann, Gauss, Tukey, Tri), Size, Density, stereo Spread |
| Pitch | Root (the key that plays the sample as recorded — a dropped file can set it from a note in its name), Coarse, Fine |
| Variation | Per-grain Pos Rand, Pitch Rand and Pan Rand |
| Filter | LP, HP or BP, Freq, Reso |
| Amp | The envelope of the whole cloud — A · D · S · R |
Presets
Section titled “Presets”50 factory presets, many with their own source sound: frozen textures (Half Frozen, Frozen Choir, Frozen Bell), pads (Slow Bloom, Glass Pad, Shimmer, String Cloud, Warm Ensemble), voices (Vowel Drift, Vowel Slicer, Whisper Cloud, Angel Octave), basses (Sub Grain, Grain Bass, Growl Cloud), keys and plucks (Grain Keys, Soft Pluck, Nylon Halo, Harp Scan, Kalimba Cloud, Marimba Grains) and utility starts (Sample Plus, Plain Sampler, Slow Scan).
- Instant pad: Freeze on a sustained part of the sample, large Size, high Density, a little Spray and Pitch Rand.
- Plain sampler: Dry/Wet fully dry plays the sample straight — then add the cloud to taste.