Nota Keys

Nota Keys is an electric piano built from its physics: a hammer strikes a tine (with its tone bar), a reed or a string, and the vibration passes a pickup that colours it — the harder you play, the more it growls. Four models in one instrument: Tine and Suitcase (the classic tine piano, stage and suitcase), Reed (the reed piano) and Clav (a struck, damped string with two pickups).

Signal flow: hammer → tine / reed / string → pickup → preamp → tremolo → phaser → chorus → cabinet → output. Up to 64 voices.

The card has two sizes — L with the Sound and FX tabs, and S with the model, the pickup and four knobs. Switch them with S / L in the header.

Sound

The model chips (Tine, Suitcase, Reed, Clav) sit in the tab strip. Picking a model also sets the pickup and the cabinet it is usually heard with.

Section	Control	What it does
Hammer	Hard	Hammer hardness: soft is dark and round, hard is bright and percussive
	Vel→H	How much harder the hammer gets when you play harder
	Noise	The thump of the hammer, off or −60 to −12 dB
Resonator	Decay	How long a note rings, 25 % to 400 % of the model’s natural time
	Body	The weight of the fundamental and the tone bar
	Bright	The bell-like upper partials
	Key→Br	Brighter up the keyboard (or darker, below the centre)
Pickup	the graph	Drag the point: ↔ Symmetry, ↕ Distance (see below)
Damper	Damper	How fast a released key stops: low rings on, high stops in ~25 ms
	Rel N	The thump of the damper felt on release
	CC64 / Pedal	The sustain pedal — click it, automate it, or press your keyboard’s pedal

The pickup curve

The graph is the transfer curve the sound actually goes through, not a picture of it. The teal band is how far a full-velocity note swings. Distance (up/down) moves the pickup closer — the curve bends more and loud notes saturate; Symmetry (left/right) offsets the tine against the pickup, adding even harmonics: that’s the bark, read out above the graph, and the H1–H8 bars show what the curve does to a sine. Quiet notes stay in the straight middle of the curve and sound clean; hard ones reach its knees.

With Clav the graph shows the string and its two pickups instead: Upper is thin and bright, Lower fuller, Both sums them.

Play

The rail on the right: Tune (±50 cents), Age (each key drifts a little in pitch, decay and level — the same every time), Stretch (an octave stretch like a tuned piano) and Voices (8, 16, 32 or 64). The grid shows the voices: bright for keys held down, dim for notes ringing out or held by the pedal. Re-striking a ringing key hits the same tine again.

FX

Each effect has its power dot; the chain in words sits on the right of the tab strip.

Effect	Controls
Preamp	Drive into a soft clipper, Bass and Treble shelves (±12 dB)
Tremolo	Mono (level) or Stereo (auto-pan, the suitcase sound); Rate — free (0.5–15 Hz) or Tempo (1/1 to 1/32); Depth
Phaser	Rate (0.05–5 Hz) and Depth
Chorus	Mix
Cabinet	Off, Suitcase (2×12″ wood), Combo (the reed piano’s speaker) or DI (line)
Output	Volume and Pan

A tempo-synced tremolo locks to the bar while the transport runs, so a freeze or a bounce sounds exactly like playback.

S size

The model, the pickup graph, and Hard, Pickup (distance), Drive and Trem (depth). The preset picker is the same as in L.

Playing it

• Velocity is the instrument. The bark, the brightness and the hammer all follow how hard you play — record from a keyboard or shape velocities in the piano roll.
• Sustain pedal: your keyboard’s pedal (CC64) holds notes; the Pedal button and its automation lane do the same in a clip. Lifting it drops the dampers on everything it held.
• MPE: bend retunes a note, pressure drives the tine harder into the pickup, slide shifts the pickup’s symmetry — see MIDI controllers.

Presets

40 factory presets in six folders: Basics (Mk I Stage, Suitcase Init, 200A Classic, D6 Funk), Tine (from Ballad Tine and Mellow Mk II to Bark Lead, Phase Ninety and Tine Bells), Suitcase (Suitcase Stereo, Slow Pan, Fast Pan, Synced Eighths, Dream Case…), Reed (Reed Bark, School Reed, Reed Tremolo, Overdriven Reed…), Clav (D6 Bright, Clav Lower, Funk Drive, Muted Clav…) and Character (Lo-Fi Keys, Detuned Tape, Toy Box, Ambient Tine).

Tips

• Growl on demand: lower Distance and push Symmetry off-centre, then play harder — soft notes stay sweet, loud ones bark.
• The suitcase sound: Suitcase model, Stereo tremolo around 4–5 Hz, Suitcase cabinet.
• Funky clav: Clav, Upper pickup, Damper high, a touch of Phaser.