Nota Physical
Nota Physical builds sounds the way objects make them: something strikes (a mallet, a burst of noise) and something rings (a resonator tuned like a beam, a marimba bar, a string, a drum skin, a plate or a pipe). It’s the instrument for mallets, bells, plucks and struck percussion that respond to how hard you play.
Signal flow: mallet + noise → resonator 1 and resonator 2 (in series or in parallel) → output. Up to 8 voices.
Exciter
Section titled “Exciter”What strikes the resonators.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mallet — level · Stiff · Noise · Color | A strike: harder mallets excite more high partials; noise adds the click of the hit |
| Noise — type · Freq · Reso · level | A filtered noise burst, for breath, bow or scrape |
| Noise Env — A · D · S · R | How the noise burst evolves; Env sweeps its filter |
Resonator
Section titled “Resonator”
Two banks of tuned resonators; bank 2 can be switched off. The graph shows each bank’s partials as the engine tunes them — drag ↔ for Ratio, ↕ for Bright.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Type | The material: Beam, Marimba, String, Membrane, Plate, Pipe |
| Decay | How long it rings |
| Material | How fast high partials die compared with low ones — wood to metal |
| Bright | How much of the high partials you hear |
| Inharm | Bends the partials away from a clean harmonic series — bell-like |
| Ratio | Tuning of the partials relative to the note |
| Hit | Where it’s struck — the centre or the edge |
| Tune | Tuning of the bank |
| Struct | 1 → 2 (series: bank 1 rings bank 2, like a string on a body) or 1 + 2 (parallel: both struck) |
| Mix 1+2 | Balance between bank 1 and bank 2 |
Output
Section titled “Output”Poly (8 voices) or Mono (a new strike chokes the last), Tune, Fine, Note off (how the sound reacts when you release a key), Volume and Pan.
Presets
Section titled “Presets”32 factory presets: mallets (Marimba, Vibraphone, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Bass Marimba, Balafon), bells (Glass Bell, Tubular, Church Bell, Music Box, Crystal Chime, Gamelan, Singing Bowl, Wind Chimes), percussion (Wood Block, Hand Drum, Steel Drum, Log Drum, Cowbell, Clave, Sub Thump), plucks (Kalimba, Harp Pluck, Koto, Tine Keys) and blown or bowed sounds (Pan Flute, Blown Bottle, Bowed Glass, Metal Plate).
- Velocity matters: a harder strike brings out more partials, so play it from a keyboard or shape velocities in the piano roll.
- From wood to metal: start from Marimba, raise Material and Inharm step by step.