Recording

Record into the Arrangement

1. Arm the track: click the ● button in its header. An audio track records audio, an instrument track records MIDI.

2. Choose what it records. For an audio track, right-click the header ▸ Record input: a hardware input, the master, or another track. An instrument track records the notes you play on a MIDI keyboard, the computer keyboard, a gamepad or your phone.

3. Put the playhead where the take should start and press Record (⌘R). Press Space or Stop to finish.

Arm an instrument track and an audio track together and one take records both — the MIDI and the audio. Nota records the first armed track of each kind.

Disarming a track while it records ends its take.

Count-in

Right-click the metronome for a count-in of 1, 2 or 4 bars. Record from stop then counts in first; the clicks are never part of the take. See Transport.

Hearing the input

The headphones button next to an audio track’s input turns on monitoring: you hear the input live through the track’s effects and fader, whether or not the transport is playing. While monitoring is on, the track plays its input instead of its clips. The master can’t be monitored — it would feed back.

Recording over a loop

With the loop on, recording fills the loop range: each time round, the new pass replaces the previous one, so you can keep playing until you get it, then stop. Turning the loop on in the middle of a take starts recording the loop region from there.

Recording from another track

An audio track’s Record input can be another track, a group or a return — handy for printing a performance through its effects, or a submix, to audio. Nota keeps it sample-aligned.

Recording into Session

In the Session view, arm a track, select a scene and click Session Rec — the take goes into that track’s slot. Click again to keep it (cut to whole bars), or set FIXED to 1–8 bars and it stops by itself. An empty slot’s Record here does the same for that slot.

Recording automation

Record also records automation: while it’s on, move any knob or fader and that parameter’s lane writes what you do. See Automation.

Tip

Latency matters most when recording. Pick a small buffer in Settings ▸ Audio while you record and a larger one while you mix.