Getting started

This chapter takes you from an empty window to a saved song: make tracks, play, record, save. Every key named in this manual is the key Nebula uses right now, so if you change a key in Key Commands, the manual changes with it.

Your first song

A song in Nebula is a project. It holds your tracks, your regions (the blocks of sound and notes on the tracks), the tempo, the key and the mix.

  1. Choose File ▸ New Project (⌘N). You get an empty song.
  2. Choose Track ▸ New Tracks… (⌥⌘N). Pick the kind of track and how many, then press Create.
  • An audio track plays and records sound: a voice, a guitar, a sample.
  • An instrument track plays notes through an instrument plug-in.
  1. Set the tempo: click the number in the middle of the transport bar and type it, drag up and down on it, or tap it in with TAP (⇧T).
  2. Set the key and the time signature the same way, beside the tempo.

To bring in a sound file, drag it from Finder onto a track, or choose File ▸ Import Audio… (⇧⌘I). It lands where you drop it.

A new, empty song shows the Start Your Song card. Start from a Template opens the Project Chooser (⇧⌘N), where Nebula's own templates (Beat, Record a Band, Songwriter, Mix and Master) and your own start a song with its tracks already made. Ask Claude to Start a Song and Record Audio are two more ways in, and Make Your First Song opens the guide below. See The Library and templates.

The First Song guide

The First Song guide walks you through a whole song in the real window, in six steps: make a track, choose a sound, record or draw, loop it, mix, and bounce. Open it from the welcome's Make Your First Song, or with Help ▸ First Song Guide.

  • It sits in the corner of the arrangement. The step to do next says how, and the control it uses has a ring round it: the new instrument-track button, the channel strip's button, Record, the cycle, the mixer's button.
  • A step ticks itself when the song gets there, however you got there: by hand, with Claude, from a template, or with a session player. Undo something and its step comes back.
  • The last step's Bounce… opens File ▸ Bounce…; the step ticks once the bounce is written.
  • Close it with its ×. Help ▸ First Song Guide brings it back, ticked where your song is.

The demo song

Help ▸ Welcome to Nebula DAW has a Demo Song: a finished song to press play on and take apart. It is made only from Nebula's own instruments and effects — drums patched on Nebula Grid, a Nebula Poly bass and pad, Nebula Keys through the Pedalboard, an FM bell lead — with a drum bus, reverb and delay returns, arranger sections, automation and a mastered Stereo Out. Claude opens it too ("play me the demo").

It opens as an untitled copy. Change anything you like; File ▸ Save asks where to keep your version, and the demo is the same the next time you open it.

Play and stop

  • Space plays, and pressed again it stops where it is.
  • ↩ takes the playhead back to the start.
  • ← and → move the playhead one bar back or forward.
  • Click in the ruler at the top of the arrangement to put the playhead there.

The transport bar at the top has the same buttons: Return to Start, Play, Stop and Record. Point at any of them with Quick Help on (Help ▸ Quick Help, ⇧/) to read what it does.

Record

  1. Choose the track to record on. On an audio track, choose its input in the inspector on the left.
  2. Press the R button on the track to arm it. It turns red: this track will record.
  3. Press Record (R). If the count-in is on, you hear the click count you in first.
  4. Play. Press Space to stop.

The new recording is one region. If you do not like it, Edit ▸ Undo (⌘Z) takes the whole pass back in one step. To record several tracks at once, see Recording several tracks.

Save

  • File ▸ Save (⌘S) keeps your song. The first time, Nebula asks where.
  • File ▸ Save As… (⇧⌘S) keeps a copy under a new name.
  • Nebula also keeps an autosave copy every minute. If your Mac stops, Nebula offers it back the next time it opens.
  • File ▸ Revert to Backup goes back to one of the last saves.
  • A save that cannot finish says why in plain words — the disk is full, and how much room it needs; Nebula is not allowed in that folder — and when the last autosave was kept. Your song is still open, so nothing is lost.
  • If your Mac stops in the middle of saving over another song, the song you were saving over is never left missing: the next time Nebula opens it, or opens with it in Open Recent, it is put back as it was, and a note says so.

Undo

Edit ▸ Undo (⌘Z) takes back one step: a gesture, a command or one request to Claude. Settings ▸ General sets how many steps Nebula keeps. Each step remembers the song as it was, so a long day of rewriting big regions could fill the Mac's memory; Nebula keeps up to 512 MB of history and, past that, lets the oldest steps go first. It says so once when it happens. The newest steps stay, and the song itself never changes.

Reduce Motion and Increase Contrast

Nebula follows System Settings ▸ Accessibility ▸ Display:

  • Reduce Motion: panels, inspectors and banners appear where they land, without sliding or fading, and nothing pulses.
  • Increase Contrast: secondary text and the lines between controls are drawn stronger, in every appearance.

Both take effect as soon as you switch them, with Nebula open.

You can choose what Nebula does when it starts in Settings ▸ General: open the last song, show the Project Chooser, or start a new song.