Nebula's instruments

Nebula comes with seven instruments of its own: Nebula Sampler, Nebula Keys (an electric piano, an organ and a clavinet), Nebula Poly (an analogue-style synth), Nebula Grid (a modular synth you patch yourself), Nebula Kick, Nebula Genesis (a synth) and Nebula Drums. This chapter shows how to put each on a track, what its controls do, and what Claude can do with it.

Adding an instrument to a track

Choose Track ▸ New Tracks… (⌥⌘N) and pick Software Instrument.
In Instrument, choose Nebula Sampler, Nebula Keys, Nebula Poly, Nebula Grid or one of the installed instruments, such as Nebula Kick, Nebula Genesis or Nebula Drums. Built-in Instrument is the simple General MIDI sound every new instrument track starts with.
Click Create.

On a track you already have, click ＋ INSTRUMENT in the channel strip's instrument slot and choose one. Hover over the slot and click its slider button to open the instrument's window. Each of Nebula's instruments also starts with eight Smart Controls in the inspector: the knobs a producer reaches for first (see Smart Controls).

Instrument racks

An instrument rack plays several instruments on one track: a pad layered under a piano, a bass on the low keys and a lead on the high ones, a soft sound under a hard one. Choose Instrument Rack from the instrument slot's menu. The instrument the track had becomes the first layer, beside an empty second; click the slot to open the rack's window.

Each layer has its own instrument (＋ Instrument or Replace Instrument), its own plug-ins (＋ Audio FX), a level, a pan, M and S.
Keys and Velocities are the notes a layer plays, from its lowest key to its highest and from its softest velocity to its hardest. A key split gives two layers keys that do not overlap; velocity layers give them the same keys and velocities that do not. A note outside a layer's zone is not sent to its instrument; letting go of a key reaches the layer that played it.
The track's notes, recorded or played, go to every layer whose zone holds them, and the track's MIDI effects run on each layer's notes.
Add Layer adds a layer, up to eight. The eight macros work as an FX rack's do (see Racks in the mixing chapter).

Claude can do this for you: ask it to put a pad under the piano below middle C, or to split the keyboard into a bass and a lead.

Nebula Sampler

Nebula Sampler plays an audio file across the keyboard. To load a sample:

Drop one audio file on the header of an empty instrument track. Dropped on the empty space below the last track, it makes a new instrument track named after the sample.
Or drop it on the waveform in the Sampler's window (Drop an audio file here).
Or right-click an audio region and choose Convert to Sampler Track (also Edit ▸ Region ▸ Convert to Sampler Track). A new instrument track appears below, its sampler playing just the part of the file the region plays.

Nebula sets the root key to the sample's pitch where that is clear, otherwise C3. The window has two pages, Sample and Zones, and two modes, Classic (the sample on every key, from its root) and Slices.

On the waveform, drag S and E to set where a note starts and stops in the sample, and the two L markers to set the loop. Each drag is one undo step.

Sample: Root, Tune (semitones), Fine (cents), Gain.
Loop: turns the loop on, with a Crossfade so the wrap does not click. It is dimmed in Slices or with One Shot on.
One Shot: each note plays to the end of the sample, however short you hold it.
Amp: Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release, and a velocity knob for how much quieter soft notes are.
Filter: Type (Off, Low-Pass, High-Pass, Band-Pass), Cutoff, Reso, Env, its own Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release, and Vel (soft notes darker).
Play: Mode (Poly plays chords; Mono one note at a time; Legato joins notes without starting again), Voices (up to 32) and Glide.

Smart Controls start as Cutoff, Resonance, Filter Env, Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release and Tune. Claude can do this for you: ask it to load a file into the sampler (sampler_load), or to read and change its settings (sampler_get, sampler_set).

Slicing a sample and Slice to MIDI

Choose Slices to cut a loop into hits you can play from the keys. Slice 1 plays on C1, slice 2 on the key above, and so on, up to 64 slices.

Choose how to cut: Transients (at the sample's hits), Grid (1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32 at the sample's own tempo) or Manual.
In Manual, double-click the waveform to add a slice. Right-click a slice marker and choose Remove Slice to take it away.
Click Slice to MIDI to write a region at the playhead's bar that plays the slices back in the song's tempo. Rearrange its notes to make a new groove.

Claude can slice for you too: ask it to slice by transients, grid or by hand, and to write the region (sampler_slice).

Sampler zones and multisamples

The Zones page maps many samples over the keys and velocities, for a real instrument: a piano with soft and hard layers, a guitar with release noises. The zone map runs from C-2 to G8 across, velocity 0 to 127 upwards, with a lane for release samples above the keyboard.

Drop samples on a key: each becomes a zone, the first on that key and the next on the keys above.
Drop a folder of samples named by their notes, such as Piano_C3_v100.wav. The velocity can be written v100 or pp to ff, and a round robin as rr2. Each velocity layer reaches up to its own velocity, and files on the same note and layer take turns.
Drop an SFZ file to load the whole instrument, its groups' envelopes and filters included.
Click a zone to choose it; drag it to move it over keys and velocities.

For the chosen zone: Root, Low Key, High Key, Low Vel, High Vel, Vel Fade (to blend velocity layers), Tune, Gain, Pan; Loop (Off, Forward, Sustain, One Shot); Trigger (Attack plays when the key goes down, Release when it is let go); and Group. Choose New Group to make one.

A group sets how its zones take turns: Turns is Every Time, Round Robin (a note each, in order, set with Length and each zone's Position) or Random (never the same twice running). Turn on Own Envelope to give the group its own Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release in place of the instrument's.

Each sampler holds up to 1 GB of samples in memory. Past that, the window says how many samples do not fit, and their zones are silent. Claude can load an SFZ (load_sfz), lay out a folder (map_samples_to_zones) and list the zones (list_sampler_zones), and tells you what it could not bring in.

Nebula Keys

Nebula Keys is three keyboards in one instrument: an Electric Piano, an Organ and a Clavinet. Each is modelled — played by the physics of its hammers, tonewheels and strings rather than from recordings — so there is nothing to load, and it plays 32 notes at once. Choose the keyboard with Model at the top of its window, or choose a preset: each of the 24 presets, eight for each keyboard, chooses its keyboard too. Each keyboard keeps its own settings, so you can switch back and forth.

The Keys session player plays Nebula Keys' electric piano on a new track, and the Songwriter template's Keys track plays it too. Every model answers the sustain pedal, the pitch-bend wheel (as far as Bend says, each MIDI channel on its own, so an MPE controller's bend moves only its note) and the mod wheel. Drive pushes the amplifier into overdrive; Volume is the instrument's level. The window shows how many voices are playing.

The electric piano:

Piano: Tine is the bell-like electric piano with a long ring (like a Rhodes); Reed the buzzier, shorter one (like a Wurlitzer).
Tone is how hard the hammers are. Bark is how much harder playing drives the pickup: soft notes stay clean and loud ones growl. Pickup moves the pickup closer, so the bark comes sooner; Offset sets it off centre, for a hollower, more nasal colour.
Decay is how long a held note rings; Thump the damper's sound as a key comes up.
Tremolo: Depth and Rate, and the mode: Tremolo pulses the level, Auto-Pan swings the piano from side to side as a suitcase amplifier does. The mod wheel adds depth.

Smart Controls start as Tone, Bark, Pickup, Decay, Thump, Tremolo, Rate and Drive.

The organ in Nebula Keys

The organ is a tonewheel organ with nine drawbars. Drag a drawbar down to pull it out (up to 8) and up to push it in (0 is off); each step is 3 dB. From the left they are 16′ (an octave below the key), 5⅓′, 8′ (the key itself), 4′, 2⅔′, 2′, 1⅗′, 1⅓′ and 1′. Under them, the registration reads as an organist writes it: 888000000 is the first three out, the classic jazz sound.

Percussion adds a decaying harmonic to the attack — Second or Third, Fast or Slow, Soft or Normal — but only when every key was up: play legato, and only the first chord has it.
Vibrato: V1 to V3 bend the pitch, more each step; C1 to C3 are the chorus versions. Click is the key contacts' click; Leakage lets every tonewheel bleed in faintly, as an old organ's do.
Rotary plays it through a rotary speaker. Slow and Fast are its speeds; the horn gets there in about a second, the drum over several, as fast as Accel says. Mic Dist moves the microphones away for a narrower swirl with more room. The mod wheel up turns it Fast while you hold it, and the window shows how fast each rotor is turning.

Smart Controls start as 16′, 5⅓′, 8′, 4′, Click, Drive, Rotary and Mic.

The clavinet in Nebula Keys

The clavinet is a struck string with two pickups under it. Pickup chooses Lower (warm), Upper (bright and thin), Both, or Both Reversed (the two against each other: the thinnest, most nasal sound, the one funk players put through a wah). Mute lays a felt on the strings for short, dull notes. Brightness is how bright the string rings, Decay how long a held note lasts, Release how long it rings after the key comes up, and Pluck the small pluck as the key lets go of the string.

Smart Controls start as Brightness, Mute, Decay, Pickup, Release, Pluck, Drive and Volume.

Claude can play it for you: ask for a track with Nebula Keys' electric piano, organ or clavinet, or with one of its presets by name (create_track), to read or change its settings (get_plugin_parameters, set_plugin_parameters) or to choose a preset (list_presets, select_preset). The Library has a part for each keyboard: Keys Suitcase Comp, Organ Chords and Clav Funk Riff.

Nebula Poly

Nebula Poly is an analogue-style synth: the sound of the classic polysynths, made the way they made it. Two oscillators feed a filter, envelopes shape each note, and LFOs and a matrix move it. It plays 16 notes at once, nothing to load. Choose a sound from Preset… at the top of its window: 100 presets in nine folders (Bass, Lead, Pad, Keys, Pluck, Brass, Strings, Sequence and FX). Choosing one sets every control. The Bass and Strings Pad session players play Nebula Poly on a new track, each style its own preset.

Its controls are on four pages, chosen along the top: Oscillators, Filter & Amp, Modulation and Play & Effects. Volume and the number of voices playing stay at the side on every page.

Smart Controls start as Cutoff, Resonance, Env, Attack, Decay, Release, Detune and Glide.

Claude can play it for you: ask for a track with a Nebula Poly sound, by a preset's name or by a kind of sound such as "a warm pad" or "a bass" (create_track), to choose another preset (list_presets, select_preset), or to read and change its settings (get_plugin_parameters, set_plugin_parameters). The Library has three parts on it: Poly Saw Bass, Poly Warm Pad and Poly Pluck Arp.

Shaping a sound in Nebula Poly

Oscillators. Each of the two oscillators has a wave (Saw, bright and full; Pulse, hollow; Triangle, soft; Sine, pure), an Octave and Semi to tune it, Fine in cents, Width for the pulse (50 % is a square; narrower is thinner and more nasal) and a Level. A few cents of Fine between the two thickens the sound; oscillator 2 a fifth up (Semi 7) makes a fat interval.

Oscillator sync starts oscillator 2 again each time oscillator 1 does. Tune oscillator 2 up, or sweep its pitch with the matrix, for the tearing sync lead.
Sub is a square or sine one or two octaves below oscillator 1. Noise mixes in noise; Colour darkens it.
Ring multiplies the two oscillators for metallic, bell-like tones. FM lets oscillator 2 bend oscillator 1's frequency: a little adds edge, more makes clangorous bells, and oscillator 2's own Level can stay at 0.

Filter. Low-Pass 24 is the classic transistor ladder, steep and fat; Low-Pass 12 is gentler; Band-Pass, High-Pass and Notch do as they say. Cutoff is where it starts to cut; Resonance adds a peak there, and near the top the ladder rings on its own. Drive pushes the sound into it. Key makes the cutoff follow the key, Env is how far the filter envelope opens it (below 0 closes it) and Velocity how much less a soft note opens it. The picture beside them shows what the filter does now, and a line where the last note's cutoff is as it moves.

Envelopes. The filter envelope and the amp envelope each have Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release, drawn beside their knobs. A short attack with no sustain is a pluck; a long attack and release a swelling pad. Playing the same key again starts its envelopes from where they are, so it never clicks.

Modulation in Nebula Poly

LFO 1 has a Shape (Sine, Triangle, Saw, Square or S&H, a fresh random value each cycle), a Rate, and Sync to lock it to the song's tempo (a bar, a quarter note, a sixteenth…). Delay fades it in after each note starts, as a player's vibrato does. LFO retrigger on starts it again with each note; off, one LFO runs for every voice. Its four amounts move the Pitch (vibrato), the Cutoff (the wobble), both pulses' Width and the Level (tremolo).
LFO 2 has its own Shape, Rate and Sync, and reaches the sound through the matrix.
The mod envelope (Mod attack and Mod decay) rises and falls back to nothing with each note: a pitch dive, an FM bite, a sync sweep.
Wheel is how deep the mod wheel's vibrato goes at the top.
The matrix has four slots. In each, choose a source (LFO 1, LFO 2, the three envelopes, Velocity, Mod Wheel, Aftertouch, Key, or Random, a fresh value for each note), a destination (the pitch of both oscillators or one, a pulse's width, an oscillator's level, FM, Ring, Noise, Cutoff, Resonance, Level or Pan) and an Amount, which can be negative. At 100 % a pitch moves two octaves and the cutoff five.

Playing Nebula Poly and its effects

Poly mode: Poly plays chords. Mono plays one note, the last key down, and goes back to a key still held when you let go; each key starts its envelopes again. Legato is Mono that glides between joined notes without starting them again.
Voices is how many notes it plays at once, up to 16; past them the oldest gives way, fading out first. Glide is how long the pitch slides from note to note. Bend is the pitch-bend wheel's range; each MIDI channel bends its own notes, so an MPE controller's bends stay on their note. Vel is how much softer soft notes play, and Analog gives every voice a slightly different pitch and cutoff that drift slowly, as old oscillators do.
Unison stacks up to 8 detuned copies of each voice; Detune sets how far apart they are and Spread how wide across the stereo field.
Chorus: the bucket-brigade chorus of the classic polysynths. I is slow and gentle, II faster and deeper, I + II a quick shimmer.
Delay: Mix, Time (when Delay sync is Off; otherwise the echoes are in the song's tempo) and Feedback, in Stereo or Ping-Pong.
Reverb: Room sets how much is heard and Size how long it rings.

The sustain pedal holds notes, and aftertouch reaches the matrix.

Song tuning and Scala scales

Choose File ▸ Song Tuning… to tune the song away from equal temperament. Nebula Sampler, Nebula Keys and Nebula Poly play every key at the song's tuning, live, in a bounce and in a freeze. Nebula Pitch Correction pulls a voice to the tuning's pitches, not equal temperament's: a just third stays just. Another instrument stays in equal temperament unless it plays MPE: then choose Bend Notes to the Song Tuning in the track's MPE menu, and every note is bent to the pitch its key has in the tuning.

Reference is the frequency the A above middle C sounds at: 440 Hz, or 432 or 442 to match a band or a recording.
Temperament spaces the twelve notes. Equal Temperament makes every key alike. Just Intonation, Pythagorean, Quarter-Comma Meantone and Werckmeister III make the chords of one key sweeter and others rougher; Root is the key they are pure in. Type a number into any of the twelve cents boxes to make the table your own (Custom).
Load Scala Scale… reads a .scl file, of any number of notes and any period: the scale replaces the table of twelve, its first note on the root in the middle octave. Load Keyboard Mapping… reads the .kbm file made for it, which says which keys play the scale, where its first note is, and the key and frequency it is tuned to. Keys a mapping leaves out play equal temperament.
Save sets the tuning in one undo step, and it is saved with the song. Equal Temperament puts it back.

A slice in Nebula Sampler's Slices mode keeps its own pitch whatever the tuning. Claude can tune the song too (set_tuning).

Nebula Grid

Nebula Grid is a modular synth: you build the instrument yourself from modules joined by cables, as on a modular rack. Oscillators, noise and LFOs make signals; a filter shapes them; envelopes rise and fall with each note; math and logic modules combine them; a clock and a sequencer play patterns inside every note; and the Out module is what you hear. Every module runs once for each note, up to 16 at once, so a patch is polyphonic without any extra work.

Put it on a track like any instrument (it is Nebula Grid in the instrument menu). It starts with the Init patch: an oscillator through a filter and an envelope. Choose another from the patch menu at the top of its window: Init, Saw Bass, Wobble, Acid Line, FM Bell, Random Pluck and Stereo Pad. Voices sets how many notes play at once (1 plays one note, the last key down), Bend the pitch-bend range, and Volume the patch's level. The number beside them is how many voices are sounding now.

Smart Controls start as the patch's eight macros.

Claude can build and change patches for you: ask it for a sound and it can describe the modules (grid_describe), read the patch on a track (grid_get_patch) and write a whole one or load a factory patch (grid_set_patch). A track with Nebula Grid playing a factory patch can be made in one go (create_track with gridPatch).

Patching in Nebula Grid

The window has the modules to add on the left, the patch in the middle and the module you clicked on the right, with the macros along the bottom.

Adding a module. Click a module's name on the left. It is placed below the others and chosen. A patch holds up to 32 modules and 64 cables.
Plugging a cable. Drag from a module's orange output dot, on its right edge, onto an input dot on another module's left edge. An input can take several cables; it hears their sum. An input with nothing plugged in uses its default: an oscillator's Pitch is the note's own, an envelope's Gate is the note's own gate, and Multiply's B is 1.
Without dragging. Choose a module and use Plug In beside each of its inputs to pick any output from a menu. The cables already plugged in are listed under the input; the cross takes one out. This is also how VoiceOver patches.
Moving a module. Drag it by its title.
Knobs. The chosen module's knobs are on the right. A knob is dragged up or down; double-click puts it back to its default. A choice, such as an oscillator's wave, is a menu.
Deleting. The bin beside the chosen module's name takes it out with its cables.

Every change is one undo step: a module added, a cable plugged or taken out, a knob turned through one drag, a module moved through one drag.

A cable can loop back to a module that comes earlier, or to the same module, for feedback. A loop is heard one sample late, as on any modular. If a loop runs away and stops being a number, that voice goes silent and starts again from rest.

Modules in Nebula Grid

Signals are numbers, many times a second. Pitch is counted in octaves from middle C: 0 is C4 and 1 is an octave above. So adding 1 to a pitch raises it an octave, and a filter's Cutoff input of 1 opens it an octave.

Input. Note gives the note's Pitch (the bend included), its Gate (1 while the key is held) and its Velocity. Macro gives one of the eight macros, 0 to 1. Constant gives a fixed value.
Source. Oscillator plays Sine, Triangle, Saw or Square at its Pitch input, with Octave, Semi, Fine and Level; its FM input moves its phase, so another oscillator plugged in there is FM synthesis. Saw and Square stay clean high up. Noise is white noise; Colour darkens it.
Modulation. LFO is a slow wave, started again with each note, at a Rate or locked to the song's tempo by Sync. Envelope is an ADSR: it rises over Attack when its gate opens, falls to Sustain over Decay, and to nothing over Release once the gate closes.
Filter. A 12 dB state-variable filter: Low-Pass, Band-Pass, High-Pass or Notch, with Cutoff, Resonance and Key Track (how far the cutoff follows the note).
Math. Add (A + B) mixes sounds or puts an offset on a signal. Multiply (A × B) is a VCA: an envelope times an oscillator is a note that rises and falls. Scale is In × Amount + Offset: how far a modulation reaches.
Logic. Compare is 1 while A is above B. Logic combines gates: And, Or, Xor or Not A. Sample & Hold takes its input each time its trigger rises and holds it: noise in, a fresh random step each time.
Sequencing. Clock opens and closes a gate in time from the note's start, in the song's tempo or in hertz. Sequencer plays eight steps, each a pitch in semitones, one per clock; unplugged, its clock is sixteenth notes. Its Value is in octaves, so adding it to the Note's Pitch plays the sequence in the key you hold. Its Gate can strike an envelope on every step.
Output. Out is what the voice sounds: Left, and Right (the same as Left when nothing is plugged into it).

A note ends once its key is up and every envelope in the patch has finished (or it has been silent for a quarter of a second). A patch with no envelope ends each note 5 ms after its key is up.

Macros and patch files in Nebula Grid

The eight macros along the bottom are how the rest of Nebula reaches inside a patch. A Macro module puts out its macro's value, and you plug it in wherever you want a knob: into a Scale and on to a filter's Cutoff, into a Multiply for a depth. Then the macro can be turned by hand, drawn as automation, moved by a host modulator (an LFO, a follower, steps; see the mixing chapter) or turned with Smart Controls. Name a macro in the box under its knob.

A patch can be kept as a file of its own, to use in another song or share: Save Patch File… and Open Patch File… in the patch menu. The file ends in .nebulagrid; it is plain JSON holding the modules, the cables, their knobs and the macros' names and settings. Opening one sets the macros as the file sets them. A song keeps its patch inside it, so nothing outside the song is needed to open it.

Nebula Kick

Nebula Kick is a kick drum synth. Put it on an instrument track and play or draw notes; open its window from the instrument slot to shape it. Its Smart Controls start as Pitch, Decay, Punch, Drive, Tone, Sub, Sweep and Level.

Nebula Reverb, Nebula Delay and Nebula Cosmos can duck to the song's kick (Kick Link): each note a Nebula Kick track plays ducks them for the kick's own length, whatever is muted or soloed.

Claude can shape the kick for you: ask it to change a setting, load or save a preset, play the kick once, or measure it (kick_set, kick_presets, kick_load_preset, kick_save_preset, kick_audition, kick_measure).

Nebula Genesis

Nebula Genesis is a synth with sixteen Parts. Its presets are patches, Stacks (layered patches) and Multis (all sixteen Parts with a tempo). Its Smart Controls start as Cutoff, Resonance, Env Amount, Attack, Decay, Release, Drive and FX Mix.

Claude can design sounds with it: ask it to load a preset onto a Part, change settings or wavetables, make a Variation (Brighter, Darker, Fatter, Tighter, Wider, More Motion, Softer or Wild), explain how a Part's sound is made, or measure its level (genesis_load_preset, genesis_set, genesis_tables, genesis_vary, genesis_explain, genesis_measure).

Nebula Drums and drum kits

Nebula Drums plays every kit sound but the kick, which Nebula Kick plays. It has 12 pads, kits in four styles (Full-on, Progressive, Dark / Forest and Goa) and 16 patterns of its own. Its Smart Controls start as Tune, Decay, Snare, Hats, Clap, Toms, Room and Drive.

The Built-in Instrument has nine General MIDI drum kits too: hover over its slot, click the keys button and choose from Drum Kits.

Drum Rows: in the piano roll's View menu, on a track that plays a kit, shows one row per drum sound with its name, hits drawn as diamonds. Each row has M and S to mute or solo it while you listen; this does not change the song. The built-in kits name every row; with Nebula Drums the rows are the notes you have played.
Track ▸ Save Selected Tracks as Kit… saves the selected instrument tracks to the Library's Kits folder, to use in another song.
Track ▸ Save Region as Library Pattern… saves one selected MIDI region, with its track's strip, to the Patterns folder. Double-click a Library Pattern to put it in at the playhead's bar.

Claude can program the drums: ask it to load or save a kit, write a pattern, fill all patterns with a groove style, spread hits in a Euclidean rhythm, vary the kit's sound or play a pad (drums_load_kit, drums_save_kit, drums_set_pattern, drums_style, drums_euclid, drums_vary, drums_audition).