Recording several tracks

You can record one track or many at once: a whole drum kit on its own microphones, or a singer and a guitar together. Every track in one pass starts on exactly the same sample, so the sounds stay in time with each other.

Arm and choose inputs

On each track you want to record, choose its input in the channel strip's Input slot: one input for a mono microphone, a pair for stereo. The list shows your interface's own channel names when it has them.
Press the track's R button to arm it. It turns red.
Arm as many audio tracks as you like. An armed instrument track records its MIDI in the same pass.

Nothing records until you press Record (R). Claude can choose a track's input for you, but Claude never arms a track and never presses Record.

Record-safe

A finished track can be made record-safe, so it is never armed by mistake. Option-click its R button, or right-click the track header and choose Record Safe. The R button fades while the track is safe. Option-click it again to allow arming. Record-safe is saved with the song.

New tracks for a band

To set up a band's microphones in one go, choose Track ▸ New Tracks… (⌥⌘N).

Choose Audio and set Number of tracks.
Choose the Format: Mono or Stereo.
Choose the Input of the first new track.
Leave Ascending on to give each track the next input: Input 1, 2, 3 and so on. Stereo tracks go up by a pair (1–2, 3–4). If the interface runs out of inputs, the sheet says which tracks get none.
Choose the Output: the Stereo Out, a bus, or one of the interface's outputs.
Tick Record Enable to arm the new tracks, and Input Monitoring to turn on their I buttons, if you want that at once.
Click Create. All the new tracks are one undo step.

For Software Instrument tracks the sheet asks for the Instrument instead: the built-in one, Nebula Sampler, or any instrument on the Mac. Claude never arms tracks or turns on their input monitoring for you.

Hearing yourself

The I button (input monitoring) lets you hear the track's input through its channel while you play, with its plug-ins. Turn it off when you only want to hear what is already recorded.

Armed tracks are heard on their inputs too, while Hear armed tracks' input is on in Nebula DAW ▸ Settings… ▸ Audio. When and how they are heard is Auto Input Monitoring's job (below).

If the sound comes back late, turn on Low Latency Monitoring (the hare in the transport bar, or Transport ▸ Low Latency Monitoring). Slow plug-ins are left out of what you hear while it is on. They are still in the song and in every bounce.

Auto Input Monitoring

Auto Input Monitoring makes an armed track behave like a tape machine (tape-style monitoring). It is on unless you turn it off: Transport ▸ Auto Input Monitoring, or the same switch in Nebula DAW ▸ Settings… ▸ Audio.

Stopped: you hear the armed track's input, so you can check the sound and the level.
Playing: you hear what is already recorded on the track, not the input.
Recording: you hear the input.
Recording with Autopunch on: you hear the old recording outside the punch range and the input inside it. Each switch at a punch point is a short crossfade, so nothing clicks.

The I button always wins: with it on, the track plays its input whatever the transport is doing. With Auto Input Monitoring off, an armed track plays its input all the time, stopped, playing or recording.

Count-in and click

The metronome button (K) turns the click on and off. Right-click it, or choose Transport ▸ Metronome Settings…, for its level, its sound and the accent on beat one.
The count-in button plays the click before recording starts. Right-click it, or use Transport ▸ Count-In, to choose how long: None, 1 Bar, 2 Bars, or 1 to 4 Beats. The count-in is also the pre-roll: the song plays from that far before the place you record.
Transport ▸ Click Plays decides when the click is heard, while the metronome is on:
Always: on playback, in the count-in and in the take.
Only while recording: in the count-in and the take, never on playback.
Playback and count-in, not the take: keeps the click out of a microphone in the room.
Only the count-in: silent on playback and in the take.
Transport ▸ Click During MIDI Count-In plays the click through the count-in of a MIDI take even when the metronome is off.

Claude can set the click and the count-in for you: ask it, for example, for two bars of count-in with the click only while recording.

Punch recording

Punch recording replaces one part of a take, such as one wrong line, and leaves the rest alone.

To record a punch-in:

Turn on Transport ▸ Autopunch. A red bar appears in the ruler, under the cycle: the punch range.
Set the range. Drag its ends to move the punch in or out, or its middle to move it. Or choose Transport ▸ Set Punch Range to Loop (the cycle's length) or Transport ▸ Set Punch Range to Selected Region. Until you set one, the cycle is the punch range.
Choose a count-in (Transport ▸ Count-In) as the pre-roll, so the singer hears the song before the punch.
Choose Transport ▸ Post-Roll: how long the song plays on after the punch out before it stops. With None it plays on until you stop it.
Arm the track and press Record (R).

The song starts before the punch, Nebula records only inside the range, and the song plays on after it. Recorded over audio, the punch becomes a take folder, or replaces what was there when Recording Over Audio is set to Replace (see Takes).

Claude can set up a punch for you: ask it to "punch me in at bar 17 for four bars", or for a bar of post-roll. It sets the punch, the pre-roll, the post-roll and whether armed tracks monitor tape-style (Auto Input Monitoring) or always; it never presses an I button, and you arm and record.

Several tracks at once

Press Record (R) and every armed track records. One press of Undo (⌘Z) takes the whole pass back, every track at once.

If the audio interface stops in the middle, Nebula keeps what it has already recorded and tells you plainly.

Takes

Record over the same place again and Nebula keeps every take in a take folder on the track. Click the folder's badge to choose which take plays, or open it to hear each one.

With the cycle on, Transport ▸ Cycle Recording Keeps Each Pass keeps one take for every time round.

Transport ▸ Recording Over Audio decides what a new take does to audio already there:

Take folders (the usual one): the old audio becomes a take, and the new one plays.
Replace: the new take takes the place of what is under it, cut at its edges. In a cycle only the last pass is kept.

Where a comp joins two takes, the parts crossfade so the join does not click. The crossfade is 10 ms until you change it, from 0 to 200 ms: choose Comp Crossfade in the take folder badge's menu, or drag the Comp Crossfade value in the region inspector. Longer smooths a join in a held note or a breath; shorter keeps a hard consonant crisp. It is saved with the song and is one undo step. Claude can set it too.

On tracks in an edit group, such as the microphones of one performance, choosing or comping a take on one track does the same on the others, so they always play the same take. Claude can also compare your takes and comp them for you: see Comping with Claude.

Where takes are recorded

Nebula DAW ▸ Settings… ▸ Recording sets, for this song:

Record takes to: The song's folder (the usual one), The takes shelf, or A folder I choose, such as a fast external drive. Takes on the shelf or in a chosen folder are copied into the song when it is saved.
Bit depth: 24-bit (the usual one) keeps everything an interface delivers in less space; 32-bit float keeps room above full scale.

Recording setup saved with the song

Set up a punch, quit, and it is still there tomorrow. These are saved with the song: Autopunch and the punch range, the count-in, the post-roll, Click Plays, Click During MIDI Count-In, Cycle Recording Keeps Each Pass, Recording Over Audio, each track's I button and record-safe, and where takes are recorded and at what bit depth.

These belong to your Mac and its room, not the song, so they stay as you set them for every song: Auto Input Monitoring, Hear armed tracks' input and Low Latency Monitoring.

Capture as Recording

Played something great without pressing Record? Choose Edit ▸ Capture as Recording (⇧R). Nebula keeps what you play on armed instrument tracks (or on the chosen track when none is armed), and turns the last thing you played into a take, as if you had been recording.

Played with the song: the take lands exactly where you played it. In a cycle, every pass goes into a take folder, or only the last pass when Cycle Recording Keeps Each Pass is off.
Played while the song was stopped: the first note lands on the playhead, and the rest keep their timing at the song's tempo. A pause of a few seconds with no key held starts a new performance, so only your last idea is taken.
Each track keeps its own last performance. One press of Undo takes the capture back.

Nebula keeps the last 10 minutes. Choose how long in Nebula DAW ▸ Settings… ▸ General ▸ Capture keeps.

Capture audio, in the same place, keeps the input of armed and monitored audio tracks too, so a take you sang or played over the song can be captured the same way. It is off unless you turn it on, because it uses memory: the setting shows how much a minute costs with your audio input.

Edit groups

When several microphones recorded one instrument (a drum kit, say), their tracks must be edited together, or they drift out of phase and sound thin.

Tracks recorded in one pass are grouped for you as Recorded Together.
In a group with Editing (Selection) on, choosing a region on one track chooses the regions under it on all the others. Cut, move, trim, fade and delete then act on all of them, in one undo step.
Quantize on a grouped track moves all the tracks by the same amount, from one look at all their hits, so they stay in phase. Choose a Q-Reference track in the group to quantize by that track's hits alone (the snare, say).
Suspend in the group menu lets you edit one track on its own for a moment.

If you quantize tracks from the same pass apart, Nebula shows a warning with a Group for Editing button.

Playing with other machines

Drum machines, sequencers and video follow Nebula through MIDI clock and MIDI Time Code (MTC). In Settings ▸ MIDI, under Send clock and MTC, tick Clock or MTC for each MIDI destination. They leave with the sound you hear. If a machine answers late or early, move it with its offset.

Clock sends 24 ticks a beat, with Start, Stop, Continue and Song Position, and follows tempo changes, Speed Only and Varispeed. Each time the cycle jumps back, it sends the loop's start position and Continue. MTC runs at the song's frame rate, from the label bar 1 plays at. Set both under Song timecode; they are saved with the song.

To let another machine lead, choose MTC or MIDI Clock under Follow. Following MTC, Nebula finds its place and plays once a whole timecode message arrives, keeps to the code, and stops a moment after the code stops. Following clock, Nebula takes its tempo, Start and Stop. Until it hears something, the transport bar says it is waiting. Follow is off until you choose it.

MIDI files that count in timecode rather than beats are read too. Their events land on the song's tempo, unless the file has a tempo of its own.

MIDI 2.0 keyboards

Nebula reads MIDI 2.0. A MIDI 2.0 keyboard's velocity has 65,536 steps, not 128, and its controllers and pitch bend far more than MIDI 1.0's: play it and Nebula Sampler, Nebula Keys and Nebula Poly hear the finer velocity, and Keys and Poly the finer mod wheel. A take keeps the finer velocity in each note, and a controller's finer value in its lane.

Other instruments hear what MIDI 1.0 can carry: the velocity and each controller to 128 steps, with the finer steps of the velocity and of controllers 0 to 31 in MIDI 1.0's own way (the High Resolution Velocity Prefix, controller 88, and each controller's fine half, 32 to 63). A MIDI 1.0 keyboard plays exactly as it always did.

A MIDI 2.0 controller can also move each key on its own: a key's own pitch bend, its own pressure, and its own controllers. A recording keeps them on the note they belong to, as that note's expression: the bend as its pitch slide (at the track's MPE note bend range, ±48 semitones unless you set another), the pressure as its pressure, and per-note controller 74 as its timbre. Open the note's expression lanes in the piano roll to see and edit them; an MPE instrument plays them back.

If a device misbehaves in MIDI 2.0, turn off MIDI 2.0 in Preferences ▸ MIDI: every controller is then heard as MIDI 1.0, and the finer values and the keys' own messages are not.