Magister Music User Guide

Magister Music is a macOS DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for arranging audio and MIDI clips, hosting Audio Unit instruments and effects, editing MIDI, generating musical patterns, automating parameters, mixing tracks, and exporting finished audio.

This guide describes the app from a user perspective. It focuses on what you can do and where to find it.

Magister Music does not include built-in instruments. To create sound with MIDI tracks, you must supply your own Audio Unit instrument plug-ins. The app does include built-in MIDI effects (arpeggiator, chord, and more) and built-in compressor and limiter audio effects; other audio processing comes from your own Audio Unit effect plug-ins.

Before using Audio Unit instruments or effects in a song, open Preferences and choose the plug-ins you want Magister Music to make available. Selected plug-ins then appear in the instrument and effect selection controls in Arrangement view. These preferences are stored globally, so enabled instruments and effects are available across new songs you create.

Preferences also include the audio buffer size. The default value of 512 is recommended for most users, but if you notice latency, timing discontinuities, clicks, or pops during playback, you may adjust this setting to better suit your system and plug-in configuration.

What's New in 1.4.0

• Built-in compressor and limiter: dynamics effects with gain-reduction metering and sidechain keying from any MIDI or audio track, available on tracks, buses, and the master. Their parameters can be automated, and the panel sliders animate as automation plays.
• Mute automation: a binary Mute lane gates a track's output over time with step-style points that snap to on/off.
• Automation travels with clips: moving or nudging clips — including to another track — carries their automation along, with a ghost preview of the traveling curve during the drag and a prompt when the destination already has conflicting automation.
• Automation lanes can show dimmed ghost curves of the track's other lanes for lining up moves.
• Open plug-in windows follow drawn automation when you click around the timeline while playback is stopped, not just while playing.
• Plug-in editor windows were overhauled: the plug-in owns its size and the window follows exactly, fixing oversized or cut-off editors.
• Multi-selection commands throughout: renaming, resizing, slicing, ripple-deleting, and the other context actions apply to every selected clip, and mute, solo, freeze, unfreeze, convert to audio, rename, color, and expand/collapse apply to every selected track.
• Mixer refinements: the track name sidebar sizes itself to the longest name, clips can be selected in the timeline overview to aim the loop command, clip selection carries over between Arrangement and Mixer, hovering a fader arms the arrow keys for keyboard nudges, and meters move fluidly at the display's refresh rate.
• Welcome screen: one-click lists of recent songs and recent templates, plus a From Template button that starts a new untitled song as a copy of an existing one.
• Changing the project scale can conform existing MIDI notes to the new key by degree mapping.
• Track colors: a redesigned pastel preset palette, editable in Preferences; the track selection highlight uses the track's own color.
• Arrangement track controls can sit on the left or right side of the timeline (Preferences > Interface).
• Timeline polish: 2-bar and 4-bar grid values, bar numbering that sticks to powers of two at every zoom, mappable loop-nudge shortcuts, and tempo nudging with the arrow keys while hovering the tempo field.
• Clip editing: the whole right edge of a looping clip drags its loop length, exact lengths are set from the context menu, Up and Down arrows move selected clips to the nearest matching track, and Delete Time preserves looping MIDI structure on mid-iteration cuts.
• Generator I/O: a virtual Magister Notes MIDI output and a Magister Sync clock input let external gear and apps play along with the generator.
• All audio media is standardized to stereo 48 kHz at import, recording, and project open, eliminating sample-rate drift.
• Exports capture each plug-in's exact current state and honor track and master faders precisely.
• Moving the loop region and editing clips during playback is now seamless.

What's New in 1.3.0

• Audio recording: capture a microphone or audio interface into audio tracks, with live input metering, a growing take preview, and loop-cycle takes you can switch between.
• Sample Editor view (Cmd+5): a zoomed, non-destructive editor for audio clips — trim, fades with selectable curves, gain, pitch shift, slice, reverse, and takes.
• Sample Browser: a floating window for auditioning and placing samples from your own folders.
• Buses and sends: shared effect channels with their own strips, meters, effect chains, and automation.
• Track freeze and Convert to Audio Track: render a MIDI track's instrument and effects in place to lighten playback, or bounce it to a permanent audio track.
• Export Stems renders each audible track to its own WAV file.
• Fourteen built-in MIDI effects (Arpeggiator, Chord, Transpose, Scale, Strum, Ratchet, Euclid, Note Echo, Swing, Humanize, Chance, Length, Velocity, Mirror), plus a bake command that prints the chain into the notes.
• Effect chain presets: save a whole effects stack under a name and recall it in any song, on tracks, buses, or the master.
• MIDI file support: drag .mid/.midi files onto MIDI tracks or the empty timeline, and export MIDI clips from their context menu.
• Undo History panel: browse the session's edits and jump to any state.
• Metronome click track sized to the song tempo.
• Follow mode: the arrangement auto-scrolls with playback.
• Loudness tools: export normalization to an adjustable LUFS target, and live LUFS readouts on the master strip.
• Piano Roll additions: an editable velocity lane below the grid, ghost notes from other tracks, diatonic chord stamps, legato, and swing applied by quantize.
• Audio clip tools: clip gain and fades (with linear, S-curve, exponential, and logarithmic ramps), pitch shift, reverse, normalize, split/strip/trim silence, ripple delete, and Fit to Grid.
• Plug-in groups: organize enabled plug-ins into named submenu folders for the instrument and effect pickers.
• Track color picker: custom colors join the palette as persistent swatches shared across songs.
• Autosave with crash recovery, and an audio output device picker in Preferences.
• Over forty additional actions can be given custom keyboard shortcuts in Preferences > Shortcuts.
• Interface: background tint up to a fully colored theme, configurable playhead and note colors, per-song timeline zoom, and drops of audio or MIDI files on the empty timeline region to create matching tracks.
• New songs start empty: add your first track from the toolbar, the Track menu, or by dropping a file.

Known Limitations

• Magister Music has been tested with a limited number of third-party plug-ins and MIDI devices, and we are continuing to expand compatibility coverage.
• Very dense sessions or unusually heavy plug-ins can still stress the host Mac. If you hear timing discontinuities, clicks, or pops, try increasing the audio buffer size in Preferences and closing unneeded plug-in windows.
• Plug-in editor windows size themselves to the plug-in's interface. To change a plug-in's size, use the plug-in's own resize control (usually a corner grip or a zoom/size menu inside its window); the window follows automatically.

Core Concepts

• A song is made of tracks.
• Audio tracks contain audio clips or pasted audio samples.
• MIDI tracks contain MIDI clips and usually play through an instrument plug-in.
• Tracks can have effects, volume, pan, mute, solo, meters, and automation.
• Mute and solo affect the track's mixer output, while MIDI instruments and effects continue running internally.
• The master channel controls the final output.
• The loop region controls repeated playback and several timeline editing commands.
• Selected clips can be edited together for moving, looping, enabling, disabling, copying, deleting, and duplicating.
• Audio clips show waveform previews in the timeline after import or paste.

Starting a Song

The welcome screen shown when no song is open offers New Song, From Template... (start a new untitled song as a copy of an existing song), and Open Song..., plus one-click lists of your recent songs and the songs you recently used as templates.

1. 1. Choose File > New Song, or press Cmd+N. A new song starts with no tracks.
2. 2. Add tracks from Track > Add Audio Track or Track > Add MIDI Track, the Arrangement toolbar's + Audio and + MIDI buttons, or by dropping an audio or MIDI file on the empty timeline.
3. 3. For a MIDI track, choose an instrument plug-in from the track controls.
4. 4. Add a MIDI clip with Studio > Add MIDI Clip or Cmd+Shift+M.
5. 5. Edit the clip in Arrangement, Piano Roll, or Generator view.
6. 6. Use the Loop control to repeat a section while working.
7. 7. Save with File > Save Song or Cmd+S.

Only one song window is open at a time. If a song is already open, close it before creating a new song; opening another song replaces the current open song after any save prompt.

Evaluation Mode and Registration

Magister Music can be downloaded and used for free in evaluation mode. In evaluation mode, the title bar shows [UNREGISTERED - SAVE/EXPORT DISABLED] after the Magister Music title.

Evaluation mode lets you create songs, open songs, edit tracks and clips, use Audio Unit plug-ins, use the piano roll and generator, arrange playback, mix, and automate. The following features are disabled until a valid license key is registered:

• Save Song and Save Song As, including Cmd+S and Cmd+Shift+S.
• Export WAV, Export M4A, and Export MP3, including Cmd+Shift+E for WAV export.
• Copy MIDI from Piano Roll view and Generator view.

To register, choose Magister Music > Register License Key..., then enter the email address and license key you received. The license key can be long, so the registration window provides a wide entry field. If validation succeeds, the app shows a green checkmark, stores the registration in app preferences, removes the unregistered title-bar notice, and immediately enables saving, exporting, and MIDI copy.

You can obtain a license key by visiting the Magister.ai home page.

Main Views

Use the tabs at the top of the app, the View menu, or the command-number shortcuts:

• Cmd+1: Arrangement
• Cmd+2: Mixer
• Cmd+3: Piano Roll
• Cmd+4: Generator
• Cmd+5: Sample Editor
• Tab: Toggle Arrangement/Mixer or Piano Roll/Generator, depending on the current view (from the Sample Editor, Tab returns to Arrangement)

Arrangement

Arrangement view is the main timeline editor. Use it to create tracks, place clips, select time ranges, set loop regions, edit automation, and manage plug-ins on each track.

Mixer

Mixer view is for monitoring and mixing. It shows a compact timeline overview at the top and mixer-style track controls with vertical meters at the bottom. The mixer is intended for viewing many levels at once without editing clips in the timeline overview.

Piano Roll

Piano Roll view edits the notes inside the selected MIDI clip. Select a MIDI clip in Arrangement view, then switch to Piano Roll. The ghost-notes button (next to the zoom slider) shows other MIDI tracks' notes dimmed behind the clip you are editing, for lining up harmonies and rhythms across tracks.

Sample Editor

Sample Editor view is the audio counterpart of the Piano Roll: a zoomed editor for the selected audio clip. Double-click an audio clip in Arrangement view to open it.

Generator

Generator view is a statistical mechanism for rapidly generating musical ideas inside the selected MIDI clip, including novel chord and melody patterns. It is designed for fast iteration: choose musical parameters, generate a pattern, listen, adjust the probabilities, and generate again until something useful emerges.

Metronome

The metronome button in the transport bar (next to Follow) plays a click during playback — a higher-pitched accent on each bar, ticks on the other beats — sized exactly to the song tempo. It rides the normal playback engine as a hidden track, stays audible while other tracks are soloed, and is never included in exports, stems, or frozen tracks. The setting persists across launches.

Undo History

Every edit in a session is kept on an undo timeline (up to 80 steps). Besides Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z, the clock button in the top toolbar opens the History panel: redoable states are listed above the highlighted current state, past states below it, each labeled with the edit that produced it and how long ago it happened. Click any row to jump the whole project to that state in one step — jumping back leaves the newer states available for redo until you make a new edit, exactly like repeated single undos. History is per-session and is not saved into the song file.

Transport and Top Toolbar

The top toolbar contains grouped controls that apply across the app:

• Play/Pause: start or stop playback. Press Space.
• Return to Start: move the playhead to the beginning. Press Home.
• Jump to End: move the playhead to the end of the last clip. Press End.
• Previous/Next Bar: move the playhead by bar. Press Page Up or Page Down.
• Record: record into the selected track — incoming MIDI on a MIDI track, or audio input (microphone or audio interface) on an audio track. Press F9.
• Loop: enable or disable the current loop region. The field beside the checkbox shows the loop region's length in beats; type a new value to resize the loop from its start.
• Follow: when enabled, the Arrangement view scrolls automatically to keep the playhead visible during playback.
• Metronome: toggle the click track (see Metronome below).
• Beat: shows the current playhead position in beats.
• Tempo: enter the song tempo, or hover the field and press the arrow keys to nudge it (Left/Right ±1 BPM, Up/Down ±5).
• Scale menu: choose the current key and scale. Major and Minor scales are grouped inside the menu.
• Automation mode: choose Off, Read, Touch, or Write.
• DSP: shows how much of the audio render deadline playback is using. If enabled in Preferences > Interface, a red counter appears when render overloads or missed deadlines occur; rising counts suggest increasing the audio buffer size in Preferences.
• Preferences: open app preferences.

When playback starts, Arrangement view and the Mixer timeline overview center the starting playhead position when possible.

Recording Audio

Magister Music can record audio input — a microphone or audio interface — into audio tracks.

1. 1. Save your song first: recordings are stored inside the song package, so a new song must be saved before recording audio.
2. 2. Choose an input device in Preferences > Audio > Input Device, or leave it on System Default.
3. 3. Select an audio track and press the Record button (or F9). Playback starts from the playhead and capture begins; macOS will ask for microphone permission the first time.
4. 4. Press Record, Space, or Stop to finish. The take appears as an ordinary audio clip on the track, aligned to where you played, and is saved with the song.

While recording, a growing red region on the target track shows the material being captured, and a level meter beside the Record button shows the live input signal — green for healthy levels, red when close to clipping. When a recording covers existing clips on the track, the covered material is trimmed away and replaced by the new recording.

Recording with looping enabled captures takes: recording continues through each pass of the loop, and every pass becomes a take on a single clip spanning the loop region. The newest take plays by default; a badge on the clip shows which take is active (for example 3/5). Right-click the clip and open the Takes menu to switch takes, delete the current take, or keep only the current take. Recording again over the same span stacks another take onto the same clip. Anything played before the first full loop pass — a lead-in, or a partial first pass — lands as its own clip so nothing you played is lost.

Recordings that are discarded before saving are cleaned out of the song package automatically.

Looping

The loop region is a selected range of time that repeats during playback.

• Drag in the timeline header to define a loop region.
• Enable or disable looping with the Loop checkbox or Cmd+L.
• If clips are selected, the Toggle Loop command sets the loop region around the selected clip range.
• If no clips are selected but an empty time range is selected, Toggle Loop sets the loop region to that selected range.
• If the selected clip range or selected empty time range is already the current loop region, Toggle Loop turns looping off.
• Pressing Play starts from the visible playhead position.
• If looping is enabled and the playhead sits at its default position rather than one you placed, play begins at the loop start.
• If you place the playhead before the loop region, playback includes the lead-in material and continues into the loop.
• Pausing past the end of an enabled loop returns the next play to the loop region.
• While the pointer is over the loop region header in Arrangement, or over the timeline overview in Mixer, the Left and Right arrow keys nudge the loop region ahead or back by its own length.
• Moving the loop region while playing does not intentionally stop or restart playback.
• Extending the loop region while playing takes effect on the current pass through the loop.
• When a loop region is moved forward during playback, the transition into the new region is handled like continuing through the song timeline when possible.
• At transport loop boundaries, Magister Music repairs missing MIDI starts where possible without retriggering notes that are meant to continue smoothly across the boundary.
• Audio clips and MIDI clips both follow the transport loop region during playback.

Loop regions are also used by:

• Insert Silence
• Delete Time
• Add MIDI Clip fallback when no time selection exists

Arrangement View

Arrangement Toolbar

Arrangement view has its own toolbar:

• Grid buttons: choose the arrangement snap/grid value, from 1/32 through 2- and 4-bar grids.
• Insert Silence at Loop Region: insert empty time where the loop region is. Shortcut: Cmd+I.
• Delete Time in Loop Region: remove the time covered by the loop region and shift later clips and automation left. Shortcut: Cmd+Shift+Delete or Cmd+Shift+Forward Delete.
• Slice: slice the selected clip at the playhead (available while playback is stopped). You can also slice from a clip's right-click menu at the clicked position.
• Ripple Delete (right-click): delete the clip and close the gap — later clips and automation on that track slide left.
• Normalize (audio, right-click): set the clip's gain so its loudest sample plays at -1 dBFS.
• Split at Silence (audio, right-click): split the clip at the boundaries of its silent regions — every piece, audible and silent, becomes its own clip.
• Strip Silence (audio, right-click): the same split, but the silent pieces are removed, leaving clips only where there is audible material.
• Trim Silence from Edges (audio, right-click): one click trims silence from the head and tail of the clip, leaving the audible material.
• Fit to Grid (audio, right-click): stretch the clip's end to the nearest gridline, time-stretching its audio to match.
• Export MIDI... (MIDI, right-click): save the clip as a standard .midi file.
• Merge: merge selected MIDI clips or selected audio clips on one track into one clip. Unnamed clips stay unnamed when merged; named clips combine their names with /.
• Reverse: reverse the selected clips (audio plays backward; MIDI mirrors in time).
• + Audio: add an audio track.
• + MIDI: add a MIDI track.
• Horizontal Zoom: zoom the timeline horizontally.
• Expand All and Collapse All: expand or collapse all track controls.

Paste Sample and Add MIDI Clip remain available from the menus (Cmd+Shift+V and Cmd+Shift+M).

Pasted and imported audio clips display waveform previews in the clip body. When an audio clip is looped by extending it to the right, the waveform preview tiles each repetition so the repeated sections visually match the original looped portion.

You can also drag files from Finder directly into the Arrangement view timeline. Drop a .wav or .mp3 file onto an audio track lane to place it as an audio clip at that timeline position, or drop a .mid/.midi file onto a MIDI track lane to import it as a MIDI clip. Dropping files on the empty region below the tracks creates matching new tracks automatically — audio files land on a fresh audio track, MIDI files on a fresh MIDI track.

Track Lanes

Each track appears as a lane in the timeline.

In Arrangement view, track controls can include:

• Track number
• Track name
• Expand/collapse
• Mute
• Solo
• Volume
• Pan
• Instrument plug-in, for MIDI tracks
• MIDI input/output controls, where available
• Automation controls
• Effects chain

Right-click a track to open its context menu and rename it. You can also right-click a clip to rename that clip from its context menu.

Clicking an empty part of a track lane selects that track, so commands such as paste know which track to use. Clicking empty timeline space clears selected clips and selected tracks. Cmd-click and Shift-click track controls can select multiple tracks; edits to volume, pan, mute, solo, color, name, or send levels apply to the selected group.

Mute and solo are applied as mixer output gates. A muted or unsoloed MIDI track can keep its instrument and effects running internally while its track output is silent, so re-enabling the track does not require the MIDI sequence to restart.

Selected tracks can be copied, cut, pasted, deleted, or dragged as a group to reorder them.

The track color picker offers a standard palette plus a custom color well; custom colors you pick join the palette as swatches and persist across songs, so a hand-picked color can be reused anywhere.

A MIDI track's right-click menu also offers Freeze Track and Convert to Audio Track. Freezing renders the track — instrument and effects included — into a hidden audio file that plays in place of the live chain, dramatically lightening playback for heavy plug-ins; the track's controls stay visible, a badge marks the freeze stale after edits, and you can refreeze or unfreeze at any time. Convert to Audio Track performs the same render but replaces the MIDI track with a permanent audio track.

When track controls are collapsed in Arrangement view, MIDI tracks still show a compact gear button for opening the loaded instrument editor when available.

Volume sliders in Arrangement and Mixer snap to 0.5 dB increments. If a track has volume or pan automation, the matching track-control slider is disabled until that automation lane is deleted.

Selecting Clips

• Click a clip to select it.
• Cmd-click clips to add or remove clips from the selection.
• Select one clip, then Shift-click another clip to select clips in between.
• Drag selected clips to move them together.
• Use Left Arrow and Right Arrow in Arrangement view to nudge selected clips by the current arrangement grid value.
• Drag a rectangular marquee around clips, including clips across multiple tracks, to select them together.
• Press Delete to delete the current selection.
• Press Cmd+D to duplicate the primary selected clip immediately after itself.
• Press 0 to disable or enable selected clips.
• Press Cmd+V to paste copied clips after the primary selected clip, at the clicked paste destination, or at the playhead if no clip or paste destination is active.
• Moving a MIDI or audio clip onto another compatible clip on the same track merges them instead of leaving them layered.

Disabled clips are grayed out and do not play. When a MIDI clip is re-enabled during playback, future note-on events can play without waiting for a full graph rebuild; latch-style clips resume when their next trigger occurs.

When multiple clips are copied across tracks, pasting preserves their relative timing and track offsets. While looping playback runs, clicking in an arrangement track sets the clicked position on that track as the paste destination without disturbing the playhead; when playback is stopped, clicks position the playhead as usual.

Selecting Empty Time

Drag across an empty area of the arrangement timeline to define a new loop region in the top loop band.

If there is no rectangular time selection, adding a MIDI clip uses the loop region as the target range when possible.

Clip Length and Clip Looping

Clips can have their own looped playback range. Before a clip is looped, drag the lower-right edge to adjust the clip length, or drag the upper-right edge to begin looping the clip. After looping is enabled, dragging the right edge of the looped portion adjusts the clip loop length, letting you extend or shrink the repeating region without changing the underlying clip start.

When multiple clips are selected, changing the loop length of one selected clip changes the selected clips together.

The master row stays pinned to the bottom of Arrangement view, so it remains available even when a song has enough tracks to scroll vertically.

Dragging Outside the Visible Area

When dragging clips far left or right, the arrangement can scroll so you can continue moving the clips beyond the currently visible timeline.

Dragging the loop region left or right can also scroll the arrangement when you reach the visible edge.

Use the mouse wheel or trackpad scroll gesture over the Arrangement timeline header or time ruler to zoom horizontally around the pointer. Double-click the loop region header to fit the whole song in the view. Timeline zoom is saved with each song, so every song reopens at the zoom you left it.

Mixer View

Mixer view combines a compact timeline overview with mixer controls.

The top section shows thin track lanes with clip placement, track colors, loop region, and playhead. Use it to see where material exists in the song. You can set the playhead and adjust the loop region from this overview: drag in the timeline to define a new loop range, drag the loop region's right edge to lengthen or shorten it, and nudge the loop region with the Left and Right arrow keys while the pointer is over the overview. Clicking a clip in the overview selects it (and its track) so Cmd+L can set the loop region around it — clip selection carries over when switching between Arrangement and Mixer. Use the mouse wheel or trackpad scroll gesture over the overview to zoom horizontally around the pointer. The overview is not meant for rearranging clips: there are no clip context menus or editing keys in the Mixer.

The lower section shows track controls and compact responsive meters. Use it to monitor levels, mute and solo tracks, and adjust volume and pan. Hovering a volume or pan slider arms the arrow keys — Left/Right for fine adjustments, Up/Down for larger steps — with no click needed. The track name sidebar sizes itself to the longest track name whenever the Mixer becomes active. The meter section scrolls horizontally when there are more tracks than fit onscreen, and selecting a track scrolls its bottom control into view when needed.

Mixer track controls are compact, and the master strip uses the same control width as regular tracks. Track numbers appear before track names in both Arrangement and Mixer.

When the mixer controls are wider than the window, the master strip stays pinned at the far right while the track strips scroll underneath it.

Click a mixer track to select it, Cmd-click to add or remove individual tracks, or Shift-click to select a range. Edits to volume, pan, mute, and solo apply to the selected mixer tracks. Empty mixer space clears the track selection.

Mixer track controls show the current instrument and effects with gear buttons for opening plug-in windows, but choosing instruments and editing effect chains is done from Arrangement view.

Mixer view has its own horizontal zoom slider and supports the same horizontal zoom shortcuts as other timeline views. The loop-region shading updates while you drag the loop region, and timeline bar markers continue to render at readable intervals when the mixer is zoomed far out.

Piano Roll View

Piano Roll view edits notes in the selected MIDI clip.

Use Piano Roll to:

• Add notes.
• Select notes.
• Move selected notes.
• Resize notes.
• Adjust note velocity.
• Quantize or unquantize notes.
• Slice selected notes to the current note length.
• Split selected notes at the playhead.
• Reverse selected notes, or the full MIDI sequence if no notes are selected.
• Select all notes in the selected clip.
• Set MIDI loop length in bars or beats.
• Copy MIDI to the clipboard, when the app is registered.

The toolbar includes separate Timing and Length button groups such as 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, and 1. Timing controls note placement and quantize timing; Length controls created note duration plus quantize/unquantize length. The clip length can also be typed directly in beats.

To adjust an individual note's duration directly, drag the right edge of the note to the desired length.

Piano Roll note entry follows the current key and scale: Magister Music does not create new notes outside the selected scale.

The velocity-lane button (next to the ghost-notes button) shows an editable velocity lane pinned below the note grid: each note appears as a bar, drag a bar to set its velocity, or use the scroll wheel over a bar to nudge it. Notes sounding together are staggered slightly so every bar stays visible, and selected notes' bars are highlighted.

The Chord menu stamps diatonic chords: pick a shape (triad, seventh, and more) and each click enters the full chord built on the clicked scale degree, following the current key and scale. Set it back to none for single-note entry.

Legato extends each selected note to the start of the next, removing the gaps between them.

The Swing menu sets a swing amount that Quantize applies: offbeats land late by the chosen percentage. The status line reports whether the swing touched any offbeats, so you know when a pattern had none to move.

Clicking an in-scale pitch row adds a note when no note is under the pointer. Clicking an out-of-scale pitch row deselects selected notes, or moves the playhead if no notes are selected. Cmd-click toggles individual note selection, and Shift-click adds only notes that intersect the vertical line between the existing selection and the clicked note. Selected notes move, resize, and right-click-delete together, and vertical movement snaps notes to the closest pitch in the current scale.

Useful Piano Roll shortcuts:

• Arrow keys: nudge selected notes.
• Shift+Up: move selected notes up one octave.
• Shift+Down: move selected notes down one octave.
• Cmd+U: quantize selected MIDI notes.
• Cmd+A: select all MIDI notes in the selected clip when Piano Roll view is active.
• Delete: delete selected notes.

Sample Editor View

The Sample Editor shows the full source recording of the selected audio clip as a zoomable waveform, with the part the clip actually plays highlighted as a bright window over the dimmed source. Double-click an audio clip (or use its context menu's Open in Sample Editor) to jump straight there. All edits are non-destructive clip parameters; the audio file on disk is never modified.

• Trim: drag the window's left edge to trim the head of the clip (the remaining audio keeps its position in the song; on a looping clip the trim slips which part of the source feeds the loop). Drag the right edge to trim the tail of a non-looping clip. With Snap enabled, trims land on the arrangement grid; disable it for fine trims.
• Fades: drag the small circular handles at the top corners of the window to set fade-in and fade-out lengths, and click a handle to choose the ramp shape — linear, S-curve, exponential, or logarithmic. The fade ramps are drawn on the waveform. Fades are available on any clip that plays its source at most once through, including slices; a clip that actually repeats its source hides them, because a baked fade would repeat with every cycle.
• Gain: the Gain slider in the header sets clip gain in dB and scales the drawn waveform.
• Pitch: the Pitch stepper shifts the clip up or down by semitones (up to two octaves each way) without changing its timing, non-destructively — set it back to 0 to restore the original pitch.
• Slice: click in the bar ruler to place the playhead, then use the scissors button to slice the clip at the playhead.
• Select a region: click in the waveform to place the playhead, or drag across it to select a time range (snapping follows the Snap toggle). Press Delete to silence the selected range — the clip splits around it and the middle is removed, leaving a gap — or right-click and choose Ripple Delete Selection to remove the range and slide the later material left.
• Reverse: the arrows button plays the clip's audio backward, non-destructively; click again to restore. The drawn waveform mirrors to match. The same reversal is available from the clip's context menu and the Arrangement header's reverse button (which also reverses MIDI clips).
• Takes: when a clip holds multiple recorded takes, a strip above the waveform switches between them and offers Delete Take and Keep Only This.
• Navigation: the top ruler shows song bars, the bottom ruler shows time; the magnifier slider (or the horizontal zoom shortcuts) zooms from fit-to-view up to 64x. The playhead follows playback through the clip's window, wrapping on loops.

Because looping audio clips repeat their source, double-clicking an audio clip now opens the Sample Editor; toggling looping moved to the clip's context menu (Loop / Disable Loop).

Generator View

Generator view works with the selected MIDI clip and is aimed at rapidly creating, exploring, and reshaping musical ideas. It is not just a random-note tool; it is a statistical pattern generator that uses the parameters you choose to produce chord shapes, melodic movement, rhythmic spacing, rests, note lengths, velocities, and timing feel.

Two half-locked regenerate buttons refine a result you partly like: New Rhythm keeps the current pitches in order and generates fresh timing; New Pitches keeps the rhythm exactly and takes fresh pitches. Save and Revert bracket experiments.

The intended workflow is iterative. Start with a selected MIDI clip, choose broad settings such as model, pattern type, and sequence length, then refine the result with the colored parameter controls. You can quickly regenerate ideas, save a result you like, revert if a later change is not useful, and copy the generated MIDI for use elsewhere.

The colored controls at the bottom shape the statistical behavior of the generator. They let you guide the output toward certain pitch ranges, note lengths, rests, and other musical tendencies without manually placing every note. This makes Generator view useful for sketching parts, finding unexpected chord or melody patterns, and building variations around a musical direction.

The Model setting controls the character of the generated patterns. The best choice is often a matter of experimentation and personal taste: some models tend to favor repetition, while others may lean toward ascending motion, wider variation, or different rhythmic shapes.

Generator controls include:

• Presets: save, load, and delete generator presets.
• Model: choose the generator model.
• Bars: set generated sequence length.
• Pattern: choose the pattern style.
• Save: store the current generated sequence for later revert.
• Revert: restore the saved generated sequence.
• Copy MIDI: copy the generated MIDI sequence, when the app is registered.
• Temperature: control variation in generated output.
• Velocity Variance: vary note velocities.
• Timing Variance: vary generated note timing and note lengths.
• Horizontal Zoom: zoom the generator timeline horizontally.

Choosing a pattern or changing Temperature does not regenerate by itself. Timing Variance affects only newly generated or regenerated notes. Regeneration happens when you use the generate command, click or right-click a section of the generator grid, or use the mouse wheel over a section. As a shortcut, using the mouse wheel over a generator section regenerates only that section.

The mouse wheel can also adjust the height of the colored probability bars at the bottom of Generator view. Right-clicking a bottom probability bar sets it to zero, and double-clicking a bar sets it to full. If all octave, pitch, chord size, or note length bars are zero, generate/regenerate does nothing. New generator clips default the 1/8 note length bar to full.

Generator settings are stored with MIDI clips. Duplicated and pasted MIDI clips keep their generator settings, and merged MIDI clips preserve compatible generator settings when possible.

Tracks, Instruments, and Effects

Instruments

MIDI tracks can host Audio Unit instrument plug-ins. When you add an instrument, the plug-in window opens so you can configure it immediately.

Instrument selection is edited from Arrangement track controls. Mixer track controls show the current instrument name and gear button but do not offer the instrument picker.

Plug-ins can be organized into named groups in Preferences > Audio Units: create a group, then assign plug-ins to it. Grouped plug-ins appear inside matching submenus in the instrument and effect pickers, keeping long plug-in lists navigable; ungrouped plug-ins stay at the top level.

Effects

Tracks and the master channel can host effect plug-ins. In Arrangement view, effects can be added, opened, bypassed, copied, pasted, reordered, and removed from track controls.

The Add menu also offers two built-in audio effects. The Compressor is a full-featured dynamics compressor with threshold, ratio, knee, attack, release, and makeup gain, a gain-reduction meter, and sidechain keying — choose any other MIDI or audio track as the key source to duck against it. The Limiter is its brickwall sibling with input gain, ceiling, and release. Both are saved with the song, work on tracks, buses, and the master, support Space for play/pause while their window is focused, allow arrow-key nudging of a hovered slider (Left/Right fine, Up/Down coarse), and expose every parameter for automation — the panel sliders animate while automation plays.

When a MIDI track carries built-in MIDI effects, the hammer button in the Effects header bakes them into the notes: every clip takes the chain's output and the MIDI effect slots are removed — an ordinary undoable edit, useful before fine-tuning individual notes.

The automation sidebar's copy and paste buttons transfer a lane's shape between any parameters: copy a volume lane on one track, select any lane on another (a send, a plugin parameter), and paste — values are normalized, so the shape carries over; points land at the playhead.

MIDI tracks can also host the built-in MIDI effects (Arpeggiator, Chord, Transpose, Scale, Strum, Ratchet, Euclid, Note Echo, Swing, Humanize, Chance, Length, Velocity, and Mirror) from the same Add menu. They transform the track's notes non-destructively, in chain order, before the instrument — the piano roll keeps showing the original notes. Transpose shifts every note by a set number of semitones with no scale snapping; use the Scale effect instead when the result should stay in key.

You can copy an effect plug-in from one track and paste it into another track.

An entire effects chain can be saved as a named preset from the bookmark menu in the Effects header, including each plug-in's full settings. Presets are stored with the app — not the song — so a chain saved in one song can be applied in any other. Applying a preset can replace the current chain or append to it, and works for both tracks and the master channel. Effects in a preset that reference plug-ins not currently enabled are skipped with a message. Saving with an existing preset name replaces that preset, and presets can be deleted from the same menu.

When you add an effect, the plug-in window opens automatically.

In Mixer view, effects are displayed by name with gear buttons for opening their plug-in windows, but bypass, copy/paste, reorder, and delete controls are hidden.

Plug-in Windows

Use Studio > Toggle Plug-in Windows or Cmd+Option+P to close and reopen the set of plug-in windows you currently have open.

If you manually close a plug-in window, that plug-in is removed from the remembered set for the toggle command.

While a plug-in window is focused, pressing Space controls app playback.

Plug-in editor windows automatically match the size of the plug-in's interface. Plug-ins that support resizing offer their own control for it — typically a grip in the lower-right corner of their interface or a zoom/size setting in their own menus — and the window follows whatever size the plug-in chooses.

Buses and Sends

Buses are shared effect channels. A track can send part of its signal to a bus — for example one reverb on a bus, fed by several tracks at different levels — and the bus mixes into the master.

• Add a bus with the + Bus button above the track controls in Arrangement view, next to the collapse-all control. Bus strips appear in the Mixer between the track strips and the master strip.
• Bus strips appear in both views: pinned above the master strip in the Arrangement control column (collapsible, like the master strip), and between the track strips and master in the Mixer. A bus strip has a name, fader, mute, and its own effects chain. Like track effects, the chain is edited in Arrangement — the Mixer lists bus effects with gear buttons for opening their windows. Effect chain presets work on buses too.
• Right-click a bus strip to rename or delete it. Deleting a bus removes its sends from all tracks.
• Sends live in the track's Effects / Sends section in the Arrangement track controls. Use the Add menu and choose Send to <bus> to create a send — tracks have no sends until you add one. Each added send shows a row with a level slider, a percentage readout, and a remove button.
• Sends are post-fader, post-effects, and post-mute: a muted track sends nothing, and soloing a track keeps its bus effects audible.
• Bus strips show a stereo meter, and the Arrangement bus strip has automation controls: touch a control in a bus effect's editor to add it to the automation menu, then edit points in the automation lane below the bus row — the same workflow as track and master effect automation. Bus fader and send-level automation are not available yet.
• Buses are saved with the song and included in exports.

Automation

Automation lets track or plug-in parameters change over time.

The global automation mode is in the top toolbar:

• Off: automation is not active.
• Read: automation plays back.
• Touch: automation can be written while touching controls.
• Write: automation can be written continuously.

In Arrangement view, use the track automation controls to show automation lanes, choose a parameter, and edit points.

Automation parameter menus include standard MIDI controls and plug-in-specific controls after you touch or adjust those controls in the plug-in editor. Touched plug-in automation controls are saved with the song so they are available when the project is reopened.

Automation menus group available parameters and include effect or instrument names where available, so touched plug-in controls are easier to distinguish.

Common automation actions:

• Drag automation points to change time or value.
• While dragging an automation point, a dotted vertical alignment guide shows where that point lines up with the arrangement timeline. The guide extends through the full arrangement timeline and uses the track color where available.
• Automation points can snap to dashed guide positions, including initial point placement in an empty lane.
• Dotted horizontal guide lines show the value an automation point holds before the first point and after the last point in the lane.
• If the selected automation lane has no points yet, a dashed horizontal guide shows the current value for that control. For plug-in-specific controls, the guide uses the current value reported by the plug-in when available.
• Use arrow keys to nudge a selected automation point.
• Right-click an automation point to delete it.
• Click the trash icon at the far right of an automation lane to delete all automation for that control.
• Double-click an automation point when you need to enter an exact value.
• Copy and paste automation points when working with repeated sections.

Volume and pan automation disables the matching track-control slider in Arrangement and Mixer so manual slider changes do not fight the automation lane. Deleting that automation data re-enables the slider.

A Mute automation lane gates the track's output over time: points snap to on/off (high means playing), clicking adds a step at the clicked position, and dragging a step point moves its companion with it, keeping the steps square.

Automation belongs to its clips when you rearrange: moving or nudging clips — including to another track with the Up/Down arrows or a drag — carries the covered automation along, shows a ghost preview of the traveling curve during the drag, and asks before overwriting automation already present at the destination. The selected lane also draws dimmed ghost curves of the track's other lanes for alignment.

While playback is stopped, clicking around the timeline pushes each automated parameter's value at that position to its plug-in, so open plug-in windows show the knobs where the curves put them — the same following that happens live during playback.

Editing Time

Magister Music includes time-based editing commands that use the loop region:

• Edit > Insert Silence or Cmd+I: insert empty time at the loop region.
• Edit > Delete Time or Cmd+Shift+Delete: remove the time covered by the loop region.

Delete Time removes content inside the loop region and ripples later clips and automation points left by the deleted duration. These commands affect the arrangement timeline, so set the loop region carefully before using them.

Sample Browser

View > Sample Browser opens a floating window for browsing sample libraries. Add any number of folders or individual files — with the Add Folder button or by dragging them in from Finder — and access persists across launches. Folders are searched recursively and include audio files (wav, aif, mp3, m4a, caf, flac) and MIDI files (mid, midi). The segmented control at the top chooses the display: Folders shows the directory tree (folders with no browsable files anywhere inside are hidden; each shows its file count), and All Files lists every file found across all folders as one flat, name-sorted list — no drilling down. Click the play button on any audio row to audition it. To use a file: double-click it to insert it at the playhead — audio lands on the selected audio track, MIDI on the selected MIDI track (a matching track is created if the song has none) — or drag it onto a track at exactly the position you want. Right-click a top-level item to remove it from the browser. Auditioning plays through a lightweight built-in player and never interrupts song playback; MIDI rows show a piano icon and are placed rather than auditioned.

Saving, Opening, and Exporting

Use the File menu for song and export operations:

• New Song: Cmd+N
• Open Song: Cmd+O
• Save Song: Cmd+S
• Save Song As: Cmd+Shift+S
• Revert: restore the last saved version after confirmation
• Export WAV: Cmd+Shift+E
• Export M4A
• Export MP3
• Export Stems: render each audible track to its own WAV file in a chosen folder

Export dialogs default to the current song name. Exports render hosted Audio Unit instruments and effects, not only raw clips. The export progress bar is monotonic, including during MP3 export.

If a valid loop region exists, export uses the loop region as the export range even when loop playback is disabled. The export dialog shows the range before rendering.

Saving and exporting are available only after registering a valid license key. In evaluation mode, those menu items and shortcuts are disabled.

When a song opens, a Loading Plugins progress dialog shows each plug-in as it prepares, so larger sessions make their startup progress visible.

If you close a song with unsaved changes, Magister Music asks whether to save before closing.

Closing the song window quits Magister Music. To continue working, reopen the app and choose File > Open Song or File > New Song.

Preferences

Open Preferences from the top toolbar or with Cmd+,.

Preferences include audio and plug-in related settings, including Audio Unit discovery and rescan behavior.

The Audio section shows the current device buffer size and lets you request a new buffer size for the current default audio devices. Increasing the buffer size can improve playback stability and may help support more simultaneous tracks or heavier plug-in chains, at the cost of higher response latency.

The Audio Units section lets you enable or disable the instrument and effect plug-ins that appear elsewhere in the app. It also manages plug-in groups: create named groups and assign plug-ins to them, and the instrument and effect pickers present each group as a submenu.

The Audio section also includes an Output Device picker for choosing which audio device Magister Music plays through, alongside the Input Device used for recording.

The Interface section lets you set the main window's width and height directly, which is useful for matching a specific display layout. It also chooses whether the Arrangement track controls sit on the right (the default) or the left side of the timeline, and lets you edit the track color preset palette.

The Interface section also has Background controls for coloring the app's background. The Hue slider picks the color — blue, red, green, and so on — and the Intensity slider ranges from the classic near-black look up to a fully colored interface. The background is always kept dark enough that text and controls remain readable. Changes apply immediately, the Left and Right arrow keys nudge a focused slider in fine steps, and Reset to Default restores the standard look.

When exporting, the save dialog offers Normalize loudness to with an adjustable LUFS target (-36 to -3; streaming services commonly use -14): the mix is measured (ITU-R BS.1770) and its gain adjusted to the target, with peaks kept below -1 dBFS. The checkbox and target are remembered between exports.

The Mixer's master strip shows a live loudness readout: short-term LUFS (K-weighted, 3 seconds) and RMS (400 ms) of the master output.

The Colors controls set the playhead color used in every timeline view and the note color used by the Piano Roll and Generator, each with its own Reset button.

The Autosave controls set how often Magister Music saves a crash-recovery copy of the open song while you edit (60 seconds by default), and autosave can be turned off entirely.

The Toolbar control chooses whether the DSP readout shows the red missed-deadline counter; it is hidden by default.

The Shortcuts section lists configurable app shortcuts by category. Click a shortcut to record a replacement key command, use Reset to restore an individual default, Clear to leave an action unmapped, or Reset All to restore every default shortcut.

The Help menu includes both the bundled Magister Music User Guide and a Website item that opens the Magister Music product page.

Shortcut Reference

The shortcut tables list the default shortcuts. Many defaults can be changed or cleared in Preferences > Shortcuts.

Beyond the defaults below, Preferences > Shortcuts also lists many actions that ship without a key — mute/solo/freeze/rename the selected track, slice/merge/reverse/rename clips, silence editing, take switching, clip gain and pitch nudges, MIDI note tools, generate, tempo nudges, loop-region resizing, follow-playhead, the automation mode, the undo history panel, and more (grouped by category: Track, Clip, Takes, MIDI, Generator, Transport). Click any of them and record a key to put it on your keyboard.

Project

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+N	New song
Cmd+O	Open song
Cmd+S	Save song, registered mode only
Cmd+Shift+S	Save song as, registered mode only
Cmd+Shift+E	Export WAV, registered mode only
Cmd+,	Preferences
Cmd+?	User guide

Views

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+1	Arrangement view
Cmd+2	Mixer view
Cmd+3	Piano Roll view
Cmd+4	Generator view
Cmd+5	Sample Editor view
Tab	Toggle Arrangement/Mixer or Piano Roll/Generator, depending on the current view; returns to Arrangement from the Sample Editor
Cmd++ or Cmd+Shift+=	Zoom in horizontally
Cmd+-	Zoom out horizontally

Transport

Shortcut	Action
Space	Play or pause
Home	Return to start
End	Jump to the end of the last clip
Page Up	Move playhead to previous bar
Page Down	Move playhead to next bar
F9	Toggle MIDI recording
Cmd+L	Toggle loop, or set loop from selected clips or selected empty time
Left/Right Arrow	Nudge the loop region by its own length while the pointer is over the loop region header or the Mixer timeline overview

Arrangement and Tracks

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+T	Add audio track
Cmd+Shift+T	Add MIDI track
Cmd+Shift+M	Add MIDI clip
Cmd+I	Insert silence at loop region
Cmd+Shift+Delete	Delete time in loop region
Cmd+Shift+Forward Delete	Delete time in loop region
A	Toggle selected track automation

Selection and Clips

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+C	Copy selection
Cmd+X	Cut selection
Cmd+V	Paste selection
Cmd+Shift+V	Paste audio sample
Cmd+D	Duplicate selection
Delete	Delete selection
0	Disable or enable selected clips
Left/Right Arrow	Nudge selected arrangement clips by the current arrangement grid value
Cmd-click	Add or remove clips from selection
Shift-click	Select a range of clips

MIDI

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+U	Quantize selected MIDI notes, or the full clip if no notes are selected
Cmd+A	Select all MIDI notes in the selected clip when Piano Roll view is active
Arrow keys	Nudge selected MIDI notes
Shift+Up	Move selected MIDI notes up one octave
Shift+Down	Move selected MIDI notes down one octave

Automation

Shortcut	Action
Arrow keys	Nudge selected automation point

Plug-ins

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+Option+P	Toggle remembered plug-in windows
Space	Play or pause while a plug-in window is focused

Practical Tips

• Use loop playback while building a part, then use Cmd+L with selected clips to quickly loop around them.
• Use Mixer view when you want to watch many meters at once.
• Use Arrangement view when you need to edit clip timing, selection regions, automation, or loop placement.
• Use Piano Roll for precise MIDI note editing.
• Use Generator to rapidly explore chord, melody, rhythm, and variation ideas, then copy or edit the resulting MIDI.
• If a MIDI clip is not audible, check that the clip is enabled, the track is not muted, the instrument is loaded, and the track volume is up.
• If a plug-in-heavy song takes a moment on first playback, let playback start once, then stop and restart if needed while setting up the session.

Licenses

LAME MP3 Encoder

Magister Music uses the LAME MP3 Encoder version 3.100 for MP3 export.

LAME is licensed under the GNU Library General Public License, Version 2. Commercial use is permitted under the LGPL when LAME is linked as a separate library, use of LAME is acknowledged, and any modifications to LAME are released under the LGPL.

LAME project: www.mp3dev.org

Source archive used for the bundled library: https://fossies.org/linux/misc/lame-3.100.tar.gz