Entering Notes

Notes are entered using the computer keyboard or a connected MIDI keyboard. See Notes for the QWERTY key layout. The active scale filters which pitches are available from the computer keyboard. MIDI input bypasses the scale, octave, and transpose settings — notes are mapped directly from MIDI note numbers.

• Press a note key to insert a note at the cursor and advance by the skip amount
• Press . to insert a note-off marker, which silences the voice
• Press Shift+. to insert a note-off on all voices of the current row in the current track
• Press Delete or Backspace to clear the note at the cursor
• When you enter a note, it plays back as a preview so you can hear what you’re writing

Cursor and Navigation

• Arrow keys — move the cursor up/down/left/right through the grid
• Navigation wraps around: moving past the last row goes to the first, moving past the last track goes to the first
• Click any cell in the grid to move the cursor there and enter edit mode

Zoom

The ZOOM dropdown in the header controls the note resolution at which the pattern is displayed. Think of it as zooming in and out of the time grid.

• Notes are always stored at the resolution at which they were entered
• Zooming out (e.g. from 1/16 to 1/4) aggregates rows: any cell that contains notes at a finer resolution is shown as a solid color block
• Zooming in reveals the individual notes
• You can enter notes at any zoom level — the note is placed at the first underlying row of the displayed cell
• Available zoom levels: 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, 1/16, 1/24, 1/32, 1/48, 1/64, 1/96, 1/128
• When notes can not be displayed in the current zoom level, a number indicating the zoom level required to display them is shown instead

Selection

• Shift + Arrow keys — begin or extend a selection in any direction
• Cmd+A — progressive selection:
  • From a note column:
    1. Select all notes in the current track
    2. Extend to include FX columns for that track
    3. Select all tracks (notes + FX)
  • From an FX column:
    1. Select current FX column
    2. Select all FX columns on current track (if more than one)
    3. Extend to include note columns for that track
    4. Select all tracks (notes + FX)
• Selections can span multiple voices, tracks, FX columns, and rows
• Escape — clear the current selection

FX Columns

Every track has four dedicated FX columns appearing to the right of its note voices. Each column controls a specific effect — you type only the parameter value, no command codes needed.

Track Context Menu

Right-click anywhere on any of the cells belonging to a particular track in the pattern editor to open the track context menu.

Copy, Cut, and Paste

• Cmd+C — copy the selection or the cell at the cursor if no selection
• Cmd+X — cut the selection
• Cmd+V — paste at the cursor position

Moving Notes

• Alt + Arrow keys — move the note at the cursor or the entire selection in any direction
• Notes are lifted into a preview state. Press Enter to confirm the new position, or any other key to cancel and return them to the original position.
• Moving is blocked when a cell contains hidden notes at an incompatible zoom level (when the current zoom step does not evenly divide the hidden content’s zoom step). In this case, zoom in to a compatible level first. Incompatible zoom indicators are displayed in a different color to signal this.
• When moving horizontally, notes and FX values snap to the next compatible column. Voice columns can only move to other voice columns. FX columns move to FX columns of the same width: VOL and PAN (both 2-character, range 00–7F) are interchangeable, and BEND and FADE (both 4-character) are interchangeable. Moving between narrow and wide FX columns is not allowed.

Chord Mode

When the Chord dropdown is set to anything other than “Off”, each key press inserts a chord voicing instead of a single note. The chord intervals are derived from the currently active scale, so the same key naturally produces major, minor, diminished, or other chord qualities depending on the scale degree. The number of notes placed is limited by the track’s voice count.

Available chord voicings:

Writing / Preview Mode

The pattern editor has two modes, toggled with Tab:

• Writing (default) — notes are written to the pattern when you press note keys.
• Preview — note keys play audio but do not write to the pattern. Cursor movement, selection, editing, and playback still work normally.

The current mode is shown in the footer bar.

Playback

• Enter — start/stop playback from the beginning of the pattern
• Space — start/stop playback from the cursor position
• During playback, the grid highlights the current row and auto-scrolls to follow
• All editing, cursor movement, and selection are disabled during playback

Patterns

Click + at the bottom of a track column to add a new pattern to that track. New patterns inherit time signature, note value, and measures from the track’s active pattern.

• Click a pattern block — select it and load it into the editor
• Double-click — open the pattern in the editor (exits arranger mode)

Context Menu

Right-click a pattern block:

• Color — pick from 10 colors. The color shows as a thin bar on the left edge
• Rename — rename the pattern block (12 character max)
• Clone — create a linked copy. Editing one clone affects all clones that share the same data
• Duplicate — create an independent copy with its own data. The name auto-increments
• Delete — remove the pattern (disabled when only one remains)

Keyboard Controls

Basic Settings

• NAME — set the track name (text field)
• VOICES — set the number of polyphonic voices for this track. Each voice is a column in the pattern editor. Fewer voices means less CPU usage; more voices enable richer chords and polyphony.
• INSTRUMENT — choose between Sampler, Poly Synth, and Chip Synth. Sampler mode lets you load audio samples into a note grid. Poly Synth uses the built-in subtractive analog synthesizer. Chip Synth emulates classic chiptune waveforms.

See the Sampler, Poly Synth, and Chip Synth sections for mode-specific settings.

Sample

Set a track’s mode to Sample to load a single audio file and play it chromatically across the keyboard. All note keys pitch the same sample up and down relative to its original key.

• Right-click the empty slot to load a .wav file
• Once loaded, the waveform editor, loop controls, pitch, and glide controls appear

Multi Sample

Set a track’s mode to Multi Sample for a 21-cell instrument mapped to the keyboard in a uniform layout:

Q W E R T Y U
A S D F G H J
Z X C V B N M

Each cell can hold an independent sample with its own volume, pan, and pitch settings. The keyboard keys map directly to cells — input modifiers (scale, chord, transpose) are bypassed.

Shared Controls

Both Sample and Multi Sample share the same waveform editor and loop controls.

Presets

A PRESET dropdown at the top of the synth controls provides a selection of built-in patches. Selecting a preset overwrites all synth parameters with the preset’s values. After loading a preset you can freely tweak any parameter.

All continuous parameters are presented as horizontal faders that can be dragged, and each shows a numeric readout that can also be typed into directly. Double-click a fader to reset it to its midpoint.

Pitch & Glide

OSC 1

The first oscillator — one of the two primary sound sources.

OSC 2

The second oscillator. Can be detuned relative to OSC 1 for thicker sounds or used as an FM modulation source.

Mix

Controls for additional oscillator sources and inter-oscillator modulation.

Filter

A state-variable filter (SVF) for tonal shaping.

Amp

Controls the output volume of the synth voice.

ENV

The ADSR envelope generator. It shapes how a note evolves over time and is used by the filter and optionally the amp.

LFO

A triangle-wave Low Frequency Oscillator used to modulate other parameters.

Chorus

A stereo chorus effect applied at the output of the synth voice. Adds width and movement to the sound.

Channel Strip

Each strip contains (top to bottom):

Clicking anywhere on a channel strip selects it as the active track - also selects it in the pattern editor and track editor.

Master Strip

A dedicated strip at the right end of the mixer, labeled MASTER:

Master Effects

Below the channel strips, three master bus effects are shown inline:

• MASTER EQ — A 9-band graphic equalizer. Click the header to toggle on/off.
• PURRIFIER — A multiband compressor with LOW, MID, HIGH, and WDT knobs. Master bus only. Click the header to toggle on/off.
• MASTER COMPRESSOR — A feed-forward compressor with THR, RAT, ATK, REL, KNEE, and GAIN knobs on one line. Click the header to toggle on/off.

See Effects for full documentation of each effect.

Distortion

A multi-mode distortion effect with optional frequency-band targeting.

Modes:

• DIST — Hard clipping distortion
• SAT — Tape/tube-style soft saturation (tanh waveshaping)
• CRUSH — Bit crusher (reduces both bit depth and sample rate)
• FOLD — Foldback distortion (wave folding via sine function)

TARGET isolates a frequency band using crossover filters (300 Hz low/mid, 3 kHz mid/high). Only the selected band is distorted; the rest passes through unchanged.

EQ

A 9-band graphic equalizer with vertical faders. Each fader controls a fixed frequency band with ±12 dB gain range. Double-click a fader to reset it to 0 dB (flat).

The lowest band (60 Hz) is a low shelf filter that also affects frequencies below it. The highest band (12 kHz) is a high shelf filter that also affects frequencies above it. All other bands are peaking (bell) filters centered at their frequency.

Purrifier

A multiband compressor available on the master bus only. Splits the signal into three frequency bands (below 300 Hz, 300 Hz – 3 kHz, 3 kHz and above) and applies upward and downward compression to each band independently. Quiet details are lifted and peaks are controlled, giving a polished, loud, clear sound similar to OTT-style multiband compression.

The WDT control uses mid/side processing on the mid and high bands to widen or narrow the stereo image. The low band is left untouched for mono-safe bass. This technique is fully mono-compatible — collapsing to mono perfectly cancels any added width.

Compressor

A feed-forward compressor/limiter with soft-knee support.

For limiter-style behavior, set a high ratio (20:1) with a fast attack (0.1 ms).

Delay

A stereo delay with tempo sync, modulation, and feedback filtering.

The TIME dropdown offers subdivisions from 1/32 to 1/4, including dotted and triplet variants. Selecting FREE reveals the MS slider for manual delay time in milliseconds.

Global

Edit

Arranger

When the Pattern Arranger is open, these shortcuts apply:

Notes

The 27 note keys span the active scale. The actual pitches depend on the selected scale, octave, and transpose settings.

When a Multi Sample track is selected, scale, chord, octave, and transpose modifiers are bypassed — keys map directly to cells. Note transpose shortcuts (Cmd+Arrows) are also disabled.

Hex Number Reference

All FX column values in Psikat are entered in hexadecimal (base 16). This table covers the most commonly needed values.

BEND Column Reference

Pitch bend uses quarter tones (half-semitones). The target byte 40 (hex) = no bend (centre). Values above 40 bend up; values below bend down.

FADE Column Reference

The FADE column uses SSEE format: start volume → end volume, fading from the current row to the end of the pattern. Both bytes use 00 = silent, 7F = full volume.