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Jackdaw Update (February 2026)

Jackdaw is a free, keyboard-focused Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), currently in progress. Source code and a user manual are available on github.

In May of last year, I checked out a git branch ambitiously named midi, thereby dooming Jackdaw’s main branch to months of neglect.

Until today! Branch midi has been merged.

This update includes a whole lot, much of which has nothing to do with MIDI. In fact, it’s too much to write about in a single post, but I’m going to do that anyway.

Not MIDI

This section enumerates visible changes to Jackdaw since last May that are not related to MIDI; under-the-hood changes (refactors), of which there have been many, are not described.

Clip bounds

All of the audio clips you see on the timeline are really “clip references”: windows into the underlying audio data. When you first record or import a clip, this window includes all of the available audio data. But cutting the clip (S-c) or using source mode can result in one or more partial windows into the underlying audio data.1

Now, you can directly adjust those windows with a new suite of tools. It works the same as grabbing and dragging clips; in addition to grabbing and moving the clips themselves, you can now grab and move the edges of those clips.

The keyboard commands use g (which is bound to Grab clip at cursor) as a modifier key, and j and l for “left” and “right”, respectively (analogous to j = rewind and l = play).

So to grab the left edge, position the cursor over the clip and do g-j (hold g and tap j). To grab the right edge, g-l. If dragging is active (C-k), moving the playhead will also move the grabbed edges.


Arrows are displayed when there’s “room” on either side of the clip, i.e. there’s audio data beyond the current window.

You can cut a clip and automatically grab both edges of the cut to move the cut position with g-c (Cut clip at cursor and grab edges):


If a clip edge is grabbed but you want to grab the whole clip instead (e.g. to move it in its entirety), you can use g-k to Ungrab clip edge. So it’s very easy to cycle between grabbing either edge or the clip itself with g-j, g-k, g-l:


Clip gain

You can set and adjust a gain value for a clip by Shift-clicking it, and dragging the mouse up or down. This is a non-destructive edit; the underlying audio is unchanged.

To reset the gain to 0dB, do the same but hold Cmd or Ctrl in addition to Shift.

You can reverse the polarity of the clip by dragging past the -∞ dB line.


Click track changes

Click tracks got a significant overhaul in service of some MIDI-related things. One visible sign of the change is that tempo BPM values no longer need to be integers. (Don’t ask me why the original implementation required them to be integers.)

“Freeze” click track

Jackdaw provides a lot of flexibility that you’ll almost never need with respect to click track placement; you can create a bunch of click tracks and move them up and down the timeline to your heart’s content. Placement is not strictly cosmetic: each Track is “governed” by the click track positioned nearest above it on the timeline, so when you need to do grid-related things on a track (e.g. jumping to the next beat position with C-l, or adding notes in the piano roll), you can control which grid you’re using.

The downside of this design is that if you have a bunch of tracks and scroll down, the click track you’re using may no longer be visible.

To solve this, you can now “freeze” a click track at the top of the timeline view, and it will remain fixed there regardless of how you scroll. You do this simply by moving (S-p) the click track “all the way up”:

(Note that the frozen click track covers over the timecode view, so it’s unfortunately one or the other for now.)

You “unfreeze” the click track by selecting it (repeat p or d until you’re “all the way up”) and moving it down (S-n):

Metronome customization

I always wanted a “swing” metronome: instead of clicks on every beat, your bandleader snaps on beats two and four. You can do this now (among other things) by setting which metronome sound plays on each of the following:

  1. measure boundaries
  2. beat boundaries
  3. even beats (2 & 4 in 4/4) only
  4. subdivisions (e.g. eighths)

These options can be found in the second tab of the click track settings tab view (select a click track (n and p) and then S-t to open the tab view, and S-l to tab right).

There are two finger snap recordings included along with the default sounds. You can’t add your own sounds yet, but that option shouldn’t be difficult to add in the future.

Tempo changes

Tempo changes now affect the placement of clips, MIDI notes and pitch bend, and automation keyframes. More on this below, in the context of MIDI note quantization.

Multi-channel audio devices

Jackdaw is still natively stereo, and does not support audio output with more than two channels. But you can now connect multi-channel devices (e.g. audio interfaces) and selectively record from adjacent stereo pairs of channels. For example, when you connect a 4-channel interface, you will have the option to record from channels (1,2) or (3,4). It is also now true that mono audio inputs (like the built-in microphone on most laptops) record mono clips, and not redundant stereo. (Jackdaw tracks are flexible – they can hold mono or stereo clips, MIDI or audio; a Track is just a Track. This idea will extend to buses, too).

There’s no option for the user to configure the device channel groupings manually, but you can effectively achieve any result with Split stereo clip at cursor to mono, then mixing the new mono clips in stereo with panning, exporting a mixdown (S-w) and re-importing it (C-o), or using the Jackdaw out audio input to record a stereo mixdown on the fly. I’ll add device configuration later.

I improved the code that handles device connection/disconnection events; it should always be possible to use a new device connected during runtime, and disconnecting a device should never cause a crash. (This is unfortunately not true of MIDI devices, because neither SDL2 nor PortMidi reports when a MIDI device has been added or removed.)

Build system

SDL2 and SDL2_ttf are now included in the project as git submodules, as is PortMidi. The Makefile included with Jackdaw now builds each of those dependencies locally (i.e., will not install anything on your system), and links to static builds of each when constructing the Jackdaw binary.

So, to build a self-contained copy of Jackdaw on your machine, the following should usually be sufficient:

    $ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/chvolow24/jackdaw.git
    $ cd jackdaw
    $ make

CMake is required to build PortMidi, and GNU autotools is required to configure and build SDL2 and SDL2_ttf. For its part, Jackdaw just uses GNU Make.

make clean cleans Jackdaw’s build objects only. make cleanall also cleans the dependencies. make debug creates a debug build.

Miscellaneous not-MIDI

MIDI

So far, the MIDI functionality in Jackdaw can only be used to control the built-in synthesizer. But it’ll do more in the future, and the built-in synth is more powerful than you might expect. With the QWERTY piano emulator, you can start making your own sounds in Jackdaw immediately, without an external device.

Basics (I/O, MIDI Clips)

Tracks in Jackdaw are not “audio tracks” or “MIDI tracks” – they are just Tracks. You can record MIDI data onto a track exactly like you would record audio: first, select one of the MIDI devices from list of available inputs (C-S-i, or click the track input box); then, hit r to start recording. A pink MIDI clip will appear on the track, and any notes you play on the MIDI device will be recorded to that clip. Hit r again to stop recording.

Recording MIDI with the QWERTY piano emulator

MIDI clips can also be manipulated exactly like audio clips. You can grab them, move them around, copy them, and adjust their bounds. (Source mode does not currently work with MIDI clips, however).

Synthesizer

Each Track has its own synth, and MIDI is played back through the synth by default. The synth is opened with S-s.

(There’s a Track set MIDI out command, which could be used for other instruments or external devices in the future; for now it’s useless.)

Oscillators

Jackdaw’s synthesizer has four “base oscillators” with selectable waveform types (sine, triangle, square, saw). Each of the base oscillators can be replicated in up to 7 unison voices, which can be detuned and spread across the stereo field. The base oscillators can be tuned (octave, coarse, and fine tuning) individually, or set to a fixed frequency.

By default, the four base oscillators are added together. However, you can also set one oscillator to modulate the frequency or amplitude of another. Modulation can be used to create new timbres or, when the modulator is set to a low frequency, to create vibrato (frequency) or tremolo (amplitude). When a given base oscillator is being modulated by another, the appropriate Is carrier red status light will be lit.

By default, the phase of all oscillators (i.e. all of the base oscillators and their unison voices) will be reset when a new note is triggered. You can turn this off by unchecking the Sync phase toggle. In general, not syncing phase is preferable for more heterogeneous sounds, like orchestral strings. It introduces an element of chaos into the sound, and is often undesirable for things like bass instruments, where phase differences can unexpectedly and dramatically mute or amplify a sound.

Amplitude envelope

The synth uses a conventional ADSR envelope. The Ramp exponent parameter sets an exponent value for each ramp; as that value increases past 1.0, the shape of the decay and release ramps change gradually from something that looks like “\” to something that looks closer to “L”. In other words, a ramp exponent of 1.0 gives a linear decay, 2.0 gives quadratic decay, etc.

Noise

White noise can be introduced into the sound and controlled by its own amplitude envelope. Even if the noise envelope is enabled, the noise sound still passes through the main amplitude envelope and the filter.

Filter

The filter is a one-pole resonant lowpass Chebyshev filter. The controls are, I think, slightly unconventional. The Base cutoff parameter sets a lower bound for the filter cutoff frequency. The Key tracking parameter adds a multiple of the current note frequency to the base cutoff. Velocity tracking attenuates (brings down) the cutoff frequency when the note has less-than-full velocity, more so for higher values of the parameter. (So, bring this slider all the way up if you want maximum expressivity). Env amount adds to the cutoff frequency an amount that changes dynamically with the filter’s envelope.

The filter cutoff tracks the amplitude envelope by default, but can be given its own ADSR shape when Use amp env is unchecked. The effect is most obvious when the amp envelope has a short attack, and the filter envelope is given a longer attack, producing a “wah” sound.

Effects

When effects are added directly to the synth (instead of to its parent Track), they are heard even when the synth is being monitored directly, i.e., while you are playing. Delay lines and saturation sound excellent on a synth.

The effects can be re-ordered, deleted, and undeleted exactly like track effects. They are included when a synth preset is saved. Unlike track effects, you can’t apply automation to synth effect parameters.

Polyphony

The synth can be used polyphonically with up to 24 voices (the default), or in mono mode. When voice-stealing is enabled, the oldest (longest-held) voice is stolen first.

Portamento applies to pitch and velocity in mono mode, but also polyphonically when the special Poly portamento mode is enabled.

Poly portamento mode

Enable voice sliding in a polyphonic context by:

  1. Enabling Poly portamento mode (make sure Mono mode is off), and
  2. Reducing the number of voices.

When a voice is stolen (and only then), the stolen voice slides to the destination note instead of being silenced.

Poly portamento mode implements heuristic voice-leading, so the rules for voice stealing are slightly different. When a new note occurs and all available voices are in use, those that have been released (finger no longer on key, but note amp envelope still in release) are checked first, and the nearest one in terms of pitch is used. If all of the voices in use are still being held, then the nearest one of those is used.

Here’s an example (a single track) of how this can sound with three-voice polyphony.

Presets

Synth settings can be saved in a preset file, which has the .jsynth file extension. You can open a preset in three ways:

  1. With C-o (standard Open file)
  2. By opening the synth with S-s, navigating to the Presets tab, and selecting Open preset
  3. At start time, on the command line (./jackdaw path_to_preset_file)

When you open a new preset, it will override all of the current synth settings – but you can undo and redo this action, so nothing will be lost.

You can save the current preset by navigating to the Presets tab and selecting Save preset as...

QWERTY piano emulator

Jackdaw provides the QWERTY piano emulator as a way for you to play the synth or otherwise record MIDI without an external MIDI controller. You can activate it with the Activate QWERTY piano command, which is bound to S-q. Deactivate with the same (S-q) or with <esc>.

If you want to record MIDI data using the QWERTY piano, set the track input accordingly, and then hit r to record. You cannot stop recording with r like usual (it is too easy to do this accidentally), but escaping with S-q or <esc> does the job.

Piano roll

The piano roll view can be used to edit or create new MIDI clips.

To enter the view, use Edit clip at cursor / open piano roll, which is bound to C-S-e. If the cursor (the Jackdaw cursor, not mouse) is over a MIDI clip, that clip is opened in the piano roll view; otherwise, a new clip is created.

The piano roll controls are designed to be analogous or identical to timeline controls. Notes in the piano roll view are analogous to clips in the timeline view.

All of these are exactly the same as in the timeline view: j, k, l for rewind/pause/play, , and . to zoom, h and ; to move the view left and right, [ and ] to move the playhead (without playback), etc.

If there is a grid enabled (a click track is positioned somewhere above the current track), then all of the bars/beats navigation commands work the same as well: C-j and C-l to go to the previous/next beat, C-S-j and C-S-l to go the the previous/next subdivision, and A-S-j and A-S-l to move to the previous/next measure.

In timeline view, S-j and S-l move the cursor to the previous/next clip boundary; in piano roll view, these commands (Go to previous note, Go to next note) move the cursor to the previous/next note boundary.

Note insertion (manual)

(NOTE: It is usually much faster to insert notes with a MIDI device, including the built-in QWERTY piano emulator).

The “note selector” can be moved up and down with n and p (or d and f) just like the track selector.

Hit <ret> to insert a note at the current position. You will hear the note played back (at an arbitrary short duration) through the track’s synth.

Hit <spc> to insert a rest.

If you make a mistake, hit <del> (or the backspace key) to “undo” it.

The duration of the next note (or rest) to be inserted is adjusted with 1 and 2; velocity with c and v.

By default, the cursor (playhead) jumps the right edge of the inserted note. You can prevent this by enabling “chord mode” (S-h). Disabling chord mode then moves the cursor forward to the end of the chord (or the shortest note in the chord, if they have different durations).

“Tie mode” extends the last-inserted note instead of inserting a new one, provided that the playhead is still positioned at the of the last note, and the new insertion is on the same actual note (pitch) or notes (chord). So you can achieve, e.g., a dotted quarter by setting an eighth note duration, enabling tie mode, and hitting ret three times.

(The only time you would not want tie mode is enabled is if you want to restrike notes immediately upon release.)

Note insertion (with MIDI device)

When the track input is set to a connected MIDI device OR when the QWERTY piano emulator is active, notes can be inserted simply by striking the keys of the device. Velocity and pitch are determined by the note you play, not by the piano roll input controls. Chords are detected (keystrokes occur within ~60ms of one another) and inserted as such.

Duration is still set with 1 and 2, and rests are still inserted with <spc>. <del> (backspace) is the same.

“Tie mode” works exactly the same. (So does “Chord mode,” though I can think of no reason to use it here.)

“Do you think you’re better off alone?”

Grabbing and moving notes

Notes can be grabbed, moved, truncated, and extended exactly like clips. That means all of the edge grabbing behavior described above for clips applies here as well.

You can also grab notes with the mouse by Cmd- or Ctrl- clicking the screen and dragging a box around the notes:

Quantization

In the piano roll view, or timeline view with a MIDI clip under the cursor, use Quantize notes (clip at cursor) – A-q – to quantize the notes. You can set an Amount; an amount of 1.0 places the affected notes exactly on the gridlines (fully quantized), whereas an amount <1.0 will simply move them closer to those gridlines. This can serve as a quick and dirty way to clean up a performance without making it sound completely robotic. When Quantize note offs is unchecked, each note retains its original duration.

When notes have been quantized, their original positions will be shown by an empty grey box in the piano roll view.

You can adjust the quantization amount after the notes have been quantized with Adjust quantize amount, A-S-q. This will only apply to notes that have already been quantized.

WARNING: If you move a note or clip after it has been quantized, and then adjust the quantization amount without re-quantizing, information about the note or clip move will be lost. Adjusting the quantize amount always refers back to the position the notes were in when they were originally quantized.

Click track edits and object placement

Changing the tempo of click track segment now moves clips, notes, and automation keyframes for all tracks using that click track. You can also now change the tempo by holding Cmd- or Ctrl- and clicking and dragging the click track horizontally.

If you want to edit a click track without moving these objects, you can first move the click track to the bottom of the timeline, or temporarily insert another click track below the one you wish to edit, “blocking” it. I recognize this may not be ideal, and may refine the feature later.

MIDI controllers

You can use the physical controllers (knobs, sliders) on your MIDI controller to control synth parameters. With the synth tab view open, simply select a slider (<tab> to move the selection forward, S-<tab> to move back, or just click the slider), and then turn the knob on your keyboard. This will automatically bind that physical controller to that slider in Jackdaw.

If you want to un-bind the controller, you can do so by holding down the Alt or Option key and turning the physical knob again.

This is a brand new feature and has not been thoroughly tested.

MIDI files

Jackdaw can read MIDI files (.mid or .midi). This feature is filed under “extra” because, as far as I know, people don’t use MIDI files much anymore, and also because it’s quite bad. But I’ve tested it with a number of free MIDI files I found online and it mostly works.

You can open a MIDI file exactly like you would a .wav or .jdaw file (C-o, on the command line at start time, or drag-and-drop). If the number of tracks in the file exceeds what you have on your timeline, Jackdaw will ask if you want to add more tracks. The click track part of this is one of the things that works quite badly – sorry about that.

JLily (LilyPond)

LilyPond is a fantastic music engraving software and markup language. Jackdaw can parse a very limited (and slightly altered) subset of the language, called JLily, as a way to create new MIDI clips.

JLily uses relative mode by default, with middle C as the starting reference pitch.

This feature actually has a short video demo.

Supported syntax: 

         - note names
             e.g.        "c g g a g"
             
         - duration
             e.g.        "c4 g8 g a g"
             
         - dotted duration
             e.g.        "c4 g8. g16 a4 g"
             
         - accidentals
             e.g.        "c4 g8. g16 aes4 g"
             
         - rests
             e.g.        "c4 g8. g16 aes4 g r b c"
             
         - octave indicators
             e.g.        "c4 g8. g16 aes4 g r b c c,"
             
         - repeats
             e.g.        "\repeat 4 { c16, c' }"
                          (repeat ^ times)
                          
         - nested repeats
             e.g.        "\repeat 16 { \repeat 4 {c, c'} \repeat 4 {g, g'} }"
             
         - set velocity (JLILY ONLY, not standard lilypond)
             e.g.        "\velocity 100 c c e g \velocity 90 g e c"

Sound examples

I haven’t had time to sit down and really work on music, but I’ve been making little things as I go, testing new features.

All of the audible sounds in these examples were produced by Jackdaw’s synth, and edited exclusively in Jackdaw (except wav->mp3 conversion); there’s no imported or recorded audio. The MIDI data was also recorded in Jackdaw except where noted.

a short MIDI loop produced in my friend River’s Clavier 36, altered a bit in Jackdaw and “orchestrated” with some automation tricks

pretty_clavier.mp3

a fugue or fuguettita on the mister softee theme (Les Waas) played on a very early version of the synth

softee.mp3

The rest of the examples are “orchestrations” of free MIDI files found on bitmidi.com:

What’s Next

There are many, many things I would like to add to Jackdaw. I also think it’s important for me to formally release v1 this summer, and there’s no way I’ll get to all of it.

I’m considering a few things “essential”:

Mixing tools (buses, audio routing, mixer view)

The biggest barrier to success I see here is figuring out how to represent audio routing in the GUI in a way that won’t take months.2

Reverb

Probably for v1, because it’s also a fundamental mixing tool and I have all of the rudiments I need to do the implementation. I will have to be careful not to spend too much time on this, because I’m sure I could tune it and add parameters forever.

Read / write other file types (libavcodec)

Of course you should be able to open or export mp3s, flacs, ogg vorbis, etc. I will use libavcodec (from FFMPEG) for this, so I just need to figure out the best way to package and employ it.

Everything else – it pains me – may have to wait until after the v1 release. But if life allows, I absolutely intend to continue with these additions, and more.

A sampling instrument

Record or import a clip, load it to a range of MIDI notes, and play it back through your keyboard. The absolute simplest implementation of this might be pretty easy, but how long before I want to do things like identify transients, add velocity-dependent processing, etc. The supporting UX will take some time.

A better Pure Data integration

The vision:

  1. you can add a Pd effect to an effect chain in Jackdaw. This opens a blank Pure Data patch with an input object (which supplies the pre-processed signal from Jackdaw), and an output object (for returning the processed signal to Jackdaw).
  2. you can add a Pd instrument which opens a patch that is the same except that the input object provides MIDI data from Jackdaw instead of audio.

I have ideas for how to do this, but it’s very challenging.

CLAP support

The “Clever Audio Plug-In” purports to be a simpler alternative to VST. I intend to make Jackdaw a CLAP host eventually; I simply don’t have any sense of how difficult it will be, and how long it will take.

(I do have a sense that adequate VST support would be very difficult and take a long time, so it’s not happening anytime soon.)

Looping constructs

You can copy-paste clips, and you can loop playback over a particular section of the timeline, but Jackdaw needs a way to take a section of a track and repeat it N times. Relatedly, I need to figure out how to practically replicate and move ranges of automation keyframes – this is quite difficult given the way I wrote the automation feature.

Control signal routing

I would like it to be possible to create rules like: if the volume v of Track 1 changes, write v * 0.5 + 0.3 to the volume of Track 2. The Endpoint abstraction gets me most of the way there.

Native system file dialogues and/or improved filesystem navigation

E.g. when opening files. I have plenty of ideas for how I would like this to work, but it’s all a lot of work.

Manual serialization/deserialization -> SQLite

Serializing and deserializing Jackdaw project files (.jdaw) is a pain, especially since I’m always adding new things that need to be serialized. I am also, against reason, maintaining backward compatibility (mostly). Using SQLite for project files would simplify some, but not all, aspects of the problem, in addition to affording some fun hacking opportunities.

SDL2 -> PortAudio

I’m using SDL2’s audio API, which I quite like, but it cannot be used to do latency compensation.3 PortAudio seems like it would be better for this.

SDL2 -> SDL3

I’m not aware of an actual reason to this right now except for a feeling that I probably should.

UX

The foundational goal of Jackdaw, to the extent that there was one, was to write a piece of software that I can use to make music, that works the way I want it to. As the project got more serious, the target audience expanded, and the one goal naturally split into two, each of which is very ambitious on its own:

  1. Write a DAW
  2. Encourage users to adopt an unfamiliar computer interaction paradigm without alienating them

(By “unfamiliar computer interaction paradigm” I mean primarily using the computer keyboard in places where using the mouse, GUI buttons, toolbars, etc. would feel more familiar.)

Although goal 2 is an omnipresent guiding hand in all of the work I’ve done on this project, it also requires dedicated attention, and I’ve been pretty focused on goal 1 for a while. Among the things that I would like to do in service of goal 2: