Your first session

One continuous session: a guitar part through the NAM Rack, a MIDI drum part, two edits, a quick mix, and a rendered file. It assumes you have finished Getting started and can hear playback. Shortcuts are the OpenStudio default keyboard profile; Ctrl means Cmd on macOS.

Set the tempo and save

1. Click the BPM field in the transport bar and type a tempo, or tap T in time with the song. Set the Time Signature beside it if the song is not in 4/4.
2. The metronome icon enables the click during playback/recording. The gear opens Metronome Settings for sounds, accents and volume. In the unreleased October 5 working tree after app commit 52cbd7c, Play click only / Stop click only also has Ctrl+Shift+Space (macOS: Cmd+Shift+Space) in all 19 built-in keyboard profiles, with the dialog open or closed. It changes standalone practice without changing transport or Enable. Expand Click sounds for four built-ins or a prepared custom sample; select Electronic (original) to restore the original tone. Practice timer offers Countdown or Stopwatch.
3. Press Ctrl+S and choose a folder. Recorded WAV files go into OpenStudio/Audio inside your Documents folder and are referenced by the project; saving does not copy them beside the .osproj. Keep those files with your backups.

Record guitar through the NAM Rack

The NAM Rack is the built-in guitar and bass workspace: Neural Amp Modeler A1/A2 captures, a pedalboard, a cabinet IR stage, and post effects, sitting in the track's FX chain so you hear the tone while you play.

1. Press Ctrl+T for an audio track. Pick the guitar input in the track header and set it to Mono.
2. Click FX on the track header, add OpenStudio NAM Rack, select the live instrument input inside the rack, and choose the Guitar or Bass profile.
3. Load a local .nam file, or connect TONE3000 and open a tone pack. In a multi-capture pack, click View Captures, pick the exact child, Audition it, then Use.
4. Check the topology badge. RAW / AMP ONLY needs a cabinet IR in the Cab stage; CAB EMBEDDED is a full rig and bypasses it.
5. Set the input trim, then open the tuner and tune. It listens to the dry input and adds no latency.
6. Click the record-arm circle and turn on Monitor. Aim for input peaks around −12 to −6 dB.
7. Press R, play, and press Record again or Space to finish. Ctrl+R and numpad * also record; 1 or Home returns to absolute project start. The take lands as a clip at the playhead.

If live monitoring crackles, check the actual driver buffer in Settings and increase it before judging the guitar tone. Two armed NAM Racks share the same audio-callback deadline. In the unreleased October 18 development changes, settings report a rejected request or a driver opening at a different sample rate or buffer size, then attempt to restore the previous configuration. The selected value alone does not prove what the driver accepted. Changing only rate or buffer preserves an explicitly disabled input or output. If the ASIO control panel cannot restart the device, Settings shows the actual closed state and an error; reselect the same driver and Apply to try recovery. The driver label also works for input-only operation. A larger buffer adds monitoring latency and still needs testing with your exact interface and Rack settings.

For takes, set a loop range, enable loop, and record several passes in one recording session. Overdub keeps existing clips when you record over them; it does not fold separate recording sessions into one take stack. Comping is in Recording & editing, the rack in NAM Rack setup.

Add a MIDI drum part

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+I for an instrument track. The Plugin Browser opens; pick a VST3 drum instrument (click Scan first if the list is empty).
2. To play it in: choose your controller in the track header's MIDI input dropdown, arm, enable monitoring, press R, and play. No controller? Alt+B (macOS: Ctrl+B) opens the on-screen keyboard.
3. To draw it: select the instrument track, choose Insert → Empty MIDI Clip, then double-click the clip to open the Piano Roll, choose the Draw tool, and click in the grid. Row is pitch, column is time; drag to set length.
4. For a step-entered pattern, enable Step Input in the Piano Roll toolbar, pick a step size, and press C through B to insert notes.
5. Tighten timing with MIDI → Quantize Notes…; Q reapplies the same settings later. Drag bars in the velocity lane to set how hard each hit plays.

Tidy the take

Three edits cover most first sessions. All are non-destructive and undoable with Ctrl+Z; Ctrl+Alt+Z (macOS: Cmd+Ctrl+Z) opens the undo history.

1. Split. Select the clip, put the playhead where the mistake starts, press S; repeat at the end and press Delete on the middle piece. B switches to the Split tool.
2. Trim. Hover a clip edge until the resize cursor appears and drag inward to hide the count-in, or outward to reveal audio you trimmed away.
3. Fade. Hover the top-left or top-right corner and drag the handle inward. Auto-Crossfade in the main toolbar crossfades overlapping clips on one track automatically.

A quick mix with a bus and a snapshot

1. Press Ctrl+M for the mixer. Each strip has a fader (−60 to +12 dB), pan, a peak meter, and S, M, R buttons; double-click a fader for 0 dB.
2. Start with every fader at unity and pull down whatever is loudest first, watching the master meter on the left.
3. Select the guitar and drum tracks and choose Insert → Create Bus from Selected Tracks. OpenStudio makes a bus with a send from each track.
4. Click the bus's FX button and add OpenStudio Reverb. In each strip's sends area, set the level and pick pre- or post-fader.
5. Click Save in the Mixer Snapshots toolbar and name it. Try another balance, save that too, and click either name to switch.

Sends, the routing matrix, and automation are in Mixing & routing.

Render the song

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+R (macOS: Cmd+Ctrl+R) or open File → Render….
2. Set Source to Master mix and Bounds to Entire project.
3. Choose a folder and a file name; $project and $date are replaced at render time.
4. Pick WAV and a bit depth. Add a Tail in milliseconds if the reverb rings past the last clip.
5. Turn on Add to project after render if you want the bounce back on the timeline, then render. Add to Queue parks the job in View → Render Queue instead.

Where next

• Audio setup if monitoring felt late or you heard crackle.
• Plugins & scanning if an instrument did not show up in the browser.
• Keyboard shortcuts to switch to a profile that matches the DAW you came from.
• Troubleshooting for anything that did not behave as described here.