Core Concepts

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Interface Layout

Kern’s interface has three main areas: the Sidebar, the Timeline, and the Inspector.

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Sidebar

The sidebar on the left provides tabbed access to different panels: Toggle the sidebar with ⌘1 or via the toolbar button.

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Timeline

The timeline is the central workspace. It shows all tracks stacked vertically with a beat/bar ruler at the top. This is where you arrange, edit, and record clips. Everything happens directly in the timeline — there is no separate editing window. When you need to work on a single clip in detail, you use Focus Mode instead of switching to a different view. The timeline is GPU-rendered via Metal for smooth scrolling and zooming at 60fps, even with many tracks and clips.

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Inspector

The inspector panel on the right shows details for the currently selected track or clip. It adapts to what you have selected:

• Track selected — shows track name, color, volume, pan, effects chain, routing
• Clip selected — shows clip properties like gain, fade, timestretch settings
• Nothing selected — shows project overview

Toggle the inspector with ⌘3 or via the toolbar button.

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Transport Bar

A floating transport bar at the bottom provides playback controls: play, stop, record, loop toggle, and the current playhead position. The tempo and time signature are also accessible here.

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Track Types

Kern has five track types. You can add tracks via the Command Palette (⌘K → “Add Track”) or by right-clicking the track list.

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Sample Track

For playing audio files. Drag audio files from the Browser or Finder onto a Sample track to create clips. Sample tracks have no instrument — they play audio directly.

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Instrument Track

For virtual instruments (Audio Units). An Instrument track hosts a plugin and receives MIDI input. You can play the instrument live with Musical Typing or record MIDI clips.

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Group Track

For organizing tracks. Drag tracks into a group to nest them. Muting or soloing a group affects all children. Groups are useful for managing sections like “Drums”, “Synths”, or “Vocals”.

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Bus Track

For parallel processing and send effects. Route audio from other tracks into a bus to apply shared effects (reverb, delay) or to submix a group of tracks before the master.

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Master Track

The final output. All audio flows through the master track before it reaches your speakers. Use it for master processing like limiting or EQ.

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Focus Mode

In most DAWs, editing a clip means switching to a separate editor window — a sample editor for audio, a piano roll for MIDI. Kern does it differently: editing happens directly in the timeline.

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How It Works

Double-click a clip (or press ⌥↓) to enter Focus Mode. The selected clip expands to fill the view, zooming in for detailed editing. The rest of the timeline stays visible but fades into the background. What changes in Focus Mode:

• The focused track expands to a larger height for precise editing
• The zoom level increases so you can see individual waveform details or MIDI notes
• A Focus Mode bar appears with clip-specific controls (gain, AI tools)
• For audio clips: transient markers become visible and you can play individual slices from the keyboard
• For MIDI clips: the piano roll grid appears inline, letting you draw and edit notes directly

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Entering and Exiting

When you exit, the timeline returns to exactly where you were before — zoom level, scroll position, and track heights are all restored.

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Why Inline Editing?

Keeping editing inside the timeline has advantages:

• No context switching — you always see your clip in the context of the full arrangement
• Faster iteration — enter focus mode, make a change, exit, and hear it in context immediately
• Spatial consistency — the beat/bar ruler stays aligned, so timing references are always visible

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Clips

Clips are the building blocks of your arrangement. They live on tracks and represent a segment of audio or MIDI data.

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Audio Clips

Audio clips reference an audio file and define a region to play. You can:

• Move clips by dragging them along the timeline or between tracks
• Trim clips by dragging their edges
• Fade in/out by dragging the fade handles at the top corners
• Timestretch clips by holding ⌘ and dragging the lower right edge
• Split clips at the cursor with ⌘E

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MIDI Clips

MIDI clips contain note data. In Focus Mode, a piano roll grid appears where you can:

• Draw notes by clicking in the grid
• Move notes by dragging
• Resize notes by dragging their right edge
• Delete notes by selecting and pressing Delete

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Creating Clips

• Drag audio from the Browser or Finder onto a Sample track
• Record audio or MIDI by arming a track and pressing Record
• Draw an empty clip by holding ⌘ and dragging on the timeline

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Beat-Based Positioning

Clips in Kern are positioned in beats, not in seconds. This means that if you change the tempo, clips stay at the same bar and beat — they don’t shift in the arrangement. Audio clip durations are stored in seconds (since the audio file length doesn’t change), but their position on the timeline is always beat-based. This is the same approach used by professional DAWs.

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Next Steps