Play freely, and keep what you just played.

Stev is a capture-first MIDI sequencer. It is always listening: you never press record before you play. When something is worth keeping, one key turns it into a clip, framed and in time, whether the transport was running or not. Then you loop it, arrange it across tracks, and play the next part on top.

Build from source View on GitHub

Version 0.5.0 · free and open source · macOS. No prebuilt app yet: running Stev means building it with Rust.

Stev: six tracks of captured clips in the arranger, with the clip panel open on a mallet part

How it goes

  1. Play

    Noodle until something sounds right. Nothing needs to be armed.

  2. \ Keep it

    Stev finds the phrase you just played and makes it a looping clip. [ and ] move its edges if it came out too long or short.

  3. Enter Set the tempo

    The tempo fits that first clip, so it is a whole number of bars. There is no tempo to set up front: your first phrase is the tempo.

  4. Space Play over it

    Play the next part over the loop, on the same track or another, and keep that too.

  5. ⌘Z Change your mind

    Anything can be undone, a capture included.

Capture

Stev keeps everything you play on the MIDI input, and \ keeps your latest take. It works the same in the arranger and in the clip view. Where the take goes depends on what is under the cursor:

Empty space A clip
Stopped The phrase you just played becomes a new clip at the cursor. The phrase goes into that clip, at the cursor.
Playing The last loop pass becomes a new clip at the cursor. The last loop pass goes into that clip.

So you can noodle with the transport stopped and keep the phrase you liked, or play over a running loop and keep the pass that worked, and either way start a new clip or add to one you already have. The metronome clicks with the transport stopped too, so you can play to a pulse before anything runs.

Getting sound

Stev makes no sound of its own apart from the metronome. Each track sends its notes to one of two places:

An instrument plugin

CLAP and VST® 3 instruments, one per track, dragged from the browser onto a track. macOS only.

VST Compatible

MIDI Out

To a DAW or a hardware synth, each track on its own channel. A virtual port lets other apps on the same Mac listen without any hardware.

Stev arranges; a DAW mixes. There are no effects or mixer by design: export the tracks as audio stems and mix them elsewhere.

What it is, and isn't

Stev is an opinionated app built around one workflow, not a general-purpose DAW. It is developed and tested on macOS. Linux and Windows builds compile and pass the tests, but are untested and have no plugin host.

Not planned:

The full list and what may come next are in the roadmap.