The .noisesong file and the noise:// link

A song leaves NØISE in one of two machine-readable forms: a .noisesong file (JSON) or a noise:// link (the same JSON, encoded into a URL). Neither contains audio. Both carry exactly one song.

The .noisesong file

EXPORT — in the SONGS plate and in the editor — writes a UTF-8 JSON document. The file type is registered by the app as nl.weap.noise.song ("NØISE Song", conforms to public.json, extension .noisesong), so double-clicking a file opens it in NØISE.

Envelope

{
  "version": 3,
  "song": { … }
}

Keys are written sorted and pretty-printed. Dates are ISO-8601 in UTC without fractional seconds (2026-05-01T12:00:00Z) — the app rejects fractional seconds.

The song object

{
  "id": "6F1A0E9C-3D4E-4B11-9A0B-1C2D3E4F5A6B",
  "name": "Amber Skyline",
  "author": "NØISE",
  "songDescription": "Demo song for the website",
  "style": "rock",
  "kit": "rock.classic",
  "drums": { "feel": "straight", "preset": { "name": "LAID BACK", "energy": 0.45, "swing": 0.2, "humanize": 0.25, "live": 0.35 } },
  "jam": { "intensity": 0.5, "colorLayer": false, "rhythmGuitar": true },
  "tempoHint": 112,
  "grooveSeed": 4422912175377245,
  "schemaVersion": 3,
  "createdAt": "2026-05-01T12:00:00Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-01T12:00:00Z",
  "chart": { … }
}

feel, drumStyle, drumEnergy, drumHumanize, jamIntensity, colorLayer and rhythmGuitar no longer exist at song level: they live inside drums and jam. A song from a newer app never fails on an extra key; unknown keys are kept on a round trip.

The lanes

The same two blocks sit on the song (what every section starts from) and on a section (what it says itself). Every field is optional and means "not set here" — see the resolution rule.

drums — what a section says to the kit:

jam — the band's flags:

The resolution rule

Every lane field resolves in one order, per field:

SECTION → THE SECTION BEFORE IT → SONG

• A section that sets a field decides it. A section that sets fill.in and nothing else decides the cymbal and follows for everything else.
• A section that leaves a field open plays what the section before it played — say HALF TIME once and it carries on until something says otherwise. In the editor that reads FOLLOW PREV.
• The first section has nothing before it, so it takes the song's lanes (FOLLOW SONG).
• The style, the kit and the genre are the song's on every section. Nothing a section can say.
• The preset name follows only when every knob does. A section that moved one knob under a named preset reads CUSTOM: the name is a label for exactly those four values. A section that names a preset and sets no knob carries the name AND the knobs of the section before it — the editor always writes a name with its values.
• The listener is not in the list. A field the song leaves open is completed with a fixed default, part of the format, so the same document plays the same band everywhere:

A section's swing and live land on the app's clock (GRID) while the song plays and are never saved as the player's own; the player's come back when the song is put down.

The chart object

{
  "writtenKey": { "tonic": 9, "mode": "minor" },
  "endBehavior": "end",
  "sections": [
    {
      "id": "…",
      "name": "INTRO",
      "repeats": 2,
      "energy": "sparse",
      "color": "cyan",
      "drums": { "feel": "straight", "fill": { "in": "none" } },
      "items": [
        { "ref": { "degree": { "_0": { "degree": 1, "alteration": 0, "quality": { "minor": {} }, "alterations": [], "secondaryOf": false } } },
          "duration": { "bars": 2, "ticks": 0 }, "rawText": "Am" },
        { "ref": { "absolute": { "_0": { "root": { "letter": "F", "accidental": 0 }, "type": { "major": {} }, "alterations": [] } } },
          "duration": { "bars": 1, "ticks": 0 }, "rawText": "F" }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Chord types are the 24 names of the app's ChordType: major minor diminished augmented sus2 sus4 major7 minor7 dominant7 diminished7 halfDiminished7 minorMajor7 augmented7 add9 major9 minor9 dominant9 major11 minor11 dominant11 major13 minor13 dominant13 power. In the file such a name is the key of an empty object, { "minor7": {} }, under type as well as under quality.

What the app accepts on import

importSongs tries three shapes in order and takes the first that decodes:

1. a .noisesong document { "version": …, "song": { … } },
2. a bare song object,
3. a whole library export { "version": …, "songs": [ … ] } — every song that this build can read is imported; unreadable ones are skipped, never the whole file.

In every shape a song with schemaVersion below 3 is skipped: the app logs why, and nothing is converted.

The noise:// link

The website's Open in NØISE button, and the Copy link button beside it, produce this link. The app makes no links itself; it only reads them.

noise://song?d=<payload>

• scheme noise, host song, one query parameter d;
• <payload> is the .noisesong document encoded compactly (no whitespace, sorted keys, version: 3, schemaVersion: 3) as base64url (RFC 4648 §5, - and _ instead of + and /, no = padding).

When the app opens such a link it decodes the payload with the same rules as a file. It is tolerant: a payload that arrives padded or percent-encoded still decodes. Because the JSON is not compressed, a link is roughly 1.4 × the size of the compact JSON — a four-section song is a few kilobytes. Links longer than what your chat client accepts should be shared as a file instead.

Opening a link never adds anything silently: the app asks first. See Import.

Where your library lives

All songs are stored in one file, inside the app's container:

~/Library/Containers/com.noise-app.macos/Data/Library/Application Support/NØISE/jam-songs.json

It is written atomically; the previous version is kept as jam-songs.json.bak on every successful save, and a corrupt main file is silently restored from the backup (the corrupt copy is kept as jam-songs.json.corrupt). The library holds at most 100 songs; beyond that the least recently updated songs are dropped on save. A library written before schema 3 is set aside as jam-songs.v2.json on the first launch of 0.81 and the library starts empty — the songs are not converted, they are written again in the editor.