A way to hold notes down for a set amount of time

[CreeperPookie]

Describe the enhancement you'd like
Hello! Something that I've always wanted in Note Block Studio is a way to hold notes down. As of right now, the only way I found to do it is to set the tickrate really high and put notes really close together, but I would like a more consistent way to achieve this.
However, I do understand that this type of thing would be nearly impossible to export into Minecraft (at least as a schematic). But when exporting as MP3 / staying as a NBS file, this would be really helpful.

[Bentroen]

Hello! Thank you for your suggestion.

Although extended notes are one of our most frequent requests, I can surely say it's not coming to NBS, at least in the near future. There's no feasible way of implementing it without fundamentally changing the whole structure of note block songs. It would require a new interface, playback system, a new file format, and a lot of complicated logic to "fill in" the remaining space in a held note. Besides, Minecraft plugins would have to be rewritten from the ground up to support playing these sounds.

There's also an educational factor: Note Block Studio, as it stands, is a great tool for people wanting to learn music, just because of its simplicity. Being able to extend notes could make usability far more complicated, making the learning curve of the program much steeper. The relationship of one cell = one note block is intuitive to grasp, even for beginner musicians.

I understand that this feature would make the workflow so much easier and open up a lot of possibilities for more advanced users. In the distant future, I have a few ideas in mind on how to make this come to life, but don't rely on it becoming a reality soon, as we still have a lot of stuff to work on first -- such as porting the current program to another engine.

For now, your best option (depending on how complex your song is) is to create it in an external DAW, import it as MIDI and then add effects using macros. This workflow is far from perfect, but we do plan to make it better one day! :)