The story of NuCorder

NuCorder is a remote music rehearsal application developed in France by musicians and engineers specializing in audio, telecommunications and internet technologies.

The project began with a simple question: how could musicians who already play together continue rehearsing when distance, travel or the lack of an available rehearsal space prevents them from meeting in person?

An idea born in a music studio

In 2007, Francis Caste and Jean-Noël Helal were both playing guitar in the same rock band.

Francis ran Studio Sainte-Marthe, a recording and rehearsal studio in Paris. Jean-Noël worked at BleuSolid on telecommunications systems for digital satellite television. Their combined experience led them to imagine a solution capable of transmitting sound between several musicians over the internet with a short enough delay for them to play together.

At the time, internet connections could not yet support this idea under suitable conditions. They nevertheless continued exploring it, convinced that the development of fibre broadband would eventually make the project technically possible.

From an idea to the first prototype

From 2012 onwards, the rollout of fibre broadband in France and across Europe opened up new possibilities.

Francis brought his understanding of bands, studios and the practical constraints musicians face. Jean-Noël worked on audio transmission and infrastructure. Studio Sainte-Marthe also gave them a place to gradually test the project in real musical situations.

In late 2016, after building an initial prototype, they met Stanislas Michalak, a software engineer and musician. His experience in software development, backend systems and internet technologies complemented their existing skills.

NuCorder then began to take shape around these three backgrounds: playing music and working in a studio, audio and telecommunications, and software development and infrastructure.

Opening the first version to the public

In March 2020, at the beginning of the lockdown, the team made an initial beta version of NuCorder available free of charge.

Opening the service to the public allowed the software to be tested by more musicians, across a wider range of equipment and connection conditions. It also confirmed a central reality of remote rehearsals: the resulting quality depends not only on the software, but also on distance, the route taken by data over the internet, the stability of each connection and the equipment being used.

In 2022, Francis, Jean-Noël and Stanislas founded Ugly Cat to continue developing NuCorder and prepare for its commercial launch.

A new generation of the real-time audio software

NuCorder has been around for about a decade now, and the project is still active and evolving. In 2025, we did a major overhaul of the web interface and we still try to refine it every week to ease the user experience.

Starting september 2026, after 2 years of development, we're finally launching in beta a major rewrite of our real-time audio software. We hope this new version will make it easier for you to work with your audio equipment, so feel free to give it a try!

The original goal remains unchanged, although the way we approach it has become more focused: helping an existing duo or small band prepare their setups, join a private session and play together in real time when meeting in person is not possible.

NuCorder is not intended to replace every rehearsal in a studio: it can also be used between studio sessions, when one band member is away, when the usual rehearsal space is unavailable or when the journey would be disproportionate to the time available for playing.

Our work is to make this experience as straightforward as possible while remaining transparent about the conditions required for it to work well. We hope that we'll succeed in making you playing with your band more often, and prove that the technology can be at our service to improve creativity, not to replace it.