Editing MIDI Tracks

The Edit button on the righthand side of the track shows/hides the track's editor. The editor can show the MIDI notes in four different ways: Wave (looks like an audio signal), Pianoroll, Notation and Drum. The small buttons on the right (W, P, N and D) can be used to switch between these editors. The default editor is Pianoroll, this can be changed in the Preferences window.

All four editors can edit MIDI as if it were audio. The Pianoroll, Notation and Drum editors can edit the notes themselves as well. This section deals with editing MIDI as if it were audio, the next sections cover editing notes and controllers. part of it can be selected using the mouse (press left button and drag).

MIDI track with Wave editor

At the bottom of the editor the common track editor buttons appear (see Common track editor buttons). Editing actions, like paste, delete or undo, affect both notes and controllers.

MIDI edits are not written to disk immediately. When a track is closed (this also happens when the song is closed) , a window appears asking whether to save the changes or not. If you want to save the changes explicitly you can use the File Options Menu's Save option.

MIDI tracks have built-in scrubbing features similar to audio tracks.

MIDI Edit Control

The MIDI Edit Control, invoked by clicking the editor's Edit button, can be used to manipulate the selected part in various ways.

MIDI Edit Control window

MIDI Edit Controls have the following features:

• Volume fader: Changes the volume of the selected part.
• Fade: Performs a fade in or fade out on the selected part.
• Dynamics: Compress (0..100%) or expand (100..400%) the dynamic range of the notes.
• Reverse: Reverses the select part.
• Transpose: Transpose all notes in the selected part by a number of semitones.
• Legato: Note durations are adjusted to make note-to-note transitions smoother. Can be used to make 'smooth' instruments like violins sound more natural.
• Quantize: Notes that are not exactly on a 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32 note position (use the Note button) are moved towards the exact positions. Quantizing to triplets (1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32) is possible as well. The amount of correction can be from 5% up to 100% ('hard quantizing').
  Three types of quantization are available:
  • Full: quantize both note-on and note-off.
  • Keep Note-Off: quantize note-on, don't touch note-off. This is the default type.
  • Keep Duration: quantize note-on, move note-off to keep duration the same.
• Humanize: Shifts note events a (small) random amount of time, and changes the note volumes slightly.