Editing

MIDI regions & note editing

Draw a region, edit notes and use the song scale.

In this guide

Draw and edit MIDI notes in the clip editor. Select the image to view it full size.

Create and open

With Pointer (1), drag across empty MIDI-track timeline space. Release when the preview reaches the desired end. Existing regions remain normal move/trim targets; the drawing gesture stops at neighboring region boundaries. Pencil (4) is another way to draw a region.

Select the region and choose Clip, or double-click it, to open the piano roll. The vertical keyboard represents pitch. Horizontal position represents time. A note's width is its length.

Import one MIDI file

Import one .mid or .midi file at a time. Drop it onto a MIDI lane or empty arrangement space at the desired time. The import creates note regions there. On a MIDI instrument, it uses an empty lane or adds a sibling lane under that instrument. Existing regions stay intact. A drop over an audio lane or empty space creates a separate MIDI instrument with one track holding the notes.

Use Command+Z to undo the complete import, including a new instrument or an End-marker extension. A short import keeps a longer existing End marker. Imported notes follow the song tempo.

Stop recording and let pending recording saves finish before importing. Drop audio files separately from MIDI files. The session Clip area and take lanes do not accept MIDI-file drops; use the arrangement timeline instead.

For a file-picker alternative, right-click a MIDI track header and choose Import MIDI File... to open the picker. It imports at the project start; canceling it makes no changes. If the project or destination changes during preparation, the import stops without adding notes. Return to the intended project and try again. A file-read or format error needs attention; it is not an empty successful import.

Edit a phrase

Choose a grid such as 1/8 or 1/16 for the rhythm.
Double-click empty space to add a note. To draw notes, hold Shift: Shift-click adds a note, and Shift-drag before releasing sets its length; Escape cancels. The grid determines its start and initial length.
Drag a note to change its pitch or start time.
Drag a note edge to change its duration.
Select notes before using quantize, duplicate or other note commands.
Turn on Velocity in the editor toolbar when you want to edit note strength. It starts closed so the piano roll has more room.

The exact response to velocity depends on the instrument and patch. A low velocity is not necessarily the same as lowering the track fader.

Move notes to another clip

Select the notes and press Command+X to cut or Command+C to copy, or right-click them and choose Cut or Copy. This works while the song plays. Open the other clip and press Shift+Command+V, or choose Paste in Place from the right-click menu, to paste them at the same time in that clip, so they keep their timing. Command+V pastes them at the playhead instead. You can also click a MIDI track in the arrangement and paste there to make a new clip on it. Use this to split low and high notes into separate clips.

To give the notes a track of their own, right-click them and choose Cut to New Track or Copy to New Track. A new instrument track appears directly below, outside any group, with the notes at the same times. Cut removes them from the original clip; Copy leaves them there. Command+Z undoes either one.

Mute individual notes

Click a note, or Command-click several notes, then press 0 while the note editor has focus. Muted notes have Chance set to 0 and remain available to edit. Press 0 again to activate them. Command+Z undoes the change. In this editor, 0 acts on notes; it does not mute the arrangement track.

Find the parts

Press Detect Parts, or D while the note editor has focus, to mark the selected notes, or the whole clip, as melody, harmony or bass. The melody is the top line, chosen phrase by phrase; the bass is the lowest line that sits clearly below the chords; long chord tops stay harmony. Pressing Detect Parts again starts over and replaces every mark, including ones you made; Command+Z brings them back. Right-click notes to Mark as Melody, Mark as Harmony or Mark as Bass, or Clear Mark. Melody notes show in maroon, harmony in gold and bass in blue, and unmarked notes turn gray. Click Parts in the toolbar to show or hide the colors; marking notes or pressing Detect Parts turns them on. Marks are saved with the project.

Detect Parts runs away from the UI and can be canceled. It accepts at most 100,000 notes and stops after 30 seconds if it cannot finish. If you edit or close the clip before it finishes, the old result is discarded. The musical classification rules are unchanged in 2.1; check the parts by ear, especially where melody and chords overlap.

Separate Parts to Tracks and Copy Parts to Tracks put each marked part of the selection, or of the whole clip, on its own new track in the part's color, named after the instrument and the part, and grouped below the source track. Separate moves the notes; Copy keeps them and mutes the source only when every note in it now plays from a part track. Unmarked notes stay in the source, a part with no notes makes no track, and Command+Z undoes the whole action. Select Part → Melody, Harmony or Bass selects only that part's notes.

To check a part by ear, click its colored square next to Parts to mute or unmute it, or Option-click a square to hear only that part; Option-click it again to hear every part. Muted notes look faint, like notes muted with 0. While a part is muted, double-click a note, or select notes and press Enter, to move them into the part you can hear and unmute them. With two parts playing, each note goes to the one nearest its pitch. Part mute and solo preserve each note's own mute and Chance settings. Separate and Copy Parts to Tracks clear part mute on their destinations while preserving individual note settings. Copying only some parts leaves the source notes' state unchanged. Existing zero-chance notes remain as saved.

Zoom and shortcuts

Note rows grow to fill the editor's height, up to a comfortable maximum, so a folded clip with few pitches uses the whole space. A plain vertical wheel moves through pitches; horizontal or thumb-wheel input moves through time. Shift with horizontal input still pans horizontally. Hold Control and scroll vertically, or pinch, to make rows taller or shorter. Hold Shift and scroll vertically to zoom in time. The same independent pitch/time scrolling applies to the MPE note roll.

Selecting many notes no longer scans the entire clip once per selected note. Note values, undo and musical updates remain immediate.

While the note editor has focus, single keys work the toolbar: = Fit, F Fold, S Scale, Q Quantize the selected notes, V Velocity lanes, E Envelopes, and W Step Recording. Hover a toolbar button to see its key. In the arrangement, Q quantizes the selected audio clips.

Root and scale

The header has separate Song root and Song scale buttons for direct choices. Song key and style… opens the optional combined dialog; Apply commits that dialog, and Cancel or Escape leaves the song unchanged. MIDI regions follow the song unless they have their own scale. Highlight Scale gives scale pitches a clear colored row and key marker. Root notes use stronger shading and a full-width colored key, so you can locate each octave in normal, Fold and Scale views. The shading adapts to the selected theme, including light themes and Soundstream. Turning Highlight Scale off restores neutral rows without changing notes. Scale exposes the scale pitches across the MIDI range, with vertical scrolling. Existing out-of-scale notes remain accessible. Fold shows only pitches already used by notes; on an empty clip it falls back to the available scale or chromatic range. Turn Fold off to draw on unused pitches. Both Notes and Steps use these filters. Choose a clip-specific root or scale to override the song; choose Song in the clip's scale selector to follow it again. Choosing a scale guides pitch work; existing recorded audio is not automatically retuned.

In version 1.3.0, Fold refreshes the pitch rows when you select another clip, add or remove a used pitch, or transpose notes. Fold and Scale together retain used out-of-scale pitches. These view changes do not change the notes.

Steps

Choose Steps for a pattern grid. Click or drag cells to draw steps. Drag an existing step up or down to change the selected Velocity, Chance or Repeat value. Shift-drag, or drag the right edge, to change length. Escape cancels the gesture. Length sets the number of steps; Step sets the time division.

All MIDI pitches are available by scrolling when Fold and Scale are off. With Scale enabled, every pitch in the scale is available across octaves. Click a piano-key row header to select it, then press 0 to mute or activate the notes on that row. The row uses the same Chance-based mute behavior as individual notes. There are no separate per-row mute or solo buttons, and no Add Row step is needed.

Clip and note settings

The left inspector separates Clip timing from selected Note values. Loop start and Loop length describe the repeating part; Start and End place the region on the arrangement. Set uses the current transport position for the corresponding boundary. Signature displays the arrangement meter at the clip. Change meter in the header or Signature lane.

Select a note to edit its labeled Position, Length, Pitch, Velocity, Fine tune, Chance, Repeats and Repeat curve. Drag numeric values vertically or click to type. A disabled field needs a suitable note selection. Advanced Pitch & Time, Transform and Generate sections start collapsed; expand a section when needed. Their operations use selected notes, or all notes when their explanation says so. Use Command+Z to undo an edit.

Several notes and controllers

Drag across empty space to draw a selection rectangle. Command-click or Command-drag adds notes to the selection or takes them out. To select every note in a range of pitches, hold Shift and click or drag on the piano keys, for example from D3 down to C1; hold Command as well to add to the current selection. The editor's selection commands also work on multiple notes. Inspect the value lanes when editing MIDI expression or other supported controller data. MIDI channels and hardware mappings should agree with the receiving instrument.

Edit per-note expression

Choose MPE in the Clip editor, select a note, then choose its expression lane. Pan or zoom to the passage you want to edit. In version 1.3.0, long curves with many expression points draw the visible portion while preserving the complete saved curve, its boundary values and its step changes. This does not thin or delete expression points.

Switch between Notes, Envelopes and MPE to inspect the same clip. A view change does not change the recorded data. Use Command+Z for a completed expression edit. If the whole studio stops responding, that is not expected behavior; use Troubleshooting rather than deleting recorded notes.

Piano versus Clip

The Piano view in the bottom bar, beside Analysis, is a playback visualization. Clip is the note editor. Notes is a written project notepad. MIDI Keyboard is the playable software keyboard in the header. These four views have different jobs.

Clip Steps versus Step Sequencer

Clip → Steps edits the notes of the selected region. The separate Step Sequencer window edits pattern clips or older device-held steps. Available row and graph controls depend on that target; Song/Pattern playback requires a pattern track. Use Step Sequencer for that workflow; its row mute/solo controls are different from the Clip Steps pitch-row shortcut.

Dawnamite user guide for macOS. For changes between versions, see update history.