Click and drag a single note to change its position in time or pitch, or draw a box around some notes to use commands such as copy, cut and paste, and drag them about as with a single note. The Arrow tool is your starting point: it lets you select notes and move them about. So, let's see what's in Studio One's Music Editor toolbox. Notes can be altered in pitch, time and length, and new ones added on-screen with the stroke of a mouse. The beauty of having this data on a computer is that it can be edited. It's a remarkably useful alternative to a written score, and can convey similar information plus more besides. As it plays, it looks like a paper roll from a player piano, hence 'piano roll'. This vertical axis isn't just labelled with note names: it shows a piano keyboard displayed on its side.

The basic premise is that any MIDI notes that you've recorded into a track can be displayed on a grid that represents time going from left to right, with pitch on the vertical axis. I'll highlight some of the tools and functions that make this an awesome place to compose and edit your music, and along the way we might hit upon something you haven't seen before.įirst, a quick explanation.

In Studio One, it goes under the name of the Music Editor. This month I'm going to take a look at the humble piano-roll editor, one of the longest-serving computer-based MIDI tools and perhaps the least celebrated. Studio One's Music Editor is more than just a piano roll. In the Music Editor, note velocity is represented by the vertical bars at the bottom of the piano roll.

Studio one pitch shift