Edit notes in the Piano Roll Editor

You need to select notes before you can edit them. You can select notes by clicking, Shift-clicking, dragging to make a marquee selection, and using the keyboard at the left edge of the Piano Roll Editor.

The Piano Roll Editor header shows the number of selected notes and the region name. When multiple overlapping notes are selected, the Piano Roll Editor header shows the chord name. When no notes are selected, the header shows the name of the most recently selected MIDI region, or the number of regions selected.

Select notes

Select all notes of the same pitch

Move notes

Copy notes

Do one of the following:

Change the pitch of notes

Do one of the following:

Resize a note

Resize multiple notes

Edit the velocity of notes

Each note in the Piano Roll Editor displays a horizontal line. The length of the line relative to the overall length of the note shows the note’s velocity. Velocity indicates how hard the key was struck when the note was played, which usually corresponds to the note’s loudness (the MIDI velocity range is from 0–127, with 127 being the loudest). Velocity can also control other synthesizer parameters, such as filter resonance or cutoff, alone or in conjunction with volume level.

The note velocity updates in the inspector as you drag. The line inside the note also updates to show the velocity change.

When you edit the velocity of multiple notes, the relative differences in their velocity values are retained. If the velocity value of any of the selected notes reaches the minimum or maximum value (0 or 127), none of the notes can be adjusted further.

You can override this behavior by holding down Option while dragging. This technique allows you to continue altering the velocity values until the selected note reaches the minimum or maximum value. By overriding, you alter the velocity relationship of this note to the other notes.

Delete notes in the Piano Roll Editor