How Do I use Piano roll?

[Mad4it]

Sometimes it makes me skip a beat when I dont want to and it is very annoying.

[Chaps]

Skip a beat? Not sure what that means regarding the Piano Roll.  Maybe something to do with your snap settings? Do you mean you can't enter a note exactly where you want it?

[fitzj]

Why are all Piano Roll views always showing vertical in all DAWS and why not horizontal as if you were playing keyboards?

[msmcleod]

17 hours ago, fitzj said:

Why are all Piano Roll views always showing vertical in all DAWS and why not horizontal as if you were playing keyboards?

Interesting... I guess at one point everyone decided that it was easier to keep time in the x-axis.

It's not always been that way though, back in the old Amiga tracker days, tracks were on the X axis and time was on the Y axis:

 

[bitflipper]

I spend a lot of time with my head cocked like a curious German Shepherd, visualizing the notes as if I was looking at a keyboard. Still, the standard orientation is much less confusing to users.

Think of it this way: the vast majority of graphs show time in the x-axis and amplitude in the y-axis. Imagine how confusing it would be the other way around, e.g. looking at interest rates plotted over time, but with time as the vertical axis.

 

[John Vere]

There are a many tutorials and help files regarding the Piano roll. It is always a wise move to perhaps do a little reading and watching in your spare time. It's a very complicated workspace so it is advised first time users do a little learning on their own before complaining that it doesn't work.  

[slartabartfast]

On 6/19/2020 at 3:02 PM, fitzj said:

Why are all Piano Roll views always showing vertical in all DAWS and why not horizontal as if you were playing keyboards?

When you commit to having the "note" appear aligned with the location of the cartoon keys you are going to have some constraints. I can certainly get used to viewing the vertical alignment of (almost always) less than 88 keys in a piano roll GUI, than I could in following the vertical scrolling of all of the data points along a timeline. That horizontal arrangement of the data points also echoes the standard musical notation that puts higher notes "higher" on the staff. The fact that time moves from the viewer's left to right is also arbitrary, but fits with the decades of left to right following of text ingrained in readers of Western languages and music notation. When you do not have to incorporate a moving display of the notes into the picture you are free to give the user the illusion that he is sitting in front of a keyboard that is (also arbitrarily) constructed with lower notes to his left as is typically done with the keyboards displayed in the GUI's of synths etc. 

[Kalle Rantaaho]

What I've always wanted to have is a VST or whatever, from which you could drag and drop pre-made chords to the piano roll.  Different versions for piano, guitar and maybe other instruments.  Maybe there is one?

[John Vere]

I used Dr T sequencer and an event list style editor for almost 20 years. My Atari died in 2004 and I just happened to have a copy of Guitar Studio that came for free with my Roland keyboard. I was disappointed that the event list was not the focus of editing with Cakewalk and forced to use the piano roll. I'm still learning. It's latest incarnation is the best yet and I could never go back to an event list. 

For first time users I recommend you bone up on the 2 main things before you get down to editing.

First the smart tool. Go to the help files and read about the options and especially what happens when you hold the tool over different parts of the note blob. 

Second is the Workspace. Take the time to click on every option and drop down etc. There's a lot. You'll be surprised at what you'll find and possibly that feature you are looking for is right there under your nose. 

 

I love Kalle's idea. A little pop up window with drag and drop chords would be a huge time saver. 

I do believe Strum session can generate chords but I've never figured that out. I think you have to record them via midi out in real time.  

[57Gregy]

11 hours ago, Kalle Rantaaho said:

What I've always wanted to have is a VST or whatever, from which you could drag and drop pre-made chords to the piano roll.  Different versions for piano, guitar and maybe other instruments.  Maybe there is one?

Hey, Kalle, here are a few guitar chords in a CWP you might be able to do that with. I think you can chop them up and save them to your samples folder and drag them into a project. Major, minor seventh and minor seventh.

 

Guitar Chords.cwp

[GreenLight]

11 hours ago, Kalle Rantaaho said:

What I've always wanted to have is a VST or whatever, from which you could drag and drop pre-made chords to the piano roll.  Different versions for piano, guitar and maybe other instruments.  Maybe there is one?

There are numerous chord assistance VST plugins nowadays that basically do just that: they assist you in creating a chord sequence within the plugin, that you can easily drag and drop into your DAW.

Check out Plugin Boutique Scaler, for example. Here's the Sound On Sound review.

[John Vere]

Ya I realize there are many ways to create chords but what Kalle is saying and like me, is to be able to do this in Piano roll view. I often have to flesh out simple 2 or 3 note chords I have played. I'm not a keyboard player but I can play real basic chords. But then I have to manually edit note by note to make those chords more interesting. I need a really smart mouse tool! 

Edited June 23, 2020 by John Vere

[57Gregy]

On 6/22/2020 at 5:40 AM, Kalle Rantaaho said:

What I've always wanted to have is a VST or whatever, from which you could drag and drop pre-made chords to the piano roll.  Different versions for piano, guitar and maybe other instruments.  Maybe there is one?

Is there a way to drag and drop anything into the PRV? 
And Cactus, I know you've been around a long time, but as a guitar player (mostly) I've found it easiest to  draw guitar chords in the Staff view on the fretboard. Almost like I'm playing the thing.

[John Vere]

I don't use midi guitar parts unless it was something that was part of a downloaded file. My own creations I play real guitar so it's keyboard chords I'm referring too here. 

I admit to have never even opened the staff view in Cakewalk. I used to read music and occasionally have to follow along looking over a piano players shoulder, but I guess the kind of music I normally play is not presented in that format. But that's a great idea I'll have to mess with it just for fun. 

 

[scook]

There are CAL scripts included for a few chords. The scripts are in plain text and the chords scripts are pretty easy to read. Creating new chord scripts is not too bad. Although using CAL is a little clunky.

Chordz is a free tool to map cords onto single notes.