Keyboard view

The Keyboard view turns the MIDI editor into a keyboard you can play. Type on your computer keyboard, press the keys with the mouse, or use your fingers on a touch screen to hear the track’s instrument and find a melody before you write it down. A connected MIDI keyboard lights the same keys as you play it.

When to use it

Try out a sound, look for a melody or a chord, or find which key a drum sound sits on. When you want to write or change notes, switch back to the piano roll or Beats.

Controls

Keyboard

Keyboard in the rail on the left of the MIDI editor shows the keyboard in place of the clip’s notes. It stays while you pick other clips in the Tracks shelf, and the editor returns to the clip’s own view when you close it or open a clip from the sequencer. The choice is not saved with the clip.

Without a clip

A track needs no clip to be played. The keyboard opens for an instrument track in three ways:

• Piano roll in the places bar, or the 2 key, with the track selected and no clip.
• The keyboard button beside the sound in the instrument’s own panel.
• Adding an instrument track, which opens straight onto its keyboard so you can pick a sound and hear it.

The header then shows the track’s name, and Piano roll and Beats wait until there are notes to edit. Record a take and it becomes the track’s first clip, opened right here. While the keyboard shows, selecting another instrument track moves it there, onto that track’s selected clip if it has one.

Playing

Press a key to play it, and slide along the keys to play each one you cross. Press low on a key to play loud and near its top to play soft. On a touch screen every finger plays its own note, so chords work. The keys always sound, whatever the note preview setting.

Typing

With Typing on in the rail, the computer keyboard plays notes while the Keyboard view is on screen. Every key you can reach carries a small cap with the character printed on your own keyboard, and a line above the keys shows the whole reach. In Chrome and Edge the caps match your keyboard layout from the start; in other browsers they learn it as you press keys.

Two rows is a piano on two rows of letters. The Z row plays one octave, with its black keys on the row above (S, D, G, H, J), and the Q row plays the octave above, with its black keys on the number row. That reaches from C3 to G5. One row puts the white keys on A to the end of the row and the black keys on W, E, T, Y, U, O and P, from middle C.

While Typing plays, the single-key shortcuts wait: the number keys for places and V, C, P and S in the sequencer. Space still plays and stops, Escape, Tab, Enter and Delete keep their jobs, and so does every shortcut with ⌘ or Ctrl. Typing also waits while you write in a text field or a dialog is open; the caps fade to show it. With Typing off the number keys still leave the places alone, so 2 never plays a note one moment and jumps to another place the next.

Velocity

How loud typed notes play, 100 to start. With One row, C and V step it down and up by 20.

‹ and ›

Move the keyboard an octave down or up, together with what the computer keyboard reaches. The ↓ and ↑ keys do the same, and with One row so do Z and X. The note beside the arrows is the lowest note you can type.

Sustain

Holds the sustain pedal down until you press it again, on instruments that use the pedal, such as the piano and the synths. While Typing plays, holding Shift works the pedal too, and a pedal on a MIDI keyboard works alongside both.

Arm and recording

Arm beside the sound arms this track for recording, the same switch as the round button on the track. Press Record in the transport and play: the keys, typing and a MIDI keyboard all go into the take. Space or Stop ends it. The take becomes a new clip where the recording started, and the editor opens it and stays on the keyboard, so you can play another take or switch to the piano roll to tidy the timing.

When another track is armed, the keys play that one, and the view says so. Press Arm here to move the arm to this track.

Strip

The strip above the keys shows the clip’s notes at a glance, with the playhead and the bar lines. While you record this track, it shows the take as it grows.

Step record

The footprints button in the editor’s header turns step recording on, in the piano roll and the Keyboard view. Each note you play goes in at the red cursor, one step after the last, however long you hold it. It is a quick way to capture a melody or an arpeggio without worrying about timing.

Chords work too. Hold several keys at once and let go: they go in together on the same step, and the cursor moves on once every key is up. Sketch a progression by playing one chord per step, with a longer Step such as 1/4 or a held chord and → to give each chord a whole bar.

The button’s menu holds Step, how far the cursor moves, from 1/4 to 1/32 with triplets; Length, how long each note lasts, either One step so notes join up or a fixed value such as 1/32 for short notes; and the Velocity of typed notes.

• → adds a rest. Hold notes and press → to make them a step longer.
• ← moves the cursor back without erasing. Backspace erases the step before the cursor and moves back to it.
• Click the ruler, or the strip above the keys, to put the cursor somewhere else.
• Esc turns step recording off. While the song plays, notes sound but are not written.

The notes go where the editor is: the clip it shows, or else the track’s clip under the playhead, or else a new clip on the bar under the playhead. Step recording carries on into the same clip until you stop, and the clip grows as you go. A looping clip keeps its length, so the cursor goes round to the start of its loop instead. In a clip that already has notes, the cursor starts at the playhead if the playhead is inside it, otherwise just after the last note, so you add to what is there.

Sound

Shows the name of the instrument’s sound. Press it to open the sound library and try other sounds while you play, then keep one or cancel. An expanded editor docks first, so the library has room beside it.

Tips

• On a drum kit, each sound’s name is written on its key and keys without a sound are dimmed. The keyboard opens on the kit’s sounds.
• With Typing on, the keyboard opens on the keys you can type. With it off, other instruments open around the clip’s notes, or around middle C when the clip is empty.
• When a track is armed for recording, the keys play that track, as a MIDI keyboard does.
• Many laptop keyboards cannot send three or more keys at once. If a typed chord drops a note, play it with the mouse, on a touch screen or from a MIDI keyboard.
• A drum kit opens with its lowest sound on Z, so a General MIDI kit has its kick on Z and its snare on X.