MIDI input

A hardware keyboard or pad controller plays the selected instrument directly. Notes sound whether the transport is stopped or running, with the velocity you played and the sustain pedal held as you hold it, so you can audition a sound, rehearse over the song and then record a take into a MIDI clip you can edit afterwards.

When to use it

Use it whenever typing notes into the piano roll is slower than playing them: finding a chord voicing, trying a bass line against the drums, or capturing a performance with its own timing and dynamics. It also works as a silent test of a controller, because the panel shows every note it hears.

Controls

MIDI input

Settings › MIDI input… opens the panel. Choose Enable MIDI input to connect. The first time, the browser asks for permission to use MIDI; after that the connection comes back on its own when the studio loads. Chrome, Edge and Firefox support MIDI input. Safari does not.

Listen to

All connected inputs is the default and merges every device. Choose one device to ignore the others. Devices plugged in later appear in the list, and a disconnected device is marked rather than removed. The panel names the target instrument and the last note it received.

Which track plays

Notes go to the armed instrument track if there is one, otherwise to the track whose piano roll is open, otherwise to the selected track. Audio tracks and Master never receive notes. Changing the target, changing the device or leaving the window releases every held note, so nothing sticks.

Sustain pedal

A pedal on your controller holds released notes on instruments that respond to sustain, such as the Piano and the synths. Pressing the pedal before the first note works the way you expect; see sustain pedal for how the same pedal is drawn and edited.

Recording

Arm an instrument track and press Record. Playback starts from the cursor and keeps running past the last clip until you press Stop. Each note and pedal change is stamped on the audio clock as it is heard, and the take appears as it grows. On Stop the take becomes one clip named MIDI take at the record position, with pedal presses turned into sustain regions. Notes are moved earlier by the output latency, so they sit where you heard the beat at any buffer size. It is one undo step; a take with no notes changes nothing.

Tips

• A key sounds after the output latency of the buffer size: about 8 ms at Low, 16 ms at Balanced, 27 ms at High and 90 ms at Max on a typical interface, plus a millisecond or two for the message. Choose Low for playing in.
• Timing in a take is what you heard, so play to the metronome and tidy afterwards with Quantize in the piano roll rather than trying to compensate while playing.
• Each take is a new clip. To layer a second part on the same track, record again and merge later with Glue, or record onto a second track for a different sound.
• Pitch bend, modulation and aftertouch are not recorded yet; velocity and the pedal are.