Piano roll
Draw, move, quantize and transpose notes, with the other tracks showing through.
The piano roll edits one MIDI clip at a time: a keyboard down the left, a grid of notes to the right, and lanes for velocity and the sustain pedal below. Double-click a MIDI clip to open it and expand it to fill the window when you need room. Notes drawn here are what the instrument plays, before the arpeggiator, strumming, groove and chord track shape them.
When to use it
Write a part by hand, fix a recorded take, tighten timing with the quantizer, or write a bass line against the chords showing through from another track.
Controls
Piano roll and Beats
The rail on the left switches the clip between the piano roll and Beats, a step grid for drum patterns. Both edit the same notes. Drum clips open in Beats; Dr. Tape remembers your choice for each clip. The third choice, Keyboard, shows a keyboard to play the track’s instrument on.
Step record
The footprints button in the header records notes one step at a time: each note you play, from a MIDI keyboard, the piano keys on the left or your computer keyboard, goes in at a red cursor that then moves one step on. Hold several keys together and they go in as one chord. The Keyboard view page describes its settings and keys.
Drawing and selecting
Click empty grid to draw a note at the remembered length; drag its right edge to resize, drag the body to move. Shift-drag draws a selection box, Shift-click adds or removes a note, Option/Alt-drag copies. Double-click a note to delete it, or select notes and press Delete. ⌘/Ctrl A selects every note; Escape clears the selection, then closes the editor. On touch, Pan moves around the grid with one finger. Choose Draw to add, move or resize notes, or Select to drag a box from empty space. Hold a note in Draw or Select for its menu. Pinch to zoom with any tool; a second finger cancels a pending edit.
The note menu
Right-click a note or the grid for Up / Down 1 semitone, Up / Down 1 octave, Duplicate notes, Delete notes, Quantize, Select all notes and Deselect all. Transposition keeps timing, lengths and velocities, and is refused rather than half-done if a note would leave the MIDI range. The arrow keys transpose the selection too.
The keyboard
Hold a key to hear it; drag down the keys to play through them. Note names appear when you point at a key. On a drum machine, a sampler kit or a kit from the sound library, the keys show their sound names all the time, and a clip opens on the kit’s main sounds rather than its extra articulations.
Grid and zoom
The display grid sits at the right of the header, down to 1/128 with triplet and dotted options; changing it never moves notes. Zoom with the toolbar buttons or pinch horizontally on the grid; pinching over the keyboard changes the row height.
Quantize
The Q button opens the quantizer with its own settings: the selection or the whole clip, a timing grid from whole notes to 1/64, whether to snap starts, how to treat lengths (keep, snap ends, snap lengths or a fixed length), a Strength from 0 to 100 percent and a Swing from 50 to 75. Apply is one undo step.
Velocity and Chance
The lane under the grid shows each note as a bar; the menu at its left switches it between Velocity and Chance. Drag a bar to change it, drag a selected bar to move the whole selection together, or sweep across empty space to paint a curve. Chance is the probability, 1 to 100 percent, that a note plays; notes that might not play are hatched, and the dice beside Chance rolls the clip again. The pattern belongs to the clip: each repetition of a looping clip rolls again, moving a clip keeps its pattern, copies repeat it until rolled, and exports play what playback plays.
Tracks
Tracks opens a shelf of the other instrument tracks. Eye buttons show their notes as dashed ghosts in project time, colored By track or as Active / others. Ghosts never catch the pointer, so you can draw over them; click a track name in the shelf to switch to its clip.
Gluing clips
Select two or more MIDI clips on one track in the sequencer and choose Glue MIDI clips to merge them, gaps left empty. It waits until groove, Arp and Strum are off, and it refuses clips whose chance notes would roll differently once glued (a clip split in two glues back as it was), so nothing changes sound silently.
Tips
- Quantize starts only and keep lengths when a take feels loose but the phrasing is right; add Swing afterwards rather than drawing it.
- The clip’s Transpose submenu in the sequencer shifts every note in the selected clips without opening the editor.
- Edits to a looping clip’s Loop source change every repetition; duplicate the clip first if one bar should differ.
See also
Changes
- FixedSpace stops a recording from the docked piano roll · 13 October 2026
With the piano roll docked and focused, Space did nothing during a recording. It now stops the recording, as it does everywhere else.
- ImprovedDrum sounds keep their names in the piano roll · 7 October 2026
Drum machine pads, sampler kit sounds and kits from the sound library now show their names on the piano roll's keys without pointing at them, and a drum clip opens on the kit's main sounds. Opening another clip while the piano roll is open now brings its notes into view instead of staying where the previous clip was.
- FixedSound library kits play in full when you audition them · 7 October 2026
Clicking a key or placing a note on a kit from the sound library now plays the whole sound, as the drum machine always did, instead of sometimes stopping it at once or staying silent on the first click. In Beats every hit you place sounds, and clicking a row's name plays it.