The piano roll and MIDI

The piano roll shows the notes of a MIDI region. Up and down is pitch (the keyboard on the left tells you which note), left and right is time.

Open the piano roll

Double-click a MIDI region, or choose it and press ⌘E. The editor opens at the bottom of the window. Press ⌘E again to close it.

Tools

Like the arrangement, the piano roll has a Primary Tool and a Command-Click Tool in its toolbar. T opens the tool menu at the pointer.

Pointer: choose, move and resize notes.
Pencil: draw a note; drag to set how long it is.
Brush: paint a row of notes on the grid.
Eraser: delete notes.
Scissors: cut a note in two.
Quantize: put the notes you click on the grid.
Velocity: drag up and down to make notes louder or softer.

Drawing notes

Pick the Pencil and click where you want a note. The Snap menu in the toolbar sets the grid notes land on. Drag up or down while drawing to change the pitch.

To play notes in from your computer's keyboard, switch on Musical Typing (⌘K).

Step input

Step input writes notes one at a time without playing in time. You need a region open in the piano roll.

Put the playhead where the first note goes.
Choose MIDI ▸ Step Input, or click the keyboard button in the piano roll's toolbar.
Play a note on a MIDI controller or with Musical Typing. It is written at the step position, with the velocity you played.
Let go of the key: the step position moves on by one grid step.

Keys held together are a chord: they all go in at the same step, and the position moves on once the last key comes up. Each note is as long as the grid step, or a sixteenth when the grid is off, so change the grid to write longer or shorter notes. Nothing is written past the end of the region.

Each note is its own undo step. Turning step input on or off is not. Click the button again, or choose MIDI ▸ Step Input, to stop.

Quantize

Quantize moves notes onto the grid so they are in time.

Region quantize (in the inspector, with a MIDI region chosen) lets the notes play on the grid without changing them. Switch it off and you hear them as you played them. Dashed outlines show where each note really is.
The Q button beside it writes the quantize into the notes for good.
⌥⌘Q quantizes the chosen notes now.
Q-Range in the MIDI Inspector only moves notes that are already close to the grid, so a played feel stays.

Note functions

In the piano roll's Edit menu:

Note Length ▸ Legato stretches each note to the next one. Fixed Length makes them all the same length.
Velocity sets, adds to, scales or squeezes how hard the notes are played.
Remove Overlaps and Delete Duplicates tidy up notes on top of each other.

Choosing notes

The piano roll's Edit ▸ Select menu has these and more (by velocity, every second note):

⌘A chooses every note.
⇧E chooses every note with the same pitch as the chosen one.
⇧I chooses the notes inside the cycle.
⇧↑ and ⇧↓ choose the top or bottom note of each chord.

Moving and transposing

⌥← and ⌥→ move the chosen notes one grid step.
⌥↑ and ⌥↓ move them up or down a semitone.
⌥⇧↑ and ⌥⇧↓ move them an octave.
D copies them right after themselves.
⌫ deletes them.

The MIDI Inspector

The MIDI Inspector is the panel on the left of the piano roll. It holds the quantize settings, the scale to keep notes in, and the velocity and MIDI channel of the chosen notes. The channel picks which part of a multi-timbral instrument plays them. The sidebar button in the toolbar shows and hides it.

To set the MIDI channel of some notes, choose them and pick Channel 1 to Channel 16 in the inspector's Channel section. With notes on different channels chosen, it shows Mixed. The change is one undo step. The inspector's Articulation section sets how the chosen notes are played (see Articulations).

The Event List

The editor's View menu ▸ Event List shows every note as a line of numbers: where it starts, its MIDI channel, its pitch, how long it is and how hard it is played. Type into a line to change it.

The columns are Position, Status, Ch (the MIDI channel, 1 to 16), Num, Value and Length. The list shows the controllers in the open regions as well as the notes. To move a note to another MIDI channel, change its Ch.

The score

The editor's View menu ▸ Score, or the score button in its toolbar, shows the open regions as notation in place of the piano roll. The score is a reading of the notes: nothing you choose here moves a note, and the piano roll shows them as they were played.

The score's own toolbar sets how a track is read:

Display quantize (1/4 to 1/32, and 1/8T or 1/16T for triplets) is the finest value the score writes. A beat whose notes sit on the triplet grid is written as a triplet.
Clef: treble, bass, a grand staff split at middle C, or a drum staff named by the track's drum map. Auto chooses by where the notes are.
Transposition: the part as a B♭, A, E♭ or F instrument reads it, key signature and all; B♭ and E♭ an octave lower again (tenor and baritone sax, bass clarinet); or written an octave or two away from concert (guitar and double bass above, piccolo and glockenspiel below).
Instrument sets both at once for the instrument chosen, Clarinet in B♭ to Glockenspiel, and its name heads the part. What plays never changes.

Notes are written in the song's key, and a note outside it that the chord track's chord holds is spelled from that chord. Accidentals last to the bar line. Notes that overlap without starting and ending together are written as a second voice. Each track keeps its own settings with the song.

The page button shows the score as pages, as it prints; otherwise it is one line that scrolls with the song.

Writing in the score

Choose: click a note; Shift-click adds or takes one away; drag round notes to choose them.
Move: drag a note. Up or down a line or space moves it a step of the key, and across moves it by the display grid. The arrow keys do the same; Shift with the up and down arrows moves an octave.
Write: choose a value in the palette (whole to 32nd, and the dot for dotted), then click a line or space. The pointer goes back to choosing.
Rest: with the rest chosen, click a note to take it out and leave its rest.
Length gives the chosen notes a written value. The arrows beside it transpose them a semitone; Respell writes them under their other name, C♯ as D♭, without changing what plays.
Delete removes the chosen notes.

Every drag or click is one undo step, as in the piano roll.

Marks and lyrics

The score's second row writes marks on the chosen notes. Each button or menu choice is one undo step. The marks are kept on the notes, so they move, copy and undo with them.

Articulations: staccato, staccatissimo, tenuto, accent, marcato and fermata. A button puts its mark on every chosen note, or takes it off when they all have it.
Dynamic (ppp to fff, fp and sfz) is written at the first chosen note.
Slur, Crescendo and Diminuendo run from the first chosen note to the last.
Clear marks takes the chosen notes' marks away and leaves their lyrics.
Lyric: choose a note, type its syllable and press Return. The next note is chosen, so a line can be typed straight through. Several words typed at once fill several notes, and a hyphen splits a word into syllables: "Hap-py birth-day".

Marks play, as Logic's MIDI Meaning does. The notes you see in the piano roll stay as you played them, and taking a mark off gives back exactly what was there.

A dynamic sets the level from its note to the next dynamic. Each note keeps its own share of the level, so a played accent is still an accent. fp and sfz mark one note only.
A crescendo or diminuendo moves the level smoothly to the dynamic at its end, or two steps on when there is none.
Staccato plays half the note and staccatissimo a quarter. Marcato plays three quarters, struck harder, and an accent is struck harder.
Tenuto holds a note on to the next one, and so does every note under a slur except its last.
A fermata does not change the timing; the song's tempo is set in its tempo track.

Playback, a bounce, a MIDI file and a join all play the marks. MusicXML export writes the notes as written, with the marks and lyrics on them, and MusicXML import brings a score's marks back as these.

Full scores and parts

Show at the left of the second row chooses what the score shows:

Open Regions: the regions open in the editor, as before.
Full Score: every track with MIDI, in track order.
A score set: chosen instruments in their own order. New Score Set from Selected Tracks makes one from the tracks chosen in the arrangement, or from the score's own when none are. Sets are saved with the song.

A full score or a set opens all of its instruments' regions, so the score edits them all as it edits one. Each part is named over its first line. An instrument with nothing in the open regions is still listed, resting. With notes chosen, the score's settings apply to their parts only; with none, to every part.

Part shows one instrument alone, as its player reads it: in its transposition, as long as the full score, with each run of empty bars written as one bar with the count over it. All Parts shows the whole score again.

Printing the score

File ▸ Print Score… prints the score open in the editor, black on white, with the song's name over the first page. File ▸ Export ▸ Score as PDF… writes the same pages to a PDF. With the score not open, both take what MusicXML export takes: the selected MIDI regions, the selected tracks, or every track with MIDI.

File ▸ Export ▸ Score Parts as PDF… writes each part as a PDF of its own into a folder you choose. Each PDF is named for the song and the part, and is printed as its player reads it.

Claude can read a part as notation too: ask it what the bass plays in bar 9. It can also write marks and lyrics, set a part's instrument, and make a score set: "put a crescendo on bars 5 to 8 of the strings", or "set these lyrics on the vocal melody".

Grooves

A groove is the feel of a performance: which notes are a little late or early. Save one from a MIDI region or from the hits in an audio region, keep it in the Library, and choose it in Region quantize to put that feel on other parts.

Ghost notes

Ghost notes show other parts behind the notes you are editing, dimmed: the bass under the kick, the chords under the melody. You see them but cannot click, move or delete them, and they never change.

To show them, choose MIDI ▸ Ghost Notes, or click the Show ghost notes button in the piano roll's toolbar. Do it again to hide them.
At first the ghosts are the other regions of the track you are editing.
To add another track's notes, open the editor's View menu ▸ Ghost Tracks and tick the track. Ticking one turns ghost notes on.

Controller lanes

The lanes under the notes draw velocity and the region's controllers: the mod wheel, sustain, pitch bend, aftertouch and the rest.

To choose what a lane shows, click its name (Lane shows the current one). The menu lists what the open region already holds first, then Notes (Velocity, Probability, Articulation), then Controllers, with every one of the 128 under All Controllers.
To add a lane, click the + beside a lane (Add lane below). You can have up to four. The − closes a lane.
RGN and TRK on the first lane switch between the region's own controllers, which travel with the region, and the track's mix automation.
The editor's View menu ▸ Automation Lane shows and hides the lanes.

To draw a controller, pick a Controller tool in the lane's header:

Pointer: double-click to add a point, drag points about.
Pencil: draw freehand, wherever the pointer goes.
Line: a straight ramp from where the drag starts to where it ends.
Curve: a ramp that bends as your hand bends while drawing it.

A drawn stroke replaces the points under it and keeps the rest. The whole drag is one undo step. A pedal, such as sustain, is drawn as on and off steps.

Note Expression lanes

A note can carry its own expression, as an MPE controller such as a Seaboard or a Linnstrument plays it: its own Pitch slide (in semitones), its own Pressure and its own Timbre (the slide up and down the key, CC 74). Each curve belongs to one note and moves that note alone, even inside a chord.

To see them, click a lane's name and choose Pitch, Pressure or Timbre under Note Expression. Each note's curve is drawn under the note, across its own length.
To draw one, pick a Controller tool and draw over the note: Line, Curve or Pencil, or double-click with the Pointer to add a point. A stroke shapes the note it starts over, a selected one first. The whole drag is one undo step.
A selected note's pitch slide is also drawn through the grid above, from its start, a semitone a row.
To take a curve away, right-click the lane and choose Clear Pitch of Selected Notes (or Pressure, or Timbre).

The track's MPE menu. In the channel strip of an instrument track, the MPE menu (it reads MPE: Off until you set it) says how the track records and plays this:

Record per Note (MPE Input) reads what an MPE controller plays: each note's bend, pressure and slide from its own channel go onto that note.
Zone (Lower on channel 1 with members from 2, or Upper on channel 16 with members from 15) and Member Channels match your controller's setup.
Note Bend Range is how far a note bends at full throw: MPE's ±48 semitones unless your controller says otherwise.
Play the Instrument: Automatic sends MPE (each note on a channel of its own) when the instrument says it plays MPE, Always MPE always does, and Never MPE (Fold) folds it for an instrument that does not: pressure becomes key pressure, and pitch and timbre are sent only while a note sounds alone, because a bend on the channel would bend every note.
Bend Notes to the Song Tuning, in a song with its own tuning (File ▸ Song Tuning…), bends every note to the pitch its key has in the tuning, on its own channel: for an MPE synth that cannot read the tuning itself. Nebula's own instruments play the tuning without it.
MPE Off goes back to ordinary MIDI.

File ▸ Export MIDI… writes the expression too: a track played MPE puts each note on its own member channel with its bend, pressure and CC 74, after the MPE setup messages; any other track gets the fold.

Claude can do this for you: ask it to "slide the last note up a fifth", or to "set this track up for my Seaboard" (set_note_expression, set_track_mpe).

Articulations

An articulation is a way an instrument is played: sustain, staccato, pizzicato. Sample libraries switch between them with a keyswitch (a note out of the playing range), a controller or a program change. Nebula sends the right switch for each note, so one region can move from legato to staccato.

To set up a track's articulation set:

Open a region of the track in the piano roll.
In the MIDI Inspector's Articulation section, click SET (Edit articulation set).
Click New Empty Set, or Start from Strings for Sustain, Staccato, Pizzicato and Tremolo on the keys most string libraries use.
Give the set a Name. For each articulation set its Name, its Output (Keyswitch, Controller or Program), its Number (the key, the controller or the program), its Value and its Channel (Note's for the note's own channel, or 1 to 16). Your library's manual lists its switches.
Add Articulation adds one; the minus button removes one; Remove Set takes the whole set away.
Click Done. It is one undo step. Cancel leaves the track as it was.

To give notes an articulation, choose them and pick it in the inspector's Articulation section, or None to send no switch.

The Articulation lane (choose it in a lane's menu) names each note's articulation under the note. Click a name to choose its note. Right-click the lane to give every chosen note an articulation, or No Articulation.

Each switch is sent just ahead of its note. It goes past the track's MIDI effects straight to the instrument, so an arpeggiator or chord trigger never plays a keyswitch as a note. File ▸ Export MIDI… writes each note's switch into the file ahead of the note, so another program plays the same articulations.

Claude can do this for you: ask it to "set up keyswitches for the strings" or to "make bars 5 to 8 staccato".

Transform

The Transform window changes notes by rule: every note above a pitch, every soft note, every note on one channel. Choose MIDI ▸ Transform…. It opens beside the song, so you can watch the piano roll while you set it up. It works on the regions open in the editor.

Under Select notes where, set a condition for Pitch, Velocity, Position, Length or Channel: All, =, ≠, <, >, Inside or Outside a range. Tick Only selected notes to keep to the chosen notes.
Under Then, choose Change them, Select them or Delete them.
To change them, set what happens to each value: Keep, Set, Add, Scale %, Random, Random ±, Ramp, or Quantize for the position.
The count (for example "12 notes match") says how many notes the rule picks before anything is done.
Click Apply (or Select, or Delete). Apply is one undo step.

Position and length are in beats, velocity is 1 to 127, channel is 1 to 16. Presets fills the window with a ready rule: Humanize, Fixed Velocity, Crescendo or Remove Short Notes. Reset clears it.

Claude can change notes by rule too: ask it, for example, to set every note on channel 2 to velocity 90.

Step pattern regions

A step pattern region is a beat or a riff written on steps, as in Logic's step sequencer. It plays on any instrument track, a drum plug-in from any maker included.

To make one, choose Edit ▸ Region ▸ New Step Pattern Region, or right-click a region on the track and choose it there. It goes on the chosen track at the playhead's bar, one bar long, looping over four. A track that plays a kit starts with a row for each of its usual sounds; any other instrument starts with an octave of C major.
Open it and the editor shows the step sequencer instead of the piano roll.
Convert Step Pattern to MIDI (in the region's menu, or the button in the step sequencer) turns it into the notes it plays, to edit them in the piano roll. It sounds exactly the same. Undo brings the step pattern back.
Convert to Step Pattern Region does the opposite when a region's notes fit on steps: one note of each sound per step, 64 steps at most. If they would not come back exactly as written, it is not offered.

Each of these is one undo step.

The step sequencer

Each row plays one sound, a controller (its steps send their value) or an articulation (the notes struck on its steps play with it). Each column is a step.

Choose an edit mode at the top: On/Off, Velocity, Gate (how long the note holds), Repeat (1 to 4 hits in the step), Chance (how likely it plays), Offset (early or late within the step) or Tie (the note holds on through the next step).
Click a step, or drag across steps. In On/Off and Tie a drag paints what the first step became; in the others, how high you click sets the value. A whole drag is one undo step.
Length sets how many steps the step pattern runs, the rate menu how long a step is, and Swing plays every second step late.
Click a row's name to show it on the right. There you choose what it plays, give it its own Length and Rate (rows of different lengths make polymeter: three steps against sixteen), its MIDI channel, Randomise it by an amount in the current edit mode, and Copy, Paste or Delete it. M mutes a row. Add Row adds the next sound of the drum map.

Steps with less than full chance are rolled again each time round. Playback and a bounce always agree on what plays; the dice button rolls new ones.

Drum maps

A drum map names the sound each note plays and the order the rows are listed in, as in Cubase. A track that plays a kit is named by General MIDI until you change something; Nebula Drums and Nebula Kick do not publish a map of their own.

Open the step sequencer's Drum map button, or the piano roll's View menu ▸ Drum Map…. Rename a note and press Return, move it up or down, remove it, or add a note. General MIDI puts the standard names back; Remove Map takes the track's own map away. Each change is one undo step.

Giving any instrument a map, a third-party drum plug-in or a synth, turns on its Drum Rows in the piano roll: one named row per sound in the map's order, hits drawn as diamonds without lengths.

Claude can write step patterns, and set a track's drum map, too: ask it for "a four-on-the-floor kick with off-beat hats and ghost snares" on any drum track (write_pattern, set_pattern_step, get_pattern, convert_pattern_to_midi, set_drum_map).

Session players

A session player plays the song's chord track for you, as Logic's Session Players do: a Bass, Keys, a Strings Pad, a Guitar Strum or a Drummer. Its region holds how it plays, not notes: change a chord, move a section or resize the region and it plays the new song at once.

To add one, choose Track ▸ New Session Player… (or New Tracks and Session Player), pick the player and its style, and click Create. It gets its own track, a sound for it, and a region across the chord track. Without chords only the drummer plays: write some chords first.
Each player plays Nebula's own instruments: the keys Nebula Keys' electric piano, the bass and the strings a Nebula Poly preset that suits the style (a pluck bass for Walking, analogue strings for Sustained), and the drummer Nebula Drums, with a Kick track beside it whose Nebula Kick plays the drummer's kick. The two drum tracks are one drummer: change either and both change. The guitar has no instrument of Nebula's own, so it plays the built-in General MIDI guitar, and Sound says so. Choose Sound ▸ General MIDI for the built-in sounds instead, or any instrument under Instrument.
Open the region and the editor shows the player instead of the piano roll. At the top: its Style — bass Root–Fifth, Walking, Syncopated Pop or Octave Disco; keys Block Chords, Broken Chords or Rhodes Comp; strings Sustained, Pulsing Eighths or Swells; guitar Pop Strum, Straight Eighths or Offbeat Skank; drums Rock, Four on the Floor, Half-Time or Hip-Hop — then Complexity (how busy), Intensity (how hard), Swing and Fills (a drum fill, or the bass leading into the next chord, in the last bar of each section). The dice plays it a new way.
On the right: Follow plays another track's rhythm instead of its own — tick Only its kick to lock a bass to the drummer — and Range keeps it between two notes.
Below, what it plays over the chords; approach notes, which lead into the next chord from a semitone away, are drawn in the warning colour.
Keys, pads and guitar voice each chord as close as they can to the one before, and start afresh at each section; every bar has its own roll of the dice, so a chord changed in one bar leaves the others as they were.
Convert Session Player to MIDI (the region's menu, or the button at the top) turns it into the notes it plays, to edit in the piano roll. It sounds exactly the same, and no longer follows the chords.

Each change is one undo step; a slider's whole drag is one. Ask Claude to "add a walking bass" or "what is the keys player doing in the chorus?".