Another DAW with piano roll as great as FL Studio?

[GMusic]

I cannot get any of the following DAW to act like FL Studio's piano roll.

- Ableton
- Cubase
- Reaper
- Studio One

What I mean by FL Studio's piano roll is very simple: it's very simple!

- One left click to draw a note, one right click to delete. Double clicking, keyboard shortcuts and or menus shouldn't be needed to do something so simple as to delete or duplicate a note
- Easily highlight and extend or shorten notes.
- Easy to see. Not tiny (Reaper is probably the second closest to easy-on-the-eyes as I have found).

Please let me know if there's another DAW I am missing on my list to try or if there's any settings in the above DAW I can adjust to come close to FL Studio's piano roll behavior. I just want simple, easy to use MIDI editing. I prefer to use a lane-based DAW since FL Studio's playlist and effect routing is a hassle to maintain, in my opinion.

Thank you

[askoan]

I agree with you on the double click, this should not exist anywhere in the computer area.
But is the DEL key considered as a keyboard shortcut ?
I mean, i understand that you associate "easy to use" with a mouse-only editor ? Or did you want to state a "handy" editor ; aka as fast editing as possible ? One needs a keyboard for the latest, in my opinion.
As an off topic : Maybe your keyboard is not adapted ? A lot of laptop keyboards are not handy (flat keys, small keys, no separations, etc...)
I would feel restrained though if i had only a hand to control midi editing.

Speaking of cubase, because i own only it and Bitwig (which midi editor i don't like).
In cubase piano roll, I'm pretty sure the note height is scalable.
Regarding the highlighting and shortening of notes, both mouse and keyboard are used ; in this area, i find cubase handy and painless : is there any particularity in FL ?
Sorry the last experience i had with FL was Fruity Loops in the 2000's i think, and for sure i loved it, but i can't remember the piano roll. I just remember i was finding the piano rolls a pain compared to the old tracker softs

[FapFilter]

Sonar (now Cakewalk by Bandlab) is fully customizable, both in terms of keyboard shortcuts and mouse behavior.
Though Reaper's is good enough for me too, even though i need to use more key commands. But it's not really a negative for me, as i prefer to delete stuff by hitting DEL and some other things aswell anyway

[SaganTech]

Metro does that. Although with the pencil tool it is a left-click to delete a note (if you click on the note).

[Trancit]

I cannot get any of the following DAW to act like FL Studio's piano roll.

- Ableton
- Cubase
- Reaper
- Studio One

What I mean by FL Studio's piano roll is very simple: it's very simple!

- One left click to draw a note, one right click to delete. Double clicking, keyboard shortcuts and or menus shouldn't be needed to do something so simple as to delete or duplicate a note
- Easily highlight and extend or shorten notes.
- Easy to see. Not tiny (Reaper is probably the second closest to easy-on-the-eyes as I have found).

Please let me know if there's another DAW I am missing on my list to try or if there's any settings in the above DAW I can adjust to come close to FL Studio's piano roll behavior. I just want simple, easy to use MIDI editing. I prefer to use a lane-based DAW since FL Studio's playlist and effect routing is a hassle to maintain, in my opinion.

Thank you

Reaper is the one to go...
It lacks of the advanced tools FL Studio has (like all the others too) but with it´s mouse modifiers you can set it exactly like FL Studio works!!

The only difference you cannot work around afaik is that you have to use doubleclick or a different modifier for deleting as rightclick and rightclick drag is reserved for selecting (like CTRL+left drag in FLS)

But everything else you can setup exactly the same way...even that Reaper can remember the note length and velocity of the last touched note if you want it to... or not if you don´t want this behaviour...

[JiggSaw]

Just looking at the points you outlined... what's wrong with Ableton? I know you mentioned keyboard shortcuts but you literally only need to worry about pressing B to be in/out of Draw mode. In Draw mode you just single left click to draw or delete. Then to move, extend, shorten notes you press B to get out of Draw mode. It's a little different than FL but it's still stupid easy.

You can also adjust the piano roll view to make it larger if needed. I just wish there were a way to "lock" the size you set.

Edit: Also forgot to mention that Live Enhancement Suite makes it even better since you can do everything with left click (place, delete, extend, change velocity) just by holding ~ key. Then you don't need Draw mode at all.

[oneway]

No, no DAW has as good a piano roll as FL Studio. The composition tools are really well thought out once you get to know them.

I’d definitely demo Cubase though. Ableton, Logic, Cubase, and Studio One are serviceable and Cubase probably has the most mature compositional helpers. REAPER’s is terrible imo - you can customize it all you want but it will always be crippled by some really awful design choices.

You just have to judge whether the benefits of the new DAW is worth leaving the piano roll of FL behind.

[GMusic]

Reaper is the one to go...
It lacks of the advanced tools FL Studio has (like all the others too) but with it´s mouse modifiers you can set it exactly like FL Studio works!!

The only difference you cannot work around afaik is that you have to use doubleclick or a different modifier for deleting as rightclick and rightclick drag is reserved for selecting (like CTRL+left drag in FLS)

But everything else you can setup exactly the same way...even that Reaper can remember the note length and velocity of the last touched note if you want it to... or not if you don´t want this behaviour...

Good suggestions! Wow it's actually a lot like FL Studio but with way more ORGANIZED options and intuitive menus. The fade in/fade out built into the track is so easy and fun to use. Indeed I wish we could modify right click. But the modification feature alone is a huge plus.

[GMusic]

No, no DAW has as good a piano roll as FL Studio. The composition tools are really well thought out once you get to know them.

I’d definitely demo Cubase though. Ableton, Logic, Cubase, and Studio One are serviceable and Cubase probably has the most mature compositional helpers. REAPER’s is terrible imo - you can customize it all you want but it will always be crippled by some really awful design choices.

You just have to judge whether the benefits of the new DAW is worth leaving the piano roll of FL behind.

So far Reaper is coming really easy to me. What is crippling about it? I'm mostly making fairly simple music. No scoring or advanced compositions, surround sound editing, and so forth.

Cubase so far is a second in terms of ease of use. Though Reaper just looks easier on the eyes and so far it's a bit easier to navigate.

[Vladislav_Gronk]

Reaper is the one to go...
It lacks of the advanced tools FL Studio has (like all the others too) but with it´s mouse modifiers you can set it exactly like FL Studio works!!

The only difference you cannot work around afaik is that you have to use doubleclick or a different modifier for deleting as rightclick and rightclick drag is reserved for selecting (like CTRL+left drag in FLS)

But everything else you can setup exactly the same way...even that Reaper can remember the note length and velocity of the last touched note if you want it to... or not if you don´t want this behaviour...

Good suggestions! Wow it's actually a lot like FL Studio but with way more ORGANIZED options and intuitive menus. The fade in/fade out built into the track is so easy and fun to use. Indeed I wish we could modify right click. But the modification feature alone is a huge plus.

You can absolutely delete notes with right-click

Mouse Modifiers > MIDI Editor > Right Drag > Delete notes/CC immediately (suppress right-click context menu)

[oneway]

So far Reaper is coming really easy to me. What is crippling about it?

If it’s working well for you, go for it!

The design choices that I never ended up liking mostly revolved around focus and zoom. For example, when I was using REAPER there were functions in other parts of the DAW that would cause the MIDI editor to open up to unrelated parts of the song the next time it was opened. Or one caused it to zoom out to view the entire song. It wasn’t really a bug, just a consequence of how the other features were implemented.

A lot of parts of REAPER are designed by committee by the users basically, so they’ll have tons of functions available but many of them step on each others’ toes. I happened to notice a lot of things like that and didn’t enjoy using it at all because of them.

Anyway, again, if it works well for you, great, use it and make some killer tracks. Some people love it.

[GMusic]

Reaper is the one to go...
It lacks of the advanced tools FL Studio has (like all the others too) but with it´s mouse modifiers you can set it exactly like FL Studio works!!

The only difference you cannot work around afaik is that you have to use doubleclick or a different modifier for deleting as rightclick and rightclick drag is reserved for selecting (like CTRL+left drag in FLS)

But everything else you can setup exactly the same way...even that Reaper can remember the note length and velocity of the last touched note if you want it to... or not if you don´t want this behaviour...

Good suggestions! Wow it's actually a lot like FL Studio but with way more ORGANIZED options and intuitive menus. The fade in/fade out built into the track is so easy and fun to use. Indeed I wish we could modify right click. But the modification feature alone is a huge plus.

You can absolutely delete notes with right-click

Mouse Modifiers > MIDI Editor > Right Drag > Delete notes/CC immediately (suppress right-click context menu)

Wow! Cool! Thank you. What a cool DAW! Total flexibility for the user, all while maintaining integrity and organization. I'm loving this so far. There's probably tons of options I haven't even explored yet.

[mdstudio]

So far Reaper is coming really easy to me. What is crippling about it?

If it’s working well for you, go for it!

The design choices that I never ended up liking mostly revolved around focus and zoom. For example, when I was using REAPER there were functions in other parts of the DAW that would cause the MIDI editor to open up to unrelated parts of the song the next time it was opened. Or one caused it to zoom out to view the entire song. It wasn’t really a bug, just a consequence of how the other features were implemented.

A lot of parts of REAPER are designed by committee by the users basically, so they’ll have tons of functions available but many of them step on each others’ toes. I happened to notice a lot of things like that and didn’t enjoy using it at all because of them.

Anyway, again, if it works well for you, great, use it and make some killer tracks. Some people love it.

The MIDI zoom can be a bit strange sometimes, and I think there are some settings for it, but I found a script in this thread to make the MIDI editor always zoom to content: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=207042so

Not sure why that behavior is not the default, but at least it can be fixed.

Also, I added custom buttons to the toolbar to be able to quickly zoom to selected event, loop and the whole project so that I don't have to cmd + scroll which can be tedious. I find those buttons very convenient.

As for REAPER in general, flexibility and performance are its strongest points. If you like tweaking, you will love it.

[kettlechips]

[antic604]

- Ableton
- Studio One

I'll comment on those 2, because I *hated* MIDI editors of Cubase and Reaper...

- if you're in appropriate draw mode ('B' in Live, I believe '2' or '3' in Studio One), then both paint & delete notes without additional clicks or shortcuts.

- both have the ability to box-select single or multiple notes (or ctrl+click if notes are scattered over a non-continuous area) and you just drag start or end of any of the selected notes to edit all of them.

- they're both resizable vertically & horizontally to a sufficient degree, so seeing things shouldn't be a problem unless you're running those DAWs on some huge resolution without high-DPI support enabled.

It seems like you're simply not familiar with the tools available and expect them to be working out-of-the-box like FL does.