Best DAW for piano roll edit

[maanga]

All DAWs can do move, delete, stretch, copy, duplicate, step recording etc.
If you want additional things like, 'show notes for only this scale', 'insert chords' or 'articulation maps' then the list can be shortlisted. If you are interested in other features of the DAW, you get the DAW which you like. Slowly additional features also will be implemented.
I would suggest to get the lower priced DAW first and then move on from there.
Regards.

[neverbefore]

I thought Bitwig pretty good for midi but got rid of it because the audio editing is not that great. It really depends how you work and what you make. Mu.Lab might be worth a look as well

[MrJubbly]

Is this a trick question? Just kidding.

Of course, there is only one correct answer to this and that is FL Studio.

FL Studio's Piano roll is 'miles better' than any other DAWs' Piano roll.

And that was the case even before the latest 'Pimp My Piano roll' feature boost within the upcoming v21.1 version of FL Studio, due for imminent release any time now.

Wherein, it has a bunch of new snap to scale functionality added, in addition to the 'huge' new feature for supporting user-created 'Piano roll scripts', to further add all sorts of new advanced tools and functionality to its Piano roll.

Like I said, when it comes to Piano rolls, there is only one winner. And it is streets ahead of the competition.

[jtikey]

1) FL Studio
2) Reaper (has its issues)
3) Ableton (with Live Enhancement Suite)

oh wow I never heard of the Live Enhancement Suite. Gonna try it now, thanks

[Obsolete187521]

[DELETED]

[anevva]

oh wow I never heard of the Live Enhancement Suite. Gonna try it now, thanks

Neither had I and I use Live quite a lot.

I managed to get this working today but it took a few hours to get some basic menus up and running. It's working on Live 9 and 10 so far very well (Live 11 is on another machine). Once the program is instantiated and running it will provide the functionality in Live. It takes a while to set up because the documentation is very terse and basic and hardly any tutorials at all. So most of the time was spent just getting my head around how this program generally works. It gets minimised to the task bar so you might miss it even after installation.

It helps to have a bit of coding experience. I can't imagine non-coders getting very far with this. Also Ableton search is a mess and they have disabled some stuff there making it harder. You need to experiment with your search strings. One clue is to do the search in Live and when it yields what you want, then put that string in to the enhancement suite.

Also some things are very esoteric. For example, if your VST has an underscore you will need to start your search with a ", but don't enclose with another " or it won't work. As I said, you really need patience and to experiment.

Some things are not possible, for example, MS-20. I have the Arturia version as well as Korg. So you have to save a default preset and search for that. No way around it since Ableton disabled some search functionality. This is mentioned in the docs.

Loading the VST3 version of MS-20 is only possible by saving a .vstpreset. This loads the plugin no problem when you put the search string as "MS-20.vstpreset". But for normal VST2 plugin you have to group it so it exists as a .adg. So the search string for that is "MS-20.adg". But then it is grouped which is not really a problem. To ungroup just right click and select Ungroup from the menu.

Also I figured out stuff that didn't seem to be included in the documentation that I found. For example putting 'VST' or 'VST3' after a space after the search strings helps to denote whether you want either of those called up. Also some times you want to enclose in quotations marks for the search string, but other times that does not work so you just put the search string in without them.

This is a great idea and well done. I really appreciate it. I can't see many people getting much out of it though except the most dedicated of Live users, and then it will take some time to get where you want. A labour of love but worth it. One good thing is you don't need to put in the VST paths as it seems to rely on the ones already there in whatever Ableton has. Makes sense.

It's also nice being able to have sub-menus. This helps to keep things organised. I will be donating to this project for sure. I haven't even got in to the midi stuff yet.

I'm looking forward to the latest release of FLStudio as I also use that quite a bit as well. I had a quick look and it seems that there is some scripting ability and on the image-line website people are already putting up scripts that enhance the functionality by a whole lot.

If I wanted to do serious midi stuff I would use Cubase as nothing really can touch that. But Live and FLStudio can still take you a long way and they are quicker as well, at least for me, for basic stuff. Sure, FL is a bit more advanced than Live, but it's going to be interesting to see how far I can get with that enhancement suite.

At least with the menu stuff I feel confident of getting a properly working menu with my most used plugins, both vsti and fx. But it will take some time. It's worth it because it will be quicker in the long run to just right click than to take hand off mouse and type in to the search bar, and then, the search does not work properly in Live so you have to alter it to get the results you want. I have a history with programming regular expressions, so this is fairly trivial to me, but as I said I can see others just giving up in frustration because to be honest the whole search system is broke in Live. Also just right clicking is easier than menu diving both vst and vst3 in the browser of live and scrolling down, clicking to access sub-menus etc. etc.

This is the relevant part from my config file so far for anyone who is interested. If you have the same plugins as me, this should work, whatever your specific path.

Code: Select all

;==================================================

/Instruments
Impulse
Impulse

Simpler
Simpler

Drum Rack
Drum Rack

//U-HE
Diva
Diva(x64) VST

Diva VST3
"Diva"      VST

Zebra2
Zebra2(x64) VST

ZebraHZ
ZebraHZ(x64) VST

ZebraHZ VST3
"ZebraHZ"      VST

Hive
Hive(x64) VST

Hive VST3
"Hive"      VST

Repro-1
Repro-1(x64) VST

Repro-5
Repro-5(x64) VST

..

//ARTURIA

SQ80 V
SQ80 V VST

Analog Lab 4
Analog Lab 4 VST

Korg MS-20 V
Korg MS-20 V VST

Pigments
Pigments VST

..

//KORG

M1
"M1" VST

M1 VST3
"M1"    VST3

MS-20
MS-20.adg         

MS-20 VST3
MS-20.vstpreset     VST3

Wavestation
Wavestation VST

Wavestation VST3
Wavestation      VST3

Triton
Triton VST
--
Triton Extreme
"Triton_Extreme VST

..


;==================================================

Also it's worth noting that if you have u-he plugins, using the default file names won't work. After much trial and error I figured it out. You can see in the code. You have to omit the "(x64)" to call the VST3 plugin for some reason. Anyway, this is a good example config file for anyone wanting to work out how to call vst or vst3 specifically and also for getting around Live's esoteric and arcane search implementation.

Sometimes those quotation marks are superfluous but at other times they are crucial. You have to experiment. If you have the Arturia collection and the Korg collection and even the "u-he collection", then this file will go a long way to helping you figure things out. I'm happy to help (if I can) so if someone wants to start another thread on this, I'll jump in if I can help you figure it out.

[jthekidd427]

I like FL Studio’s piano roll the most… easy to see and easy on the eyes

[eLawnMust]

Thought I had responded to this thread, probably another similar... Sorry but most feature-rich for function piano roll is in BUZE Tracker which is a combo piano roll - tracker...

Make a selection in the piano roll then CTRL-RT-Click then the universe opens up...



To Give You better close-up here's most of it, many dialogs have more options & menus past this-




Here is a tutorial GIF I made just on echo command, nothing else-




All that plus the power of the tracker commands & vertical curve lanes that can be drawn out then hidden when not in edit mode...

And the price is FREE!...

[_leras]

FL does have a great piano roll, but, I'm not sure it would be the best for editing live played piano.

I wonder if Cubase would be best for that as pretty sure it has midi time warp, which would be very handy for lining up played notes.

I think that feature would be better than the few extra programming features in FL.

[houlihan]

It depends on your workflow. FL Studio is often considered the best for piano roll editing due to its intuitive interface and deep features. However, Reaper, Bitwig, and Studio One also offer great piano roll functionality. What’s your main priority—speed, MIDI tools, or advanced editing?

[eLawnMust]

For FL Studio peeps best to read this interview with Didier Dambrin (Founder) that goes back to 2003... You will see his first musical application was a Tracker way before Fruity ever started & his infuences are definitely from Trackers as well as Propellerhead stuff... If you were to take Impulse Tracker & turn all it's feature set into a piano roller it would blow away anything else out there...

Interesting interview I always wondered why there was a worm in the fruit that was not there later, apparently some users said it looked like a PENIS!... what?...WHAT?!!-


Anyway interview here there are 2 pages-

https://web.archive.org/web/20100131203 ... ambrin.php

But yes, 'Best' is a broad term open to interpretation no doubt seen my previous post on BUZE tracker intense list of commands that can be done on a selection in the piano roll...

However for fast composition I have found old Sound Club very good with also separate but inclusive piano roll lanes for volume, pan & tempo changes-




But not feature-rich at all, quite spartan but if speed is your priority...

Also developer is not without humor as he is the 'whole crew-



Sound Club was old commercial DOS then Windows then Free... Believe it or not the website is still up-

http://www.bluemoon.ee/history/scwin/index.html


It can save as S3M ScreamTracker module but the sounds in it are pretty clinky 8bit 11-22k but that is what is needed to save in S3M format... I am trying to find a way to make better 8bit using modern sounds but have problems with dithering noise...

In this way I can bring in a fast composition into MadTracker as S3M then convert to a MadTracker project which will place each voice on a separate track...

BTW here's a 'coked up' tune somebody did in SC-