Which DAW has the most advanced Piano Roll editor?

[pdxindy]

IMO, Cubase has the most advanced piano roll. That was the OP question in the title.

The OP mentions photoshop brushes. I think that concept makes sense in PS, but not a midi piano roll.

My main DAW is Bitwig. It has a rather basic piano roll. It doesn't come anywhere close to the capability of Cubase or the FL Studio approach to the piano roll. I wouldn't mind some more advanced tools added, but basically, I try to avoid piano roll editing as much as possible. I would much rather re-record myself playing a midi part on my keyboard than go into the piano roll to edit it.

Rather than add advanced piano roll functions, Bitwig has added Note FX devices. So instead of being able to go into the Piano roll and apply strum to a chord, one would add the Strum Note FX device and it would strum the chords. There are pluses and minuses to this approach and I am sure some people wouldn't like it, but it suits me because it means less need to actually go into the piano roll and because everything done this way is non-destructive and easily tweaked or completely changed.

[spaceman]

FL piano roll has things that other piano rolls dont have, and vice versa. To say a piano roll sucks, or is worse than another is bias and makes no sense.

What is 'best' to most people simply represents familiarity and subjective needs.
So you're right, it's just bias.

[chk071]

Yep, familiarity is highly underrated. It doesn't all have to be the "best". Most of the time, it's more about finding your way through stuff.

That's also why I'm such an advocate for keeping things simple, and avoid bloat. DAW's don't need a gazillion features, it's extremely counterproductive.

[jonljacobi]

Of all those I've used, Live's is the quickest now that I'm used to it. But I mostly play stuff in, then edit, and have a musical background so I don't need a lot of help. It's also two-handed, requiring quite a few keystrokes or modifiers. FL seems to have legions of fans because it offers lots of entry tools and doesn't require the computer keyboard as much.

They're all designed with differing approaches, so like others, I don't think you can call one the most advanced.

[Dionysos]

I'm always surprised that the simple concept of "feel" isn't brought up more commonly in these discussions.

I think this is the number one reason why
FL Studio's piano roll is so popular, way before its offline note editing tools come into play. How "advanced" it is, in terms of pure number of features and capabilities, doesn't even matter that much because the basics work so damn well.

I don't even think this is all that subjective – just like how some video games' controls are really fluid and responsive (think Japanese action games), and some are stiff and clunky (think European RPGs), there's definitely a quantifiable aspect to this.

There are a lot of factors coming into play here:
How precise do you have to be to grab a note or its edges, what are the thresholds for moving a note (does it feel instant and solid or loose/laggy/sticky), how much tool switching is required for common operations, what do notes snap to when you move them (this is usually a preference, but defaults matter), how easy are per-note parameters to adjust, I could go on forever. FL nails a lot of these.

And other DAWs struggle to emulate some of FL's best editing features because they're based on eschewing convention, e.g. when right-clicking doesn't bring up a context menu, but deletes stuff, and does so consistently, with no need to precisely aim for a note, you just right-click and swipe around and you delete stuff.

I think all of this might not be so easy to appreciate if don't do as much direct note editing, or simply got used to, and are productive with a clunky, and maybe much more powerful piano roll. But if you're used to FL and try most other DAW's rolls, the lack of "core interaction polish" can be pretty shocking.

[seangm]

Cubase

[vertibration]

Of all those I've used, Live's is the quickest now that I'm used to it. But I mostly play stuff in, then edit, and have a musical background so I don't need a lot of help. It's also two-handed, requiring quite a few keystrokes or modifiers. FL seems to have legions of fans because it offers lots of entry tools and doesn't require the computer keyboard as much.

They're all designed with differing approaches, so like others, I don't think you can call one the most advanced.

Damn straight. I think its not only that, its also that everthing else in live is fast, so when you combine that with other speedy workflows, and no menu diving, the live piano roll seems faster, it isnt faster, but it seems that way

[Bartone]

So many good points here regarding piano rolls!

If the using of piano roll feels totally wrong it doesn’t really matter how much power there is hidden if you hate using the piano roll. That is very important factor.

You can read manuals and see how much power features some DAW has in its piano roll. But if the feel of using it is totally wrong… Well only way to find out is to try.

[jamcat]

I think Studio One needs Randomize Note Start (it only has Randomize Note Length) and also randomize automation time/value.

That would make creating a string section with SWAM far less labour intensive.

Quantize automation points, and align automation to the nearest MIDI note (for Part Automation) would also be cool.

[sQeetz]

Coming from first FL and then Logic, I'm pretty comfortable with the simplified implementation of the PR in Ableton Live. No more tools. Just edit.

[apoclypse]

Sorry duplicate post

[apoclypse]

I'm always surprised that the simple concept of "feel" isn't brought up more commonly in these discussions.

I think this is the number one reason why
FL Studio's piano roll is so popular, way before its offline note editing tools come into play. How "advanced" it is, in terms of pure number of features and capabilities, doesn't even matter that much because the basics work so damn well.

I don't even think this is all that subjective – just like how some video games' controls are really fluid and responsive (think Japanese action games), and some are stiff and clunky (think European RPGs), there's definitely a quantifiable aspect to this.

There are a lot of factors coming into play here:
How precise do you have to be to grab a note or its edges, what are the thresholds for moving a note (does it feel instant and solid or loose/laggy/sticky), how much tool switching is required for common operations, what do notes snap to when you move them (this is usually a preference, but defaults matter), how easy are per-note parameters to adjust, I could go on forever. FL nails a lot of these.

And other DAWs struggle to emulate some of FL's best editing features because they're based on eschewing convention, e.g. when right-clicking doesn't bring up a context menu, but deletes stuff, and does so consistently, with no need to precisely aim for a note, you just right-click and swipe around and you delete stuff.

I think all of this might not be so easy to appreciate if don't do as much direct note editing, or simply got used to, and are productive with a clunky, and maybe much more powerful piano roll. But if you're used to FL and try most other DAW's rolls, the lack of "core interaction polish" can be pretty shocking.

I was actually thinking the complete opposite. I think it is subjective. To you the "feel" etc is great because you are used to it but to me FL Studios navigation is just too foreign and I always get frustrated when dealing with the Piano Roll in FLStudio. Mostly because of what I would consider non-standard shortcut, modifier keys, and overall interaction. Especially in macOS.

For example in FL Studio uses Ctrl/CMD to select, you have to hold shift + CTRL/CMD to select multiple notes. In most other DAWs the pointer tool is the default tool and you can select things like you would pretty much everywhere else in a standard application. Drag to select multiple notes, click to select specific notes, shift + click to select multiple notes. That interaction is the same in pretty much any DAW I own (Logic, Studio One, Reason, Bitwig, even Maschine and MPC). FL Studio is the odd man out there and it always throws me off.

Then there are other things like the Delete button not doing anything in macOS. On macOS the Delete button on the keyboard is actually Backspace, so you have to hold Fn+Delete for it actually work as intended. No other DAW on my system behaves this way and FL Studio says the shortcut is just Delete. That was frustrating until I figured out what was happening. Still unintuitive and no way to change it in FLStudio (no I'm not going to change it system wide either I don't use FL Studio enough to bother doing that).

Shift being the command to draw notes while letting me change velocity and length seems odd to me. Usually handled by Ctrl/CMD in other DAWs, or in Bitwig, Ableton, S1's case just a double-click to add a note and then extend.

There are many other things that I don't think are "smooth" in regards to FL Studio interaction and workflow.

Personally for me the best PR is either S1 or Logic. A combination of the two would be even better. S1 because macros makes it pretty customizable. It also has zone editing which makes things like slicing etc possible without any modifier or shortcut keys. Logic's PR is great but a lot of functionality is hidden behind cryptic functions keys and a pretty old Midi Transform dialog box (though Transforms are super powerful when you get to know how they work). If you use Logic do yourself a favor and learn or change the shortcuts keys.

[Dionysos]

I was actually thinking the complete opposite. I think it is subjective. To you the "feel" etc is great because you are used to it but to me FL Studios navigation is just too foreign and I always get frustrated when dealing with the Piano Roll in FLStudio. Mostly because of what I would consider non-standard shortcut, modifier keys, and overall interaction.

I think you're somewhat missing my point – standard-compliant interaction is only really important if you're already used to an existing system. While I think that it contributes to the "feel", I think it's a small contribution compared to other aspects that I find more interesting.

For example, I'd say there's an important difference between getting used to a different modifier key for an action, and getting used to different "hit zones" around the edges of small notes. You can eventually get used to both, but a fiddly hit zone will forever be fiddly and require higher attention, while a different keyboard key will soon be muscle memory.

To give a more specific example: In Bitwig, when I move a note, it doesn't look like I'm moving it directly, instead I'm dragging a "preview copy" that follows the cursor, while the original note stays in place, visually unchanged. Only when I release the mouse button does the original note disappear. (In Logic, the original note is at least dimmed to indicate that it's being moved.)

Now I can appreciate the likely reason for this design, but directly moving the note that was clicked and dragged like in FL feels decidedly more "physical" and natural.

Calling the "feel" of something "objectively good or bad" might sound silly, but as a designer I like to think that certain ways of interaction simply feel better and more natural to most people than others. Otherwise there'd be no point ever trying to improve anything, as we'd all easily get used to whatever first attempt at something someone came up with some time ago.

I hope this explains my point a bit better.

[Obsolete187521]

[DELETED]

[HREQ]

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