Piano Roll
The Piano Roll is Sonic Vein Studio's dedicated MIDI editor. It displays notes on a piano roll grid and lets you precisely edit notes and other events, including velocity, pitch bend, MIDI CC, articulations, tempo, and time signatures.
The Piano Roll is Sonic Vein Studio's dedicated MIDI editor. It displays notes on a piano roll grid and lets you precisely edit notes and other events, including velocity, pitch bend, MIDI CC, articulations, tempo, and time signatures.
The Piano Roll can open in a separate window or in the lower workspace panel. The embedded panel lets you keep the track list in view while accessing the editor's functions.
Note
All editing operations support undo and redo. A continuous Brush stroke or a drag affecting multiple selected objects is grouped into one undo operation. Batch edits across clips are also grouped into a single undo operation.
The editor uses two data layers: a user layer and an AI-rendered layer. User edits take precedence over AI-generated content at the corresponding positions. Turning off a clip's AI switch does not delete your manual edits.
1. Piano Roll window layout
The Piano Roll window contains areas for editing MIDI notes, controller events, articulations, and timing parameters. Most panels can be shown or hidden using the window layout button in the toolbar.
Top toolbar: provides the Selection, Pencil, Brush, Eraser, Mute, and Scissors tools, as well as playback follow, grid snapping, grid display mode, and grid division settings.
Time ruler: shows bar and beat positions and the current playhead position.
Time signature lane: creates and edits time signature events at different positions.
Tempo lane: creates and edits BPM curves.
Clip lane: shows the time range and information for the current clip. Drag a clip's edges to resize it; the editing area updates accordingly. This area also supports switching, adding, and managing instruments. The AI rendering status bar on a clip shows the regions and status of AI performance generation for the focused clip.
Note canvas: edits note pitch, start position, duration, and mute state, and supports operations such as splitting notes.
Piano keyboard on the left: shows pitches and lets you audition them by clicking the keys.
Dynamic controller lane area: edits note velocity, pitch bend, MIDI CC, articulations, and other controller events.
Scroll and zoom controls: adjusts the visible editing range using horizontal and vertical scrollbars and zoom controls.
2. Left-side panels
2.1 Clip Editor
The Clip Editor selects, locates, and manages clips in the Piano Roll and controls what is displayed and available for editing.
Clip selection
The following clip selection scopes are available:
All clips: includes all clips in the editing scope.
Active clip: edits only the currently active clip.
All clips on the active track: includes every clip on the active track in the editing scope.
Editor display options
Pin editor content: keeps the editor's content fixed so it does not automatically change when the active clip changes.
Show clip boundaries: controls the display of clip boundaries to help identify each clip's time range.
Track and clip search
Search for tracks and clips to quickly locate content in projects with many tracks or clips.
Active clip navigation
Use the Previous Clip and Next Clip buttons to switch between clips and locate the content you want to edit.
Visibility selection and editing multiple clips
Visibility selection lets you add other clips to the current Piano Roll editing view.
Selected clips appear together in the Clip lane, and their MIDI notes appear together on the note canvas for direct editing.
For example, to edit the Serum and Piano clips together, add both through visibility selection. Their MIDI notes then appear in the same Piano Roll, letting you view, adjust, and edit both clips on a shared timeline without repeatedly switching between them.
2.2 Quantize panel
The Quantize panel sets note quantization rules and parameters to adjust note timing, duration, and rhythmic feel.
Basic options
Auto Apply: controls whether quantization settings are applied automatically.
Soft Quantize: controls how closely quantized notes align to the target grid. When enabled, quantize strength adjusts the degree of alignment.
Quantization parameters
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Strength (0–100) | Controls the intensity of quantization. |
Note value | Sets the note value used for quantization. |
Tuplets | Sets the tuplet grid or tuplet note value for quantization. |
Swing (0–100%) | Adjusts the swing of the quantization grid to create different rhythmic feels. |
Snap (0–100%) | Adjusts how closely notes move toward their target grid positions. |
Safe range (ticks) | Sets the safe range for quantization in ticks. |
Random offset (ticks) | Adds random timing offsets within a range to avoid overly mechanical alignment. |
3. MIDI editing shortcut toolbar
In the Piano Roll, hold the right mouse button to open the MIDI editing shortcut toolbar. It includes the Selection, Pencil, Brush, Eraser, Mute, and Scissors tools.
How to use it
Hold the right mouse button in the Piano Roll editing area to display the shortcut toolbar.
Keep the button held and move the pointer to the tool you want.
Release the right mouse button to select that tool.
This lets you quickly switch editing tools without accessing the top toolbar, making it easier to perform different editing operations in succession.