[Midi]Piano/keyboard piano roll editing whatever you call it midi tips.

[kongwee]

Probably work in all DAW.
Tip on trimming piano or keyboard playing recorded in piano roll.
First,practise hard all time.
Nothing beat the streamlines of real playing.
Ok, you can't then:
1. Arpeggio note can be quantised. Make sure no notes stack on top.
2. Block chords must captured naturally and shift to that block to the correct timing you want.
3. Correct the sustain pedal manually by pencil tool or delete and record again.
4. If the song has a drum/percussion kit backing, use that to record with your playing. The accuracy is far greater than metronome.
5. Grace can manually key in,if you see enough of your real playing in piano roll.
6. Edit velocity to as and when is need.
7. Never let two note or more to be precise on the same timing when it is in solo part. Even 1/960 bpm out is better than nothing.

This is what I can advise. How about you guys.

 

[Cheez]

If you meant midi for piano playing, I would say NEVER quantize. In fact, I have sequenced an entire piece with the timing turned off totally (no metronome) and played entirely rubato. Editing will be a little messier since playing rubato means notes don't fall into the correct measures any longer. There's basically no time-signature. But it gives very good realistic playing particularly if the piece is slow with lots of rubato instances. OK for solo piano. But if you add in other instruments, sequencing is entirely based on listening rather than on notation or piano-roll view - since locating the correct parts for editing/sequencing is not so easy any longer.

Occasionally, however, I would edit wrong notes (ie additional notes by mistakes - which can be easily deleted). I wouldn't change velocity. And I agree - practice till you are perfect before sequencing.

If you really want to cheat (ie very fast passages that's technically too difficult for you to play) - then I would suggest:

1. Still practice very hard to avoid wrong notes.
2. Turn on metronome. Rubato wouldn't help in these instances
3. Slow down the tempo during sequencing
4. Play the difficult passage in slow tempo
5. Increase tempo after playing to check.
6. Still DON'T quantize!

Once you quantize, everythine becomes robotic. Same for block chords. It's the little off-timing that makes it realistic.

The only thing I often quantize is drums. Everything else is almost never quantized.

However for electronic music, things changes. If you are doing electronic music, quantization is probably used more often for arpeggios. I would, however, use an arpeggiator. And with revolving patches, quantization is also not a key issue.

 

[Cheez]

One more thing about electronic music sequencing - consider using the step sequencer.

 

[kongwee]

Other method is separate left and right hand playing. In this case, you could fake duets too, it is common in pop song too. A full accompaniment playing with a melody line on top.

For me velocity editing is common too.
It make no sense to play again if a few note is too loud.
Left hand note I will edit velocity in block to make way for bass instrument.
Only put down 3-6 step down, orelse EQ the piano.
High quality plug-in EQ has a phase shift when adjusting the bandwidth.
This is real in all analog mixer since they use LCR to make all bandwidth control.
It may be a good or bad thing depend on you.
Also, I will pull a phase of piano up and down rather than using automation when there is other instrument coming in.
If the velocity switching is too great then automation is the next solution.

 

[kongwee]

One more thing about electronic music sequencing - consider using the step sequencer.

Open other topic for it loh. It is a very big topic since it is not just sampler alone.

 

[widdly]

If you are using Live, you can unlink the length of midi modulation loops from the notes loops. So you can, for example, have a 4 bar loop of notes with a 3 bar loop of modulation wheel and a 5 bar loop of aftertouch. If the mod wheel and aftertouch are mapped to something interesting in your synth like say envelope decay and filter cutoff you will get a looping sound with a lot of variation that doesn't repeat for 60 bars.

 

[l0u5y]

what do u all do for arpeggiation?

 

[kongwee]

For Logic is too bad, there is no arpeggiator. It seem to be that this function is not include in all DAW. It is plug in specific most of the time. For me I will just key in one by one when I'm not in my own keyboard. It is time consuming like 15 min to edit a bar, but no choice.

 

[Cheez]

Sonar has an arpeggiator. I'm sure if your DAW doesn't have it, you can find license-free plugin arpeggiators.