Hey guys, in this video we’re going to look at creating MIDI with the piano roll in Presonus
Studio One 4.
This is part of our complete tutorial series on using this digital audio workstation, so
if you haven’t checked out the other videos yet I suggest doing that first.
In the previous videos, we’ve already covered setting up the program and recording and editing
audio.
Also before we start, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and press the bell icon to
get notified whenever our videos come out.
There’s two main ways to work with MIDI in Studio One.
The first way is to draw MIDI notes out on the piano roll.
The second way is to record it using a MIDI device.
In this video, we’ll be working with MIDI completely within Studio One, so you won’t
need a MIDI device to follow along.
We’ll be covering how to use a MIDI device in the next video.
To get started, we need to add a new instrument track.
This is done the same way as we added an audio track in the previous video.
Right click on the left side of the screen and select Add Instrument Track.
We want to select an instrument track instead of a MIDI track since it’s easier for us
to add a single instrument on that track and it’s a little easier overall for now, since
we won’t have to deal with connecting multiple tracks together.
With our track added, we need a MIDI clip on that track so that we can add MIDI events,
which the virtual instrument we add later will play as sound.
Go to the top menu and select the icon that looks as like a pencil.
This is the paint tool, and we’ll use it to add the MIDI clip.
Click and drag along the MIDI track to draw in a new clip.
From there, we can switch back to our main mouse mode on the left.
Now you can adjust the length of the MIDI clip and the position by clicking and dragging
the ends, just like we did with an audio clip last time.
Before we can go ahead and actually start drawing out MIDI notes, it’s important to
be able to hear the notes we’re adding in.
We’ll need to use a virtual instrument to do this.
Studio One Prime has a free instrument called Presence built in with a bunch of different
instrument presets to use.
You’ll get more tools like this and can add your own if you’re using the full version,
or you can stick with this synth depending on your needs.
To add the instrument, we can find it on the right side of our screen.
If you’re not seeing this section of the window, press the Browse button in the very
bottom right corner of the program to bring it up.
Use the top menu to switch to Instruments.
Open the Presonus dropdown, then the Presence dropdown.
Under Artist Instruments, you can select a type of instrument then preset.
Click and drag one of these presets onto your MIDI track to get started.
Let’s start with Classic Kit under Drum Kits.
This is just a simple drum kit.
You’ll see a popup window for the instrument come up with some settings we can use.
If we close this window, we can press the little keyboard icon on the instrument track
to bring it back up again.
We won’t be able to go into detail into how to adjust a lot of the instrument controls
from this video series, since they can be complicated to work with, but there’s a
lot of controls for changing the timing of the sounds, and adding effects that you can
play around with.
For most people, I recommend starting with the presets and making small adjustments to
the settings, then gradually learn how to adjust the instrument, but don’t stress
too much about that when just learning how to use Studio One.
If you click the keyboard on that plugin with your mouse, you should be able to hear the
sounds from the instrument.
This will let you know that it’s working properly.
At this point, you now have a blank MIDI clip on your instrument track and a virtual instrument
setup.
Let’s look at how we can add MIDI events now.
Double click on the MIDI clip that we’ve created.
This will open the piano roll view in the bottom.
We can click and drag on the top line of this piano roll to expand it upwards, and if we
want to close it again after we can use the X button at the top right of the piano roll.
Within the piano roll window, we’ll start by switching to the draw tool.
Then click and drag on the piano roll grid to add MIDI notes.
You should hear the note as you’re adding it.
The notes will snap to the grid, and we can change the note resolution under the Quantize
dropdown.
Clicking on a note that is already added will delete it.
To delete a bunch of notes, we can change back to the select tool, then click and drag
to highlight the notes, and press the delete key on the keyboard to delete the selected
notes.
We can also use this tool to drag selected notes.
We can also zoom in and out on the piano roll in the bottom right corner.
If our goal is to program a song in a certain key, we can select it on the side, such as
to a C major scale.
The default is set to C chromatic, which just means that all notes are available.
The left side also gives the default velocity for the notes.
To change the velocity of the notes, we can see all the velocity bars along the bottom
of the piano roll.
Drag these bars up to increase the velocity, or down to decrease the velocity.
With your MIDI notes inputted, you can use the play button and navigate buttons in the
bottom center of the screen to listen back to everything, and you can still click on
the timeline like last time to snap to a certain point and play it back from there.
This is just the basics of what can be done with MIDI in Studio One, but we’ve covered
a lot of the features that will allow you to get started to make music with MIDI.
Now you can go ahead and experiment with inserting notes, combining different notes together
to make chords in a synthesizer or a drum beat, and add a few different virtual instruments
together to make a song.
In the next video, we’ll look at the second way to use MIDI in Studio One, and that’s
with a USB MIDI keyboard, which will allow us to record MIDI and edit it after.
Thanks for checking out this video on MIDI editing and the piano roll in Presonus Studio
One.
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