Ever wondered what the difference is between the Piano Roll and the Event List when it comes to editing or manipulating mIDI notes and events. This tutorial discuss the basics of how each works and just how similar they can in the end.
The Event List is laid out like a table. Each row in the table as you navigate with VO Up and Down, is a MIDI Note or event. As you VO Left/Right across the different columns, you will find information on said note or MIDI event, like it’s position in the time line, which note it is, it’s velocity and it’s length.
For some time now the event list has been a bit of a hassle to use with VoiceOver, mostly due to it sounding the note every time you navigate and VoiceOver speaks. If you are still using default VoiceOver settings it will most likely sound the note multiple times as it will not only sound the note when you navigate to each item with VoiceOver, but again when VoiceOver’s hints speak as well. There will be a tutorial on how you can minimize this by disabling all the VoiceOver hints.
The Piano Roll is laid out from left to right like a piano keyboard. As you navigate with left and right arrows it sounds the notes in the order they appear. If you have Logic Magician enabled, you can set it to also speak the note name, or velocity value as you navigate with left and right arrows. In the tutorial its set to speak the note name. You can also disable this feature inLogic Magician so it only sounds the note and doesn’t speak like it does when Logic Magician is disabled. If you navigate with VO Left and Right arrows it will speak the position of the note and the name of the note without sounding the note. Logic Magician also enhances a lot more functionality of the Piano Roll by adding the ability to quickly hear and adjust velocity among other parameters efficiently. For everything you can do with Logic Magician in the Piano Roll, see the Piano Roll section in the Logic Magician documentation. You can download your copy on the Logic Magician page.
Ultimately, when to use the Piano Roll vs the Event List, really comes down to workflow and which one you prefer. Most anything you can do in one you can do in the other. As of this writing and tutorial being recorded, if you want to easily edit non note MIDI DATA, like sustain pedal info, you may want to use the Event List, but for most other tasks, it really comes down to user preference. However, lately with Logic Magician enhancements, It’s usually the piano roll for me.
There are however reasons you may want to use the Event List over The Piano Roll and we’ll cover that in the next tutorial.
If you got any questions about working with or editing MIDI data, then check out this playlist of Piano Roll tutorials.
