If you’re wanting to learn how to edit notes in FL Studio’s Piano Roll, this video reveals my midi note editing secrets!

Remember, my FL Studio courses contain more secrets!

How to Edit Notes in FL Studio’s Piano Roll
Note – This is an older tutorial, but incredibly relevant.

How to Edit Notes in FL Studio’s Piano Roll

If you are brand-new to FL Studio, today you’ll learn the power of MIDI Notes.. (I teach you more in my SAFE SPOTS Drum Loop training).

Did you know MIDI IS FREE.. and is more powerful than most plugins?

Quick History: MIDI is a standard that MUSIC COMPANIES follow, which consumers benefit from! Producers mainly use MIDI for triggering Virtual Instruments, however, MIDI is also popular in the lighting world for concerts! (Fun fact!)

Most people don’t realize how powerful MIDI Notes are, and look towards expensive plugins hoping that is their solution.

(For example, if your audio loop had a note that was too loud, most people would grab a compressor.. but this is an easy fix with MIDI.. you adjust velocity of that single note! A compressor would be unnecessary, and could change how your audio sounds unintentionally!)

Let me share some FL Studio Piano Roll Shortcuts to give you an amazing experience.

You may like: Why I Choose FL Studio as my DAW.

FL Studio Piano Roll Shortcuts

These Piano Roll shortcuts will teach you how to nudge your notes, adjust velocity (kind of like volume), and do this with multiple notes at a time.

Before we get into shortcuts, I’ll explain how MIDI brings us benefit, which most people teaching music production don’t talk about (and tell you about another plugin to buy…)

What Parameters Does MIDI Have?

When I mentioned my SAFE SPOTS training above, there’s two parts to SAFE SPOTS.

  • Sound Placement
  • ORGANIC TOOLS

Sound Placement is learning about TIMING. It’s where we can place notes for them to sound good, and be in time.

ORGANIC TOOLS are the FREE MIDI TOOLS available in any DAW.

These ORGANIC TOOLS are the secrets that you need to master.. they are boring, so people overlook them, but they are the FUNDAMENTALS, and will turn you into a GREAT PRODUCER.

Here’s some benefits ORGANIC TOOLS provide us:

  • Velocity
  • Panning
  • Layering
  • Note-Nudging

Here’s an image I have provided to see how easily we can adjust velocity of a single note. (YOU CANNOT DO THIS WITH AN AUDIO RECORDING)

This is why MIDI is the most powerful tool as a producer:

How to Adjust MIDI Note Velocity in FL Studio's Piano Roll
How to Adjust MIDI Note Velocity in FL Studio’s Piano Roll
Notice the other “Note properties” like pan and pitch!

If you’re not clearly seeing how powerful MIDI is yet, then let me reveal this.

When audio is recorded into a file, it is permanent. You cannot change anything in this audio file without a plugin, or an automation clip. (A volume automation clip would still alter the previous note’s tail in a audio file..)

An audio recording is actually very hard to work with, and requires much heavier processing when it comes to using EQ while mixing, or applying compression to music!

So in short, an audio recording gives less flexibility for high-quality audio than MIDI.

Did you know Virtual Instruments are the highest-quality audio we can achieve in music production?

The MIDI Notes we program trigger our Virtual Instruments, which provides the absolute highest quality audio you can possibly get in audio production.

This is because a virtual instrument does not suffer from the weaknesses of recording like the sound of the room, background noise or self-noise hiss, and distortion!

All of these problems are remedied when using a Virtual Instrument (MIDI).. isn’t that amazing? Who else has ever taught you that? 🙂

Check out my FL Studio Membership to get more training.

Understanding MIDI is the core fundamentals of music production, are ARE A MUST TO MASTER, if you truly want to become a good producer.

Others look towards fancy plugins, and don’t realize the harm of many plugins, or don’t know the secrets of MIDI.. Be careful of their advice, it could be costly!

Now to our Piano Roll Shortcuts for FL Studio:

ALT + Scroll Wheel

First, open your Piano Roll and click in a couple notes to follow along.

To highlight multiple sounds, you just press CTRL + LEFT-CLICK.

By using CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT-CLICK you can add more sounds to your already highlighted notes. (You can de-select individual notes with CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT-CLICK as well).

I focus on Velocity and Note-Nudging in these shortcuts.

To learn more, my SAFE SPOTS Drum Loop Training teaches these MIDI Secrets in-depth (There’s a book and course).

Hover your mouse over a MIDI Note, and use ALT + Scroll Wheel to adjust a single note’s velocity.

If you highlight multiple notes, you can adjust velocity of all notes at a time!

SHIFT + Scroll Wheel

Using SHIFT + Scroll Wheel you can NUDGE a note, which adjusts its timing.

This is very important to get a human sound to your music, otherwise your music will suffer from the digital music sound, which is why people have hated digital music over the years.

Note nudging is one of the biggest secrets of creating extremely catchy and emotional music, because timing is EVERYTHING when it comes to programming MIDI Notes.

Wrapping Up: How to Edit Notes in FL Studio’s Piano Roll

So I hope you enjoyed the video.. I revealed so many pro-tips for a FAST WORKFLOW when editing midi notes in the piano roll.

Adjusting velocity and note-nudging (FREE) can be more powerful plugins.. can you believe that!

That’s just a taste of these ORGANIC TOOLS (the free MIDI Tools available to us.. do you really know how to use them?)

I highly encourage you to read my SAFE SPOTS Book, or take my SAFE SPOTS Course.

The difference is KNOWING how to do things.. it will give you the best result as a producer.

Audio recordings have their place, but Virtual Instruments give us the highest-quality we can humanly possibly hear.

Don’t get tricked out there. Having too many sounds and plugins will only hurt you over time with all the updates and changes to software over your years.

It’s all about having high quality drum kits, and high quality plugins so you don’t need to have so many! The tools you have should allow you to control all aspects of your audio, and your sounds should give you the versatility to be a well-rounded producer.

This allows you to keep it simple, your wallet to remain fatter (save money), and keep music making FUN.

Try my FL Studio Membership to access all of my Beatmaking Courses!

Leave a comment below with questions, or contact GratuiTous directly.