ardour-tutorial/content/editing-sessions/editing-midi-regions/index.en.md

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title = "Editing MIDI regions"
chapter = false
weight = 10
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Almost all the MIDI editing happens in the _Internal Edit_ mode (**E**
shortcut). The vast majority of the work there involves tweaking position and
duration of notes, adjusting velocity, and editing automation. Ardour provides
tools to edit these settings both interactively and numerically.

So let's review available tool and then do a quick exercise.

Most of the editing assumes having at least one note selected in a MIDI region.
We'll start with selecting notes.

## Selecting notes

There are multiple ways to select notes in the _Internal Edit_ mode, it really
depends on what you want to do.

To select one note, just single-click it. To add another note to the
selection, press and hold **Ctrl**, then click that note. To remove a note
from the selection, again, press and hold **Ctrl**, then click it.

If you need to extend an existing selection to another note and include all
notes inbetween, press and hold **Shift**, then click the note that you want
to extend the selection to.

To select multiple adjucent notes, you can do a regular rubberband selection.
Move the mouse pointer to a blank part of the canvas that is close to those
notes, press and hold the left mouse button, then drag the mouse to "draw" a
rectangular area. All notes inside that area will be selected. Release the
mouse button to complete the selection.

{{< figure src="en/rubberband-selection.png" alt="Rubberband selection" >}}

Finally, if you need to select all notes, just press **Ctrl+A**.

Once you selected multiple notes, you can mass-edit them in various ways.

## Editing start and end of notes

To edit the start or the end of the note, hover an edge of a note until you
see the mouse pointer change its icon. Then press and hold the left mouse
button, drag left or right to edit, release the mouse button to confirm the
edit.

Snapping options apply here, when snapping is enabled. Moreover, if multiple
notes are selected, they all will be shrunk or extended.

{{< figure src="en/drag-note-ends.png" alt="Drag note ends" >}}

Quantization effectively means adjusting start and end times of notes in a way
that makes them snap to a grid of your choice. It is something you will
probably use after real-time recording. Ardour provides some flexibility when
applying quantization: you can snap to grid just the starts, just the ends, or
both.

Another command that effectively adjusts the duration of notes is _Legatize_.
When you have two notes that begin at different positions on the timeline,
_Legatize_ adjusts the end of the note that begins earlier so that it ends
exactly where the second note begins. This might mean either expanding or
shrinking the duration of the the earlier note:

{{< figure src="en/legatize.png" alt="legatize" >}}

As you can see, the first note is expanded to join the second one, and second
one is shrunk to join the third one, and the third one is expanded to join the
fourth one.

## Shifting and transposing notes

You can shift and/or transpose selected notes by just pressing arrow keys on
your keyboard. Alternatively, you can hover the middle of one of the selected
nodes, press the left mouse button, hold it and then drag the selection
left/right or up/down (or both).

You can also transpose by a given amount of octaves and semitones in one go.
Left-click on the region where some notes are selected, choose _Transpose..._.
Then specify the amount of octaves and semitones to transpose by.

{{< figure src="en/transpose.png" alt="Transpose MIDI notes" >}}

## Editing velocity

Ardour uses two ways to represent a note's velocity: through color coding and
through a 2D chart.

{{< figure src="en/velocities.png" alt="Velocities" >}}

The paler the note and the shorter the dark line inside the note, the lower the
velocity. A deep red note and the dark line going through the entire note mean
the velocity is at (on near) its maximum value.

To quickly change a note's velocity, hover its middle on the canvas, then start
scrolling the mouse wheel up and down to change the velocity value. When
multiple notes are selected, each will receive the same amount of adjustment. So
you can select, let's say, 3 notes at 25, 50, and 100 velocity values
respectively, increment each one by 20, and end up with notes that have 45, 70,
and 120 for velocities.

{{< figure src="en/velocity-tooltip.png" alt="Velocity tooltip" >}}

A simple way to numerically change velocity (as well as MIDI channel, pitch, and
position) is to use the note's properties dialog. Right-click on a note or
multiple notes, then select _Edit…_.

{{< figure src="en/note-properties.png" alt="Editing note properties" >}}

If multiple notes have been selected, you can mass-change them to the same
value. For that enable the _Set selected notes to this velocity_ option before
applying changes.


## Editing example start to end

Let's have a look at this quick real-time performance capture.

{{< figure src="en/example-original.png" alt="" >}}

Even without listening to it, a few things stand out:

- wrong start times;
- wrong durations;
- velocity all over the place.

Let's fix it and start with positions and durations.

1. Press **E** to switch to the _Internal Edit_ mode.
Rubberband-select all visible notes.

{{< figure src="en/example-select-all.png" alt="" >}}

2. Right-click, select _Quantize_, use 1/8 or Main Grid for note starts and
ends, because in this case, it's the same thing.

{{< figure src="en/example-quantize-dialog.png" alt="" >}}

This is already much better:

{{< figure src="en/example-quantize-result.png" alt="" >}}

But there are some overlapping notes.

3. Right-click and select _Legatize_.

{{< figure src="en/example-legatize.png" alt="" >}}

4. Press **Arrow Left** key just once to shift all selected notes by one grid
unit so that they start right at the beginning of the bar:

{{< figure src="en/example-shift-left.png" alt="" >}}

Positions are all fine now. But there's more.

5. It's time to cleanup velocity. Select all notes but the first one in each of
the two bars. You can do that by pressing **Ctrl+A**, then using **Ctrl-click**
twice to deselect first notes in both bars. Or you can rubber-band select the
first portion, then press and hold **Shift** and add the second portion.

{{< figure src="en/example-select-all-but-firsts.png" alt="" >}}

6. Right-click, select _Transform_. We need to set this to more or less the same
lower velocity, let's say, 60. So we set Velocity, we set it to an exact value,
and we use 60:

{{< figure src="en/example-transform-all-60.png" alt="" >}}

This, again, much better:

{{< figure src="en/example-now-all-60.png" alt="" >}}

But it's going to sound a little too robotic if we keep it that way.

7. Let's call the _Transform_ dialog again and add a tiny bit of random
variation:

{{< figure src="en/example-transform-variation-56-to-64.png" alt="" >}}

Given the small range of the variation, the difference won't be very visible.
But if you hover individual notes, you'll see that notes' velocities are now
somewhere between 56 and 64.

8. Finally, click the first note of the first bar and use mouse wheel scrolling
to set its velocity to 82, then repeat for the first note of the second bar. You
will now how a regular velocity pattern where the first note of each bar sounds
louder than the rest of the notes in each bar.

{{< figure src="en/example-regular-velocity-pattern.png" alt="" >}}

## Continuing

This was the last chapter of the _Editing Regions_ section. Next we go into
_Mixing_.

Next: [MIXING SESSIONS](../../mixing-sessions/the-mixer-strip/)

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