Working with multiple tracks in the Piano Roll view

You can view as many tracks as you want in the Piano Roll view. When you display several tracks at the same time in the Piano Roll view, you control which track(s) you can see and/or edit by using the buttons in the Track List pane. To show or hide the Track List pane, click the Piano Roll view View menu and choose Show/Hide Track Pane.

If you want to edit the data in a track, you must make the track you want to edit the current track. The name of the current track appears highlighted in the Track List pane. The following shows three tracks in the Track List pane:

A. Track’s data shown in Notes pane B. Track’s data hidden in Notes pane C. Mute D. Track enabled for track editing E. Solo F. Arm G. Track disabled for track editing H. Output I. Current track

To make a track the current track in the Track List pane, click on the track. When a thin dotted line surrounds the track, it is the current track.

Tip: Clicking a note will make the note’s parent track the current track.

The following is a list of ways to optimize the multiple track functionality in the Piano Roll view.

Selecting tracks to view

To assign tracks to the Track List pane, click the Piano Roll view Tracks menu and choose Pick Tracks. Click on a track name to select it. Hold down the CTRL key and click more track names to select additional tracks. To show the next or previous track, click the Piano Roll view Tracks menu and choose Show Previous Track or Show Next Track. Selecting Show Previous Track(s) moves the track or range of tracks down by one track number. Selecting Show Next Track(s) moves the track or range of tracks up by one track number. For example, if you have tracks 2, 3 and 7 displayed in the Track List pane and you select Show Previous Track(s), the Track List pane displays tracks 1, 2, and 6.

Display

If the notes of two tracks overlap, the notes of the topmost track in the Track List pane appear over the notes of the other track. You can move a track up or down by in the Track List pane by clicking and holding on the track and moving the track to the desired position.

All tracks ending in the same digit (2, 12, 22, etc.) share the same color. The default colors can be changed using Edit > Preferences > Customization - Colors.

The Enable/Disable Track Editing button

The Enable/Disable Track Editing button sets whether or not you can edit the notes of a track in the Piano Roll view. When the button appears white, editing is enabled and the track appears in color. When the button appears gray, editing is disabled and the track appears in gray.

Note: The Enable/Disable Track Editing button only disables the Piano Roll view tools; other editing commands are still operational.

The Show/Hide Track button

The Show/Hide Track button controls whether or not a track appears in the Notes pane. The button appears in color when toggled on, white when off.

The Invert Tracks button

If you use the Show/Hide Track button to hide any tracks in the Track List pane, you can show all these tracks and hide the ones that are currently displayed by selecting Tracks > Invert Tracks.

 

See:

Note names