Most producers don’t use an entire piano’s worth of samples in a piano roll, so this feature helps to minimise the space taken up by the notes, especially when drum programming. Another great use for this is to draw some notes in before the start of a clip (before 1.1.1) that belong to a desired scale or key. All the 'editor' windows in FL Studio, the Piano roll, Playlist and Event Editor have a background 'grid' that represents beats and or time. Depending on the zoom level, more or less lines will show (but they are still there in the background). This allows you to line-up all your beats, notes and events to the same time or beat.

1. Piano Roll Fl Studio 20
2. Fl Studio Piano Roll Notes Not Playing
3. Fl Studio Piano Roll Notes Disappeared
4. Fl Studio Piano Roll Show Notes Sheet Music

Show next property in the Piano Roll event lane (lower section) M. Toggle Keyboard view m ode. Toggle P o rtamento. Pla y back tool. Bypass snap (very useful when combined with other modifiers) Alt + A. View note helpers. Change c olor of selected notes. Press the Play button - FL Studio will play the project and record any note events received from your controller keyboard. When recording it's generally a good idea to turn on the Recording Countdown feature so that you have at least one bar lead-in metronome. Where is my note data stored? Generally note/score data is saved to a Piano roll.

With FL Studio 12 the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll have been more closely integrated making it a smoother transition when working between these windows. In this article let's take a look at the updates to these two windows and how they interrelate.

Step Sequencer Length

First up, the Step Sequencer window's updates. It’s super easy now to extend the length of the step sequencer notes. You can just drag the bottom right corner out. You’ll see greyed out extra steps. Now click on this grey area and it’ll activate the steps to extend the sequencer length.

And another thing to point out: the Step Sequencer is now called the Channel Rack in FL Studio 12, which makes sense as it houses the different channels in your song. And on each channel you have a sequencer. So that's a bit of history on how the name has evolved. But I'll stick to calling it the Step Sequencer for the remainder of the article, as I'll be explaining the step sequence process that it can provide.

Step Sequencer and Piano Roll Interaction

Now let’s see how the Piano Roll integrates with the Step Sequencer. Make sure both the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll windows are open. You can use the shortcuts to open them, F6 to open the Step Sequencer, and F7 to open the Piano Roll. Now let’s program in a simple pattern on the step sequencer. We'll use the default kick channel. Maybe use the default drums (Kick, Snare, Clap, Hats) as an example. As you program in the pattern notice how they appear in the Piano Roll. Draw in a kick on every fourth beat.

Notice how as your program in the kicks on the step sequencer how they appear in the piano roll now. Previously you had to first program the pattern, and then send the pattern to the piano roll. So now in FL Studio 12 this process is simplified and more streamlined. Now program in a different pattern on the kick channel on the step sequencer. Remove some of the notes, and place extra notes elsewhere on the sequence. See how on the piano roll the notes you removed are muted, and the new notes are placed on the piano roll.

This is a great for testing out different patterns, and the piano roll still retains the previous ideas, if you want to switch back to them.

Now draw in a Hat hit on every 16th note. In the Piano roll, you can switch between each channel track. Next to the tools on the Piano roll you’ll see a text saying Piano Roll, and then the name of the channel. Click on the name to switch to a different channel.

Visual Markers and Step Sequencer Length

Another way that the step sequencer and piano roll interrelate is with the new time markers and visual markers. Let me show you first how to add a visual marker and then how this affects the step sequencer.

Choose a channel in the piano roll. Then go to the Piano Roll drop-down menu option in the top left, then scroll down to Time Markers, and choose Add one, or you can use the shortcut Alt-T. This will create a Time Marker, and you can give it a name.

Now right-click on this marker and change it to a visual length marker. Free serial key.

Grab this Visual length marker and move it around, and take note how this changes the length of your sequencer in the Channel rack as well. So you can see another way that these two windows are linked. And this works on a global level, so no matter what channel you have chosen, this visual length marker will change the length globally of your song. Hello neighbor alpha four.

Now let’s look at some extra updates to the step sequencer.

Piano Roll Fl Studio 20

Step Sequencer Swing

Before FL Studio 12 you had a global swing parameter that you could add to your channel tracks. But now you can set the swing value per channel track. To do this, you first need to set your global swing value for the channels. So for example let’s set the global swing to 100%.

Now double-click a channel to open up its channel settings window. And click on the Miscellaneous Functions tab.

Here the swing parameter is set by default to 100%. Drag this all the way to 0 and there will be no swing, now dial it up to the right and hear how it introduces swing for that channel track.

So you can set a global swing value and then dial in on each channel track how much you want that track to swing in comparison to the global swing setting. How cool is that?

Interactive Step Sequence / Piano Roll Overview

Fl Studio Piano Roll Notes Not Playing

The last thing I want to look at is how to change the step sequencer so that it shows you an overview of the piano roll. On the Step Sequencer click on the button on the top right. This will change your step patterns to the Piano Roll Overview.

Now when you click on the overview for each channel, it'll switch to that channel in the piano roll window. So this is a simple way to jump between these when your song starts getting quite busy. It's really fast to use.

Conclusion

Fl Studio Piano Roll Notes Disappeared

We've looked at the new updates to the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll and the interactions between the two windows. Getting familiar with these changes can really help your workflow. These new linked windows help you navigate between your step sequencer patterns and the different channel tracks, so really make use of them.

For further FL Studio tips and tricks, check out the following tutorials:

Fl Studio Piano Roll Show Notes Sheet Music