Probably for what you want there really isn't a best piano roll.I've been writing a jazz keyboard solo and trying to make it sound realistic. Most DAWs just have a pencil and an eraser tool for writing on the piano roll. Whilst this most basic toolset is all that's needed to write music, it would be nice to have other tools as well that help us get the job done faster without head scratching.
Look at Photoshop that has all kinds of different brushes and erasers. The different brushes in Photoshop pretty much act like presets and draw lines with customized shapes. You can draw the same lines with just the basic brush but it will take you much longer.
How about pen tool that only draws notes with the tiny timing variations, pitch and loudness inflections that give jazz music its feel? How about a tool for writing notes that have certain probabilities and conditions?
For minor imperfections, you might be better just turning off the grid and painting them by hand (or playing them by hand).
Almost every sequencer has a Groove Quantize feature as well (or some alternative form of this).
Piano Rolls are personal things. Many people love FL Studio (a few hate it), same with Cubase, Logic (or insert your favorite or shittiest DAW). Some piano rolls that are known for being notorious, you always have the few people who love those workflows and claim it to be the best thing since sliced bread.
Problem is that everybody use Piano Rolls for slightly different reasons, so try to get opinions from people who are doing what you are doing.
Me, I use them less for melodies and general basic editing/note correction or for writing drums, so I love Ableton's simplistic piano roll (but that is just me as many people hate Ableton here).
Statistics: Posted by jlgrimes11 — Thu Jan 16, 2025 10:40 pm