comparing midi tracks in sequencers

Most sequencers these days display midi or note data in 'piano roll' format, with notes up the side and time running horizontally. I spend most of my music-making time fiddling with sets of notes on the piano roll, and I've come to realise that there is a very important feature that a lot of piano roll sequencers don't have.

Read on ...Imagine that you have two tracks of note data, one that is driving a lead synth and one that is driving a bassline synth. If you are editing the notes for the lead synth, it would be very useful to also display and edit the notes for the bassline synth at the same time. To do that, you need a sequencer that can display two or more piano-roll tracks of midi/note data at the same time and let you edit them. Ideally they should be vertically stacked on top of each other, with the same timescale so that you can easily see which notes coincide.

Some sequencers just can't do this at all. Some can do it, but only if you position the windows yourself and get all the scales right. Some can do it very well, with lots of good features.

The other alternative, of course, is to keep flicking between the two tracks, while remembering that you changed an F# to a D and a C to an A#, and then trying to do something musically equivalent in the other track. The more I think about it, the more it seems that 'multiple piano roll editing' (lets call it) is a fundamentally important feature if you compose music inside a sequencer.

So here's a quick survey of some sequencers I have investigated or that people have told me about:

Reason

Reason can't do it. It only displays one piano roll at a time, so you have to flick back and forth.

Ableton Live

Ableton can't do it. It also only displays one piano roll at a time.

Reaper

Reaper is a very competent shareware sequencer. It is noted for its unlimited free fully featured evaluation period. In Reaper you can open multiple piano-roll editors at the same time, and if you position the windows correctly you can get the desired 'stacking' of piano rolls.

Reaper can also ReWire to Reason or Ableton, which makes it very useful.

EnergyXT2

EnergyXT2 is an efficient little sequencer that can be downloaded for 50 euros. In the 'track view' mode of the main sequencer, you can activate a mini piano roll for each midi track. See the picture opposite for a screenshot. You can also bring up a larger piano roll window for one track at a time if you need to. Alas, EnergyXT does not have ReWire support.

Synapse Orion

Orion is another sequencer that I had never heard of until I started looking into this topic. A full version can be downloaded for $150 and it can display multiple piano roll windows at the same time. Like Reaper, you have to position the windows and set the timescale yourself. Orion also supports ReWire.

Cubase

As might be expected for such a long running piece of software, Cubase has good support for 'multiple piano roll editing'. The main sequencer window can show mini piano-roll editors for each midi track if you press the appropriate button (see picture).

Cubase can also let you edit multiple tracks in a single piano roll window, by drawing the notes in different colours and letting you switch between them. That is, the different bits of midi data are all overlaid on the same piano roll using different colours. Cubase calls this Multi-Part Editing and you can read a description of how to do it on this steinbergusers page.

Logic

Logic also goes back a long way, and apparently has good support for this, although I don't have any screen shots. I am told that Logic will allow you to open multiple piano-roll windows. It also has a Multi-Part Edit feature similar to Cubase's, in which multiple tracks are overlaid on the same piano roll in different colours.

Other Alternatives

Another way to get around this problem is stop using piano rolls altogether:

Some sequencers have score editors which show multiple tracks. If you are familiar with musical notation, that can be a very efficient way to edit multiple tracks. Cubase and Logic both have score editors.

Trackers have a completely different approach to sequencing, and people that use them often swear by them. They certainly let you view and edit multiple tracks at once, but you have to work with the raw note data (C5, D#6 etc) rather than with a visual diagram.