Does Veena have a piano roll?

Yes: every melodic part CoProducer writes opens in it, and drum parts open in the Beat Maker step sequencer. Veena is an AI DAW with a personal music producer built in. Describe the song you want and CoProducer builds it with you — beats, chords, melody, arrangement and mix — as real tracks you can edit, mix and export. Free, in your browser.

Why is it called a piano roll?

The name comes from player pianos, which read songs from paper rolls punched with holes: a hole's position across the roll set the pitch, and its length set how long the note sounded. A DAW keeps that layout on screen. In Veena, every melodic part CoProducer writes lands in the Piano Roll as notes you can edit.

What does the velocity lane in a piano roll do?

It sets how hard each note is played, on MIDI's 1–127 scale: low values play soft, high values loud, and many instruments also get brighter as velocity rises. In Veena's Piano Roll, select notes and drag their bars in the velocity editor, or ask CoProducer to add human feel and it varies them for you.

What Is a Piano Roll? How to Read and Edit MIDI

A piano roll is a DAW's MIDI editor: pitch runs up a piano keyboard, time runs left to right, and each note is a block you can move or stretch. In Veena's free AI DAW, the Piano Roll is where CoProducer's notes land, so what the AI plays is always yours to change, note by note.

What is a piano roll showing you?

Height is pitch. Each row is one semitone, labelled by the key beside it; C4 is middle C.
Position is timing. Vertical lines mark bars and beats, and a note's left edge is the moment it starts.
Length is duration. Drag a note's right edge to hold it longer.
The lane underneath is velocity, how hard each note is struck.

Reading one example

Four bars of C–G–Am–F in C major, one chord per bar, look like four stacked columns of blocks. Bar 1 holds C3, E3 and G3 for the whole bar. Now drag the G chord's B down an octave, making it the lowest note: that's G/B, a first inversion, and the bass line walks C–B–A instead of leaping from C up to G. One drag, and the chords move like a pianist would play them. That is voice leading, made visible.

Four habits that make MIDI sound programmed

Every note at the same velocity. Vary it, above all on hi-hats and piano.
Everything snapped hard to the grid, even parts meant to swing.
Notes overlapping on a mono synth, cutting each other off.
Every chord in root position, so the harmony jumps instead of moving.

The Piano Roll in Veena

Open any MIDI clip and the Piano Roll tab shows its notes; drum clips open in the Beat Maker step sequencer instead. You get draw and select tools, a range from C0 to C9, a velocity editor for selected notes, 8 snap settings from a whole bar down to an eighth of a beat, triplets included, and Ctrl/Cmd with the up or down arrow to move notes an octave. Play parts in from your computer keyboard or a MIDI controller, and save any clip with Download MIDI file.

Or skip the clicking and ask CoProducer: "re-voice bar 2 as G/B" or "add human feel to the piano". Step by step: MIDI editing in Veena. Need notes to start from? The free AI MIDI generator writes them. Related terms: what quantize is and what a chord progression is. Open the Piano Roll free.

What is a piano roll?