The MIDI Note Editor lets you fix a file note by note, right on the piano roll: move, lengthen, add and delete notes, shape their velocity and decide which hand plays each one. All edits have full undo and redo, and saving writes a new version while your original stays untouched.
IMAGE · edit-note-editor.gif · 1200 × 750 px · Animated: the floating Note Editor toolbar, dragging a note to move it, resizing another by its edge, then adjusting a note’s height in the velocity lane.
Turn on and open the editor
You can still press Space to listen while editing. Drag the toolbar by its header to move it; Orfeo remembers where you put it. A hint line under the icons always tells you what the mouse will do where it’s pointing.
Editing tools
Tool | How to use it |
Select | Click a note to select it and drag to move it in time or pitch. Drag a note’s top or bottom edge to make it longer or shorter. Drag a selected note to move the whole selection. |
Marquee | Drag a box over a group of notes to select them. |
Lasso | Drag a freehand line through notes to select them. |
Pen | Hold |
Shortcut or gesture | Action |
| Add it to the selection, or remove it |
| Add to the current selection |
| Delete the selected notes |
| Undo |
| Redo |
Right-click a note | Menu with Assign to Left Hand / Right Hand, Flatten Velocity, Deselect, Undo, Redo and Delete |
Drag empty space | Pan through the song |
| Scrub in fine steps |
Seeing your edits
Snap and quantize
With Snap on, a note you move, resize or add lands exactly on the nearest grid position. The Quantize menu next to it sets the grid: 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32 notes. With Snap off, notes keep the exact timing you drag them to and the grid setting has no effect.
Edit velocity
Velocity is how hard a note is played, so it controls loudness and tone. Work on one track (click it in the Tracks panel), then turn on the Velocity lane in the toolbar. Each note gets a bar; the taller the bar, the louder the note.
Gesture | Result |
Drag a bar up or down | Changes that note’s velocity |
Drag a bar of a selected note | Moves all selected notes up or down together, keeping their differences |
Right-click → Flatten Velocity | With two or more notes selected, sets them all to their average velocity |
Assign notes to hands
Orfeo’s automatic hand assignment is a strong guess, not a transcription. Here you correct it note by note.
Some files have more than one piano track. To assign hands or edit individual notes in them, first merge the piano tracks into one in the Playback Editor, or exclude the extra ones.
Save, reset or leave
Toolbar button | What it does |
Save & Reload | Saves all edits as a new |
Reset | Throws away every edit in this session and restores the notes as they were |
Close (×) | Leaves the editor. With unsaved edits it asks first: Save & Exit, Discard or Cancel. |
Tip
Turn Snap off to fix a single late note by ear, and on when you want a sloppily recorded passage to land neatly on the beat.