Exploring the Score Editor

- In this video, we'll look at how to use the Score Editor window to create and edit MIDI notes while viewing them as musical notation. First, let's open up the Score Editor window. We can do this in several different ways. First, we can go to the Window menu and open the Score Editor here or we can use the key commands ctrl + opt + = on a Mac or alt + start + = in Windows. And here's our Score Editor window. I'm gonna close this and show you a couple of other ways to open it. We can select a clip and right click it and open in Score Editor.

This will open that clip in the Score Editor and you can see that the notes that are in that clip are selected and blue. Another way to open the Score Editor is by double clicking the MIDI clip. But first, we need to go to the Setup menu and make sure we have a preference set. Here, if we have Double-Clicking a MIDI Clip Opens: Score Editor selected, when we then double click, it will open the Score Editor and again our selection is indicated by the notes in blue. The toolbar menu up top here is much like we've seen before. We have our edit tools, MIDI Note Duration and Velocity and Play MIDI Notes When Editing.

We have Mirrored MIDI Editing, we have Link Timeline and Edit Selection and we have Double Barline. This new button here is only in the Score Editor and it allows us to put a double barline in at the very end of our score. We have our cursor position here, and again this allows us to keep track of where we are in time and just like in the other windows, this shows us where our cursor is in time and it even shows the note on which our cursor is positioned. Here, we have our Grid and the Grid value and our Edit Selection Start and End. Let's select the Zoom tool.

Just like in the Edit window and in the MIDI Editor windows, we can click once to zoom in or hold the opt key on a Mac or the alt key in Windows to zoom out. We can also click and drag with the Marquee Zoomer to zoom in on a selection. With the trimmer tool, we can shorten or lengthen notes. I'm gonna select with the Marquee section of the Trimmer tool. Notice how we have a Marquee tool while we're using the Trimmer tool. This allows us to make selections and then trim them. I'm gonna select the first notes here in bar 9 and I'm gonna trim them.

Now, if I scroll down, notice how the same change is made in bar 17. That's because we have Mirrored MIDI Editing enabled. If we don't want this to happen, we can uncheck Mirrored MIDI Editing and that change will not ripple across all the copies of the clip. Now, let's choose the Selector tool. With the Selector tool, we can select a range. Again, notice that the notes in our selection are highlighted blue. Once we've selected notes, we can delete them, move them, transpose them or process them with the event operations like Quantize.

I'm gonna delete these notes and notice that we have two whole note rests in their place. Now, I'm gonna undo this because I actually didn't wanna delete them. Also note that the Note Selector tool only includes MIDI note and velocity data. It won't include any other MIDI or continuous controller data. If you wanna edit the score, to change the length of a note for example, other MIDI data will not move with the note. If you wanna alter all the MIDI data, use the Edit window or the MIDI Editor windows instead. Now, let's choose the Grabber tool. With the Grabber tool, we can select individual notes or with the shift key held down we can select multiple notes.

We can also use its marquee to select a range of notes. Once they're selected, I can use this tool to click and drag, let's say I wanted to move this entire note selection up a whole note. I'm gonna undo that change. Now, let's select the Pencil tool. With the Pencil tool, we can insert notes, select notes and move notes. Just click and draw to insert a note, and click to select and drag to move the note. If we switch to the Line Pencil tool, all the notes that we add will be on one pitch with the exact same velocity.

Notice how when we move up and down, the pitch changes but all the notes are still on the same pitch. The rest of the Pencil tool shapes are essentially the same except that they have different velocity curves depending on the shape. So you can experiment with Triangle, Square or Random. To delete a note with the Pencil tool, just hold opt on a Mac or alt in Windows and click the note. This functionality is just like when editing MIDI elsewhere in Pro Tools. Any notes that we add or remove from the Score Editor as well as any notes that we make will be reflected in the Edit window and in the MIDI Editor.

Also note that the Score Editor automatically adds rests as needed but you can manually insert or move rests if you want to. Let's add a note here in bar 8 and I'm gonna close this window. If we zoom into our clip here, I'm gonna make this track larger, and let's select the Zoom tool and zoom in on the last bar. Here, we can see that the note that we added has been added to our score here as well. The main difference is how the data is presented to you.

We'll dig deeper into the Score Editor in the next video.