Note Grid & Editing
The piano roll — placing notes, selecting them with a marquee, and transposing, duplicating and deleting.
The note grid is Jam Club's piano roll. Pitch runs vertically with a piano-key gutter down the side, time runs horizontally with beat and bar lines, and a playhead sweeps across as the transport runs. It is where most melodic and harmonic work happens.
Placing notes
Click a cell to place a note, and drag its edge to change how long it lasts. Note length matters more than it might seem: it determines when the amp envelope's release stage begins, so short notes stab and long notes sustain even with identical envelope settings.
Selecting notes
Marquee selection
Drag across the grid to draw a selection rectangle, and every note it touches is selected. Hold Shift while dragging to add to the current selection rather than replacing it.
Note: Dragging on empty grid space selects rather than draws. To create a note, click the cell you want it in.
Editing a selection
With notes selected, the keyboard does the work — the same shortcuts you would expect from a conventional DAW:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow up / down | Transpose by one semitone |
| Shift + arrow up / down | Transpose by one octave |
| Cmd/Ctrl + D | Duplicate the selection |
| Delete | Remove the selected notes |
Transposing by octave is the fastest way to find out whether an idea belongs somewhere other than where you wrote it — a bassline moved up two octaves is often a better topline.
Notes are the single source of truth
Every instrument's musical content is stored as notes, including drum patterns built in the step grid. There is no parallel data path for different instrument types, which is why clip launching, scenes, collaboration and the AI features all work uniformly across every instrument in the rack.
Where to go next
- Transport & Tempo — loop lengths and playback.
- Clips & Scenes — keeping several versions of a part.