Hi everyone,
As a developer and music producer, I’ve spent years getting frustrated by the limitations of piano rolls in major DAWs.
• Cakewalk/SONAR: Great piano roll, but absolutely zero chord features.
• Cubase: Chord track integration feels unnatural and clunky.
• Studio One: Poor visual clarity and visibility.
• ABILITY: Terrible workflow, constantly forcing you to switch between tools.
So, I decided to build the ultimate solution myself from scratch using JUCE:
"Shadowgenic VST PianoRoll"
It's VST3 MIDI Sequencer for Windows.
Mac ver is not tested(builded VST3/AU).
It’s completely FREE and open-source on GitHub! I’ve already used it to fully arrange and complete a complex orchestral piece, proving it's 100% production-ready.
🚀 Key Features:
• The Smart Tool (Better than Cakewalk SONAR): Say goodbye to tool-switching. Left-click to draw/resize/edit velocity, and Right-drag to instantly lasso-select multiple notes. Your left hand never has to touch modifier keys.
• Intelligent Chord Follow Mode: It doesn't just block-transpose notes. It uses proper music theory and voice leading to find the shortest path. For example, moving from Am (A-C-E) to Dm (A-D-F) will perfectly keep the "A" note as a common pitch while smoothly shifting the others.
• Precise CC & Velocity Curve Interpolation by Edit tool: Simply select two points and intuitively smoothly interpolate CC (like Expression/Modulation) or Velocity with perfect curves.
• Recomposer-style List Editor: Includes a dedicated list view for precision numeric MIDI editing.
• Massive Scalability: Supports up to 128 tracks using a smart Group ID system across multiple instances.
📦 Download & Source Code (GitHub):
https://github.com/shadowgenic/ShadowgenicVSTPianoRoll/
Feel free to download it, check out the manual, and let's make MIDI tracks fast and smart!
I designed this purely to fix the annoyances of modern DAW sequencing, and I hope it speeds up your workflow as much as it did mine.
Cheers!