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MIDI can also be edited directly inside the DAW's (or an external) MIDI editor software. This typically appears as classical musical notation with a 5-line staff and a clef and the notes taking whole, half, quarter, etc. form. It can also appear as a ''piano roll'' grid where the y axis appears like a piano keyboard turned sideways. Each row corresponds to a specific note and each column is a unit of time. Notes appear as rectangular blocks (similar to events in the DAW workspace), whose length indicates the note duration. There may also be a specialized piano roll for drum editing, where notes appear as small diamonds, since duration is meaningless. Below the grid is often a small view for ''velocity'', representing how strongly each note is struck. Click dragging is used to select multiple notes, which can then have their pitch, timeline location, duration, and velocity altered at the same time.
== Quantization ==
Most DAWs feature ''quanization'' of time, in terms of tempo, attempting to keep everything lined up with the beat. This essentially means that timeline selections and MIDI data are snapped to the nearest unit of time instead of being placed exactly as specified. For example, if I set ''quantize'' to the nearest quarter note and try to set the timeline cursor a bit later than the 1st beat of a measure, the DAW will actually set the cursor to directly on the 1st beat. If I click a bit after halfway in the 1st beat, it will set it to exactly the 2nd beat, which is the nearest quarter note. This affects moving and slicing audio events as well.
MIDI recordings can be quantized as well. So if I'm playing in a slight swing feel but have quantize turned on, the recorded MIDI will not reflect the swing feel - those slightly delayed notes will be snapped back to their non-swing locations. The same will happen with editing MIDI using the mouse or keyboard.
Quantization is a very useful feature to make sure everything lines up to the beat, but it can occasionally be too rigid. In this case you can decrease the size of each quantized block, for example switching from quarter notes to eighth notes. Or if you need a tuplet (such as a triplet), there are options to quantize in terms of fractions of the beat, like 3:2 (common triplet) or 5:4 (complex tuplet). When you are dealing with audio, quantize may actually prevent you from getting an event to line up directly on the beat. For instance, consider a sample of a jet sound then an explosion. You want the explosion to line up on the beat, but the jet sound doesn't fit perfectly into your project tempo. So quantize is lining up the beginning of the jet sound instead of the explosion, and the explosion never lines up with the beat. Here's a case where it's best to turn off quantize and do what you need to do, then turn it back on.
DAWs often have features to automatically create timing offsets on MIDI data. So for instance, you can take a straight on-beat MIDI event and choose a swing-feel feature, then adjust the lag of every note that occurs on the 2 and 4 beats. There are also randomize features to "humanize" virtual drums.
== Automation ==