OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Online Melody Sequencer
Piano Roll Step Sequencer with MIDI Export, Free Online
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How the Melody Sequencer works
This online melody sequencer is a 16-step piano roll. A piano roll with sixteen steps across and the notes of your chosen scale down the side, two octaves of them from C4 up. Click a cell to place a note, click again to remove it, and press Play to hear the bar loop with the playhead marching across the grid. Because the rows are limited to the scale, anything you draw fits the key, which makes it a good first sequencer for people who do not read music. Random melody sketches a tune to edit, and Download MIDI writes the bar as a standard MIDI file you can drop into any DAW or notation program.
Online melody sequencer: drawing on the grid
Each column is a sixteenth note, so four columns make a beat and the darker column borders mark the beats. Rows are pitches, highest at the top like every piano roll. Placing a note plays it once so you can hear what you have chosen, and several notes in one column sound together as a chord. The pentatonic scales are the easiest to start with because any combination of their notes sounds acceptable; switch to Chromatic for every semitone, which gives twenty-five rows and no safety net.
Random melody
The generator walks up and down the scale one or two rows at a time from the middle of the grid, leaving a few rests, which produces the stepwise motion most melodies are built on rather than random leaps. Press it a few times until something catches your ear, then edit: move the last note to the root, remove a note to make a rest, double a note an octave up. Starting from a sketch is usually faster than starting from an empty grid.
The MIDI file
Download MIDI writes a single-track type 0 file with the tempo you set, a piano program and every note as a sixteenth at velocity 96, at 480 ticks per quarter note. That is the format every sequencer, DAW and notation program has read since the 1990s, so the bar can be dropped into Logic, Ableton, FL Studio, GarageBand, MuseScore or a hardware sequencer and played with any instrument. Nothing about the sound on this page is stored in the file; MIDI carries the notes, not the audio.
Sounds and tempo
Pluck is a short triangle-wave note that suits fast patterns, Soft lead is a sustained sawtooth for slower lines, and Bell is a frequency-modulated tone with a long ring. Tempo changes take effect while the loop runs. The drum machine on this site uses the same step grid at the same tempo, so a beat and a melody built to match will line up when you record them together.
FAQ
Can I make a melody longer than one bar?
The grid is one bar of sixteen steps. For a longer melody, download each bar as its own MIDI file and place them one after another in your DAW, or use the grid to sketch a phrase and develop it there. Chaining bars is the next step for most tunes anyway.
Why do the rows change when I change the key or scale?
The rows are the notes of the scale, so a new key or scale gives a new set of pitches and the grid is cleared, since the old cells would no longer mean the same notes. Download the MIDI first if you want to keep what you had.
Will the MIDI file open in GarageBand or MuseScore?
Yes. Drag it onto a software instrument track in GarageBand or open it directly in MuseScore, and it appears as one bar of sixteenth notes at the tempo you set. Change the instrument there; the file does not carry the pluck, lead or bell sound.
What octave are the notes in?
The lowest row is the root of the scale at C4 to B4 depending on key, which is around middle C, and the rows rise two octaves from there. That range suits a lead line; for a bass line, transpose the MIDI down an octave or two in your DAW.
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