Skip to main content
MIDI Input lets you play and record instruments from hardware MIDI controllers or your computer keyboard, with automatic device detection and per-track routing.

​
Hardware MIDI

Gridshift automatically detects and connects to all available MIDI input devices. When you plug in a MIDI controller, it’s immediately available — no configuration required. To make a controller’s knobs and buttons drive Gridshift — transport, mixer, navigation — map them with the Controller Profiles wizard or ad-hoc MIDI Bindings.

​
Supported messages

​
Routing

MIDI input is routed to the selected instrument track. In Focus Mode, input is routed to the focused clip’s instrument.

​
Computer keyboard (Musical Typing)

When an instrument track is selected or a MIDI clip is focused, your computer keyboard becomes a musical instrument. See the Musical Typing page for the full keyboard layouts. Musical Typing has four layouts, selected per-track via the Keys Layout picker in the Inspector:
  • Scale — Three rows of scale degrees across 3 octaves. Only notes in the selected key/scale are played. Best for melodies and chords. Default for new instrument tracks.
  • Piano — Chromatic piano layout with white keys on the middle row and black keys on the upper row, across 2 octaves.
  • Drums — 26 sequential chromatic pads across Y/Z…P, with Y/Z mapped to MIDI 36 (General MIDI Bass Drum). Automatically selected when you load a drum plugin.
  • Follow — The Scale layout with the chord track in place of the scale: every key plays a tone of the chord under the playhead, so the same finger position changes pitch as the progression moves. Needs a track marked as Chord Track — without one the picker does not offer it.
All layouts support:
  • Octave shifting via Command Palette (Musical Typing: Octave Up/Down)
  • Velocity control
  • Real-time recording and step entry

​
Controller layouts

A hardware controller has its own per-track picker, Controller Layout, directly under Keys Layout in the Inspector. The two are separate choices: a track can be a drum kit under your fingers and a scale ladder under the letter keys, and changing one never moves the other.
  • Default — the controller plays exactly what it sends. Nothing is remapped, no key is silent. This is what every track starts on, and it stays there until you change it — unlike Keys Layout, it is never switched for you when you load a drum plugin.
  • Drums — each white key is the next General MIDI drum pad, starting at C2 = MIDI 36 (Bass Drum). Lets a keyboard controller with no pads play a kit without hunting for the black keys.
  • Scale — the white keys are the degrees of the current key and scale. Every C is the root.
  • Follow — the white keys are the tones of the chord under the playhead, and every C is that chord’s root. Needs a track marked as Chord Track in the Inspector.
In Drums, Scale and Follow the black keys are silent. That silence is how you can tell a layout is on.
The root sits in the octave nearest the C you played, not always above it. In A minor, C4 plays the A below it rather than the A above — so a layout change does not move your hand.
A layout shorter than seven notes — a pentatonic scale, or any chord in Follow — keeps climbing into the octaves above rather than leaving white keys silent. Two white keys can then land on the same note, and a three-note chord reaches two octaves up by the seventh key before the next C drops back to one. Every C is still the root.

​
Instrument tracks

To use MIDI input for playing and recording:
1

Create an instrument track (⇧⌘T, then pick an instrument)

2

Assign an Audio Unit instrument in the Inspector

3

Select the track — MIDI input is now routed to it

4

Play your controller or use Musical Typing

The piano roll in the Inspector highlights keys as they are played, providing visual feedback during performance.
Last modified on August 29, 2026