Guide

A free piano roll, in a browser tab

A piano roll is the grid every modern producer writes in: time across, pitch up, one rectangle per note. Here is what to look for in a browser one, and how to write a part in it even if you have never played a keyboard.

What a piano roll actually is

Pitch runs up the left edge as a vertical keyboard; time runs left to right in bars and beats. Every note is a rectangle: where it starts is when, how tall it sits is which note, how wide it is is how long. Stack rectangles vertically and you have a chord. Step them up and down and you have a melody.

That is the whole idea, and it is why nobody needs piano lessons to use one. You are drawing music rather than performing it, and you can fix any of it afterwards.

What to look for in a browser one

• It makes a sound on its own. A roll with no instrument behind it is a drawing app. You want a synth and a sampler attached, so a note you draw is a note you hear.
• Snap and grid control. 1/8, 1/16, triplets — so notes land on the beat without you nudging pixels.
• Velocity. A lane under the grid for how hard each note hits. It is the difference between a part that breathes and a part that sounds typed.
• Chord help. Something that writes a whole chord from one click, so you are not counting semitones.
• A way out. MIDI export, so the part can leave for a bigger DAW later.

Writing a part in about five minutes

Beatline's roll opens on F7 (or from any channel), and it has all of the above. A workable order:

1. Chords first. Pick a chord in the Stamp box in the roll's header — Minor 7, say — and every click on the grid drops all four notes of that chord at once, at whatever pitch you clicked. Four clicks is a four-chord progression.
2. Or let the Riff Machine start it. The ⚡ button opens a generator: pick a key and a scale, choose Chords, Arp, Bass or Melody, and roll. Every roll replaces the last, so you can keep rolling until something catches your ear, then edit it by hand.
3. Melody on top. Draw notes on a second channel. If a note sounds wrong, Snap to scale pulls every note onto the nearest note of the key you chose.
4. Make it human. Strum spreads a stacked chord slightly in time, the way a guitarist would. Humanize nudges timing and velocity off the grid so the part stops sounding quantised.

Getting the part out again

A browser roll should not be a dead end. Beatline exports MIDI — every note, ready to open in FL Studio, Ableton, Logic, Reaper or anything else — as well as MP3 and WAV of the finished audio, and an FL-ready ZIP with a MIDI file plus one WAV stem per mixer channel. It imports MIDI too, so a part written somewhere else can be edited here.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes, though a full piano roll on a 6-inch screen is a compromise on any platform. Beatline switches to a landscape step-grid layout on phones — quicker for drums and basslines — and keeps the full roll for tablets and desktops.

Common questions

Is there a free online piano roll?

Yes. Beatline is a free browser DAW whose piano roll includes chord stamps, scale snapping, velocity editing, a riff generator and MIDI export. It needs no download and no account.

Can I use a piano roll without knowing music theory?

Yes — that is most of the point. Chord stamps place a whole chord from one click, scale snapping pulls stray notes onto the notes of a key, and a riff generator writes a starting progression you can then edit by hand.

Can I export MIDI from a browser piano roll?

In Beatline, yes. It exports a standard MIDI file of the arrangement that opens in FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic, Reaper and any other DAW, and it can import MIDI files as well.

Do I need a MIDI keyboard?

No. You can draw every note with the mouse. If you do have one, Beatline supports MIDI keyboards through the Web MIDI API in Chrome and Edge, with no driver install.

Does the piano roll work offline?

The project autosaves into your browser, so your work is not lost if you go offline, but loading the app and its sound library needs a connection the first time.

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