MIDISketch by Eliotonic

FL Studio cannot send per-note pitch bend on its own: every bend hits all notes on the channel. MIDISketch gets around that by hosting the synth inside itself, so you draw curves in our roll and Serum, Vital or Phase Plant hear them per note. Full walkthrough in the FL Studio guide.

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Yes. MIDISketch listens to your voice and prints it as notes carrying the pitch curve you actually sang: the scoops, the slides and the vibrato arrive as editable pitch points instead of being flattened onto a grid. Tidy it by hand, then play it back through any synth.

Drop any audio onto the roll and MIDISketch analyses it into a spectrogram you can see and trace. Draw along the pitch you can literally see, or let the trace tool snap to it. Multi-resolution analysis keeps low and high material readable at once, and a clarity pass strips the noise around the notes you care about.

Yes. Live has supported MPE since 11, and MIDISketch sits on top of it as a faster way to author expression: bezier pitch curves, MPE controller recording, chord stamps, one-click LFOs, audio tracing, and a synth host of its own. See the Ableton guide.

Yes. MIDISketch ships as AU as well as VST3 and CLAP, so it loads in Logic on macOS as an instrument. Host any MPE synth inside it and draw curves that go well past Logic’s own MIDI editing. See the Logic Pro guide.

REAPER is officially supported. Install the VST3 or CLAP, add it to a track as an instrument, and load your synth into the built-in host. REAPER’s routing is a good match for MPE output. See the REAPER guide.

Yes, and Bitwig is about as MPE-native as hosts get. Load MIDISketch as a VST3 and either host your synth inside it or send its MPE straight out to Bitwig’s own instruments. See the Bitwig guide.

Pro Tools loads AAX plugins only, so MIDISketch will not appear in its plugin list on its own. Load a VST3 host as AAX (Blue Cat PatchWork and similar wrappers), put MIDISketch inside it, and the full plugin runs from there. See the Pro Tools guide and the compatibility page.

Notes, velocity and sustain work with essentially any instrument plugin. For per-note bend, glides and the X/Y/Z dimensions the synth needs MPE support. Confirmed: Serum, Vital, Phase Plant, Pigments, Surge XT, Diva and many more. Non-MPE synths still work: see the pitch bend answer below. The compatibility page tracks the full list.

No, and if you own one, MIDISketch works with it. Without hardware you draw MPE expression with the mouse: pitch bends, slides, pressure and per-note modulation, sent out as standard MPE MIDI to any compatible synth. With hardware, record your Seaboard, Osmose or Push performance straight in, then fix a wobbly bend or redraw a slide by hand instead of re-taking. You can also import MPE MIDI files and keep every bend, pressure and slide curve intact.

Not yet, and it is planned. MIDISketch already works the way MIDI 2.0 thinks: every note carries its own pitch and its own expression, drawn as a curve rather than typed as a number. MPE is how you force that idea through MIDI 1.0, by spreading notes across fifteen channels and squeezing every bend into 14 bits. MIDI 2.0 makes it native, per note, at far higher resolution, with no channel juggling and no fifteen-voice ceiling.

That makes it a transport change rather than a redesign. The hard part, an editor where you draw expression and watch it move, is the product already. The curves you draw here are continuous maths, and MIDI 2.0 is the first protocol able to carry them at close to the resolution you actually drew.

The part we care about beyond our own roadmap: MIDI 2.0 is abstract to most producers today, because using it properly means owning hardware built for it. Drawing needs no hardware. Make per-note expression something you sketch with a mouse in a roll you already understand, and MIDI 2.0 stops being a spec people read about and becomes something they feel on the first try.

Almost always the synth’s bend range. MIDISketch sends up to ±48 semitones; most synths ship at ±2, so a big drawn curve arrives as a wobble.
MPE synth (Serum, Vital, Phase Plant, Pigments, Surge XT, Diva): enable MPE in the synth and set its pitch bend range to 48.
Non-MPE synth (Kontakt, Omnisphere, Massive, Sylenth1): switch MIDISketch to Pitch Wheel mode in Settings, MIDI Settings. Everything plays on one channel with a standard pitch wheel, which is ideal for monophonic leads, and you pick a range the synth agrees with (±2, ±12, ±24, ±48).

A Serum 2.1.4 bug, not MIDISketch. When Pressure runs through a Macro (Serum’s YZ or XYZ → Macro option) into a fast target like oscillator level, the macro holds the previous note’s value for an instant at note-on and then jumps, which you hear as a click.
Fix: update Serum to 2.1.5 or newer, or in Serum’s Matrix map Expr Z (Press.) straight to the destination instead of through a Macro. Keep MPE on with bend range 48. MIDISketch sends the value on time, so DAW latency or pre-roll will not help.

A second, optional plugin the installer offers. It is an audio effect you put on a track to send that track’s audio into MIDISketch, which is how voice and instrument audio reach the pitch tracker. You only need it if you want to sing or play into MIDISketch from another track. The instrument works fine on its own without it. It used to be called MIDISketch FX.

All three. VST3 and CLAP on every platform, AU on macOS, and a standalone build everywhere so you can sketch without opening a DAW.

A normal piano roll places notes and sets velocity. MIDISketch adds per-note pitch curves with bezier control, a brush for painting notes freehand, stamps for reusing shapes, simplify for cleaning curves up, expression lanes per note, non-destructive LFOs, live preview as you draw, and a synth host. It is a dedicated expression instrument that lives inside your DAW.

No, it is a stripped-down port of the interaction grammar running on a plain sine. The real plugin hosts your own synths, carries the full toolset, and sends real MPE. The demo exists so you can feel how drawing pitch works before you download anything.