ParEdit Guide: Placing your first Note - CANA-Dan/ParEdit GitHub Wiki

Get to know the editor

Now that you are in editor, it is strongly recommended to press escape (or click options) to get to the in editor settings menu. Hidden behind the options menu is a good explanation of all the movement, selection, and editing controls and how to work with cursor precision. Its a very helpful reference guide for how to use the editor, built right in for an easier time finding your way around the editor.

Additionally, if you forget a more specific Keybind, you can go into Settings, scroll all the way to the bottom using the bar to the left to the Customization tab, then click Keybinds.

heres a quick overview of the most important controls;

Movement is the default Minecraft controls, just with right click held. WASD for movement, with space to Ascend and Shift to Descend. You can move through the highway with scroll wheel.

Placement and Deletion: Left Click to place notes/BPM changes, Middle click to Remove notes/BPM changes. J or B to place a bookmark. these can be quickly jumped between using [ and ]. you can press the delete key when you have a large set of notes and bpm changes selected.

Selection and Editing: You can select a large amount of notes using Shift click. shift click in the location you want to start with, then go to the location you want and shift click again. you can edit these notes by pressing E, which will bring up a bulk editing menu. you can edit BPM changes or Bookmarks by clicking on their little info windows.

Copy/Paste Is Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V respectively.

Undo/Redo is Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Shift + Z (or Ctrl + Y for redo if that's what you'd prefer)

All of these keys can be rebound, so if you dont like them you can quickly change them or add a secondary keybind.

Setting up your BPM

The editor has a couple of ways to work with bpm, but for now we are just going to do the simplest method. Later, in the Working with BPM Changes Wiki, we will cover how to work with BPM changes more in depth.

Now, first step is to correct your initial BPM. Find the first distinct sound. generally this is a drum beat, but it could also be piano, or synth. really anything thats a clear and sharp sound. Click on the right of a whole beat in the place where the red BPM change object appears.
While you are holding the left click button, drag the beat line forwards or backwards to the sound.

when you are happy with the position of the beat line, release your left mouse button to set the BPM position into place.

With this, your beatline should be set correctly with the first distinct sound. In all likelihood your bpm is still wrong though. to fix this, its similar to what we just did (dragging your BPM around).

If you know about Time signatures, then youd know this should ideally be 6/8. in this guide we are going to assume that the Time Signature is 4/4 for simplicity. You can go Here for more info on time signatures.

Now that your BPM is correct, you are going to want to remove the BPM change youve just placed. This will make the map take the bpm of the previous bpm, which should now be correct.

With Timing out of the way its time to place some notes.

Placing Notes

If you are nervous about what notes go where, wanting the map to be perfect, honestly, don't be. Everyone is going to make mistakes on their first map; its pretty much inevitable. Any mapper you can think of has gone through this process of learning, so dont let the possibility of mistakes discourage you.

If you want to do some learning, here are a couple of excellent videos on the different sounds different drums make; Snare, Toms, Ride, Crash, and Hihat

You can also use the Midi Out functionality in ParEdit, and directly send the midi signals a DAW or paradiddle using loop midi as an intermediary. this will allow you to hear, in real time, what is actually being mapped.

A good place to start is to map the different drums and worry about the cymbals later. they are usually quite easy to figure out, and quite fast to place down. Snares are quite snappy, and should be very easy to pick out when mapping. Toms are usually mixed from left to right, with tom 1's on the left, tom 2's center, and floor toms to the right. Kicks may be hard to hear in some mixes, but its the "thud" or "thunk" you hear in the song. if you are having trouble hearing any of these instruments in the mix, you can slow down the playback with the - or + (for slow down and speed up keys respectively), or you can modify the spectrogram for clearer visuals for specific drums.
Here for example, you can clearly see the Kicks being shown.

And here are my spectrogram settings

One thing to keep in mind with the spectrogram is Frequency VS Time. essentially, you cant show both with the highest resolution at the same time; high Bin counts (1024 or 2048 for example) will give good frequency resolution (especially in the bass frequencies) but will give mediocre time resolution as a consequence. 256 and 128 (or lower) is the direct opposite, with much better time resolution, but mediocre frequency resolution. You should use 512 Bins most of the time, but 1024 works well for spotting kicks and other low frequency sounds (as shown in the picture above).
If you want an overview of each spectrogram setting, you can go Here.

Congrats. With this, you are ready to make your first map. once you are done, post it on ParaDB and share it to the world!
If you want to take a look at some more guides, you can look more into Working with BPM Changes, or you can take a look at Working with Midi for importing and how to send midi out to paradiddle or a DAW.