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 | | | | Jul31Written by:Joel Braverman
Friday, July 31, 1998 6:00 PM  Since I was a teenager, I've been enamored of music by Kraftwerk, Jean-Michael Jarre, Ultravox, Vangelis, and others. Unfortunately, with the exception of the built in Arpeggiators on some keyboards, MIDI has never been quite up to the task of producing this kind of music, unless it is through-composed (in other words, you program and play every note and filter setting). That is why I'm thrilled with some of the new software products that emulate the old step sequencers and arpeggiators. Here are some of the coolest ones I've found:
Seq-303
Seq-303 from Techno-Toys is a really cool little piece of software. It is a sixteen step programmable sequencer with some really neat features. It is called Seq-303 presumably because it functions in a similar way to the old TB-303 and TR-606, and attempts to emulate the 303's style of portamento,or "glide". I downloaded it from http://www.technotoys.com a few months ago, and liked it so much that I registered it after a few days of use. For each of 16 notes, you can set pitch, velocity, any controller settings, RPN and NRPNs, and turn on and off portamento for a TB-303 like glide effect. It lets you create and switch between up to 16 different pattern sets.
You can also tweak it on the fly - pressing the "r" key will randomize the settings for whichever tab you happen to be on - note, velocity, pan, etc. Each page can be configured for a different parameter. Now lets say you have a nice sounding sequence, and you want to add another part from another synth. You can load up another instance of Seq-303 and set it to a different port, channel and patch creating a separate pattern that will run in sync automatically with the first one. In fact you can run as many instances as your computer can handle. I maxed out around 8 on my PII 300. I maxed out my screen real estate before that, and had to set my video card to "panning" mode, to get them all tiled on the same screen.
The glide function is quite interesting, as Seq-303 allows you to turn it on and off for any note, and there is a slider to control the portamento speed. All your "performances" with Seq-303 can be saved as standard midi files, which you can open with Cakewalk or any program that will read an SMF.
Other good useful features of Seq-303 - the MUTE button, so you can mute one instance while the others keep playing, and the various on the fly changes you can make - pressing G will gang all the sliders together so you can move all of them at once, changing the overall pitch and pan, the ability to change the key of the pattern with MIDI input, and the ability to force a pattern to a particular key, major or minor by pressing the F key. The rhythm can be changed by clicking on different buttons - Eighth notes, Sixteenth Notes, Triplets, can all be selected. A sequence can also be played in random order, and "Brownian Motion" an algorithm based on the random motion of molecules. The length of a sequence can be shortened dynamically as well, all while staying in sync with other instances that are running.
While Seq-303 is a pretty complete piece of software, which will run on windows 95 or NT, I would like to see some additional features - like the ability to send a patch change before each note, something I manually do for a certain effect after files are recorded, and an option to integrate all instances with one interface - Seq-303 takes up a good bit of screen real estate. Another problem is that in order to start using a new instance, I need to stop the program and then start playing again, which is rather annoying. The Force To Key could also be a little more useful if it allowed you to select with a single keystroke, instead of a dialog box.
Arp-X8
Arp-X8 is another product from Techno-Toys. Its a multitimbral Arpeggiator that can work alone, in sync with Seq-303, or, like most MIDI software, to an external clock source. Arp-X8 is 8 arpeggiators in one- layed out similar to Seq-303, each tab has settings for a separate arpeggiator, where you can set different parameters for each arpeggiator, such as the keyrange that it responds to, velocity sensitivity, key order, and like in Seq-303, the type of motion - up, down, random, brownian, and some semi-random settings like Mostly Up, Mostly Down, Mostly Up And Down. You can also determine if a given arpeggiator will play only while you hold down the keys on your keyboard, or if it will keep playing till you press another set - "latched mode" as it is called. You can also set it to play while the sustain pedal is pressed.
Like Seq-303, you can pick the rhythm - quater, eighth, 16th 32nd etc, and dotted notes as well. There is also a small grid where you set the accent pattern. You can also set and store up to 12 different complete setups, which you can switch between dynamically.
Arp-X8 is a very nice arpeggiator - with many options not normally found on an arpeggiator. One option that would be nice is if they added the glide feature that is in Seq-303 to the Arp-X8 as well. In addition, the control for setting the key range for each arpeggiator is somewhat difficult to set with the mouse, especially on a high screen resolution. Like Seq-303, multiple synchronized instances of Arp-X8 can be launched.
Overall, the Techno-Toys represent an incredible resource for creating arpeggiated and step sequenced music, and the price is incredibly low - Seq-303 is 35 dollars, and Arp-X8 is 25 dollars. I purchased mine online and recieved my reg code a day and a half later. You can download and evaluate them from http://www.technotoys.com
Building Blocks for MIDI
Another interesting product for creating experimental music is Building Blocks For MIDI (BB for short) from AuReality. For those of you familiar with Opcodes Max product, this is similar - a tool for producing creating interactive music.
BB presents a blank slate on which you can add a variety of different "modules" - input devices like mouse, joystick and midi, clock and "waveform", (useful for varying continuous controllers) generators, mathmatical formula modules, and output modules. There are also sequencer and arpeggiator modules, and while individually they are perhaps not as powerful as the TechnoToys, they can be combined to form a powerful whole.
The whole concept of BB is that every module has an input and an output - and with only a couple of exceptions, you can connect any input to any output, letting velocity control pitch, which can change the clock frequency which can step the arpeggiator to the next step.
I downloaded the 30 day demo of AuReality from http://www.midiwold.com/AuReality and was impressed enough that I decided to register it a few days later. Like many other products, it is registered through Kagi online (out of Berkely, CA). So I gave them my credit card number, and waited for my reg code. Instead, I got a message saying "Sorry the Author is on vacation, will be back on the 17th of August."
Boy was I pissed. I have to wait almost a month before I can save anything I create in BB. One would hope that shareware authors would be capable of automating their registration process, so that software could be registered while they were sunning their buns on some tropical island somewhere.
None of this is to say that Building Blocks for MIDI is not an excellent program. It has tremendous potential, if you are interested in a product for creating dynamic interactive music projects - in fact, if you had a MIDI lightshow controller, this could be used for all kinds of interactive effects.
One place that appears to be lacking is synchronization - there doesn't appear (although I may have just missed it) to be a way to synch to an external clock source, which would be a problem if you were to try to use it with any other MIDI software product.
If you are interested in experimental music, interactive installations, or stoichastic music, or are looking for a Max-like product on the PC platform, then this is the product for you - if you can wait a while to truly begin using it.
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