RE: Hardware Sequencer Suggestions

[goddard.duncan@mtvne.com]

Title: RE: Hardware Sequencer Suggestions

>>I'm a BIG fan of the E-MU Command Stations.<<

I have some issues with the XL-7 I just bought. there are some edit commands that, when performed, cause the thing to stop. thus, it is not as useful as it could've been as a live sequencer.

for instance- & this is the one that bothers me the most- you might want to transpose a track relative to the other tracks you have running. entering the pattern edit menu allows you to select a transpose page, but this requires you to select the track you wish to perform the transpose on.

which in turn means deselecting one or more of the "live" tracks, since the same 16 buttons that control which tracks are playing also control which are acted upon by your choice of modifier. an obvious bug that they never dealt with. so you end up with everything muted except the track you wanted to transpose..... even if you could live with that for half a bar or so, the next thing that happens is that you press enter & the machine stops abruptly, having executed the operation.

also, running the sequencer in pattern /or/ song mode from an external clock is unpredictable. the clocking itself is fine, but the sequencer picks up song-pointers or something erroneously, & often starts a bar-&-a-half into a pattern. I would make it the master clock (it has, like my korg ES-1, a tap-tempo button) but for the edit problems above. I can live with stopping my sequencer by accident once or twice a set, but if I make it the master, I would also be stopping or disturbing a maq 16/3, a jam-man, a repeater, two echo-pros......

I don't know whether it's possible to select tracks by midi controller. I hope to establish this shortly, because at the moment I'm having to take my paws off my kahler-equipped precision bass to mute/unmute stuff. I could program the changes instead (in song mode) but we want to be more spontaneous than that, obviously.

I made the switch to the XL-7 precisely because it could do all this stuff (controller knobs, pattern & song modes, built-in proteus module- I make flash rams of my own sounds) but now I'm wondering if I wasn't better off with my sequentix p3, even though it's still a bit arse when it comes to programming long chord sequences. that's the biggest issue I have with it, despite the designer's best attempts to interpret & realise my wishes.

I'd also like the emu a lot more if you could run tracks of different lengths (but exact multiples/submultiples of each other) in one pattern. so I could have a chord sequence over, say, 16 bars, with a bassline of one bar running alongside it. this would make it easier to make live changes to the bass line while the chords do their thing. I can do this on the p3 quite easily, & the loops don't have to be mathematically-related either.

one day someone will get this stuff right in a hardware box. until then, we have to struggle along..... sigh.

I wonder if an alesis MMT8 might do what you need?

duncan/r.m.i.

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