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Re: Rise of the machines



I know that with the DR-202 you can apply the filter to individual 
instruments, or all the drums, or the bassline, etc.  And the 
percussion was broken into seperate tracks.  It's all a tradeoff 
between features and ease of use.  Grooveboxes seemed to be tilted 
towards live use and realtime adjustments.

When I think of a "sequencer", it's something that allows the creation 
and playback of MIDI information of any sort, but mostly pitched 
information.  A sequencer can be used to build drum/percussion parts, 
but that's a small subset of its features.  If you only want 
drum/percussion/basslines then you might be in the market for just a 
"groovebox".

Viewing a groovebox as a sequencer with not enough features is like 
viewing a sequencer as a workstation without enough features.  They're 
each their own things, and some of it is marketing fairy dust, but  I 
think there's a niche for each of the devices.  Put it this way--a 
metronome is a drum machine with a very limited feature set, but 
they're still quite useful, and if you want an  inexpensive standalone 
piece of hardware to provide a click track, a metronome is the answer.

Does anyone still make standalone sequencers?  Something that provides 
creation and playback of MIDI sequences with no internal sound 
generating capability?

TravisH

On Sunday, July 6, 2003, at 02:20 AM, 
Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers-delight.com wrote:

>
> Right, but in my thinking that's just a sequencer without enough 
> features.  Words like "groovebox" or "command station" are from 
> marketers.  Granted, they want to distinguish they're products from 
> "drum machines" but they all fall into the family of sequencer.
>
> At first I kind of liked the way the Roland devices worked, but I grew 
> to hate it.  They lump "percussion" in one track and sometimes I don't 
> want all my percussion going.  Also, sometimes I want to filter or 
> effect just the snare, but I had to effect the whole drum track.  Too 
> limiting.  The Command Stations work this out much better letting you 
> have 32 channels that you can put whatever you damn want on, mixing 
> and matching as you go.