From: Jamie <Meta@Dimensional.com> - 2000-08-18 20:52:29
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Dennis Brown wrote: > Mike Hardhead Masquith <mi...@ha...> wrote: > >Still, the best MIDI sequencer I have used was Bars & Pipes by > >Blue Ribbon Soundworks (an Amiga app). > > No offense, but when I look back over ten or twelve years > of back issues of Keyboard and Electronic Musician, I see > hundreds, if not thousands, or projects sequenced, recorded, > or mastered on Pro 24/Cubase, Notator/Logic Audio, Cakewalk, > and Performer. SMPTE Track, Passport Pro, and Performer, > and Vision also got good credits. Maybe Bars & Pipes was in > there somewhere but if so, I must have missed it. As a > program it may have not translated well to the other > single tasking OS's of the time, so maybe that's why it > remained an Amiga specialty. Anyway, so much for history. History. I wrote for Electronic Musician but I don't look at back issues of magazines to measure the use or usefulness of a particular program. The "best sequencer" is squarely in the realm of personal opinion, based on working style, what programs you've actually used and the operating systems with which you feel most comfortable. Sounds like you never had the chance to use B&P Pro nor, perhaps, the Amiga. Sequencer development has continued on other platforms since then and any sequencer to today will have its fans (and detractors). I beta tested SMPTE Track on the Atari and moved from there to B&P Pro. B&P Pro was written for the Amiga so obviously that's where it ran. B&P Pro was very popular on the Amiga, and running on that preemptive multi-tasking system with dynamic memory allocation and ARexx program interaction offered some real advantages. This stuff could not be done on other home operating systems at that time, so I doubt Todor was interested in porting to MacOS or MSDOS variants. There was an SGI port discussed but I don't remember how far along that got before Microsoft bought Blue Ribbon Software and killed B&P Pro development. On BeOS we have the opportunity to combine the best features, perhaps including approaches that may not have been done before, within an elegant and modern OS environment. > I like the look of MeV, with its BeOS windows and > menus, and its clean uncluttered look. Too many recent > music apps are being designed to look like video games, > IMHO. Video game style panels may be "kewl" for hobbyists, > but they may not present music data in a way that invites > quick and accurate editing in a flexible, user friendly > manner. Thankfully, MeV doesn't appear to be going > that route visually. A lot of people seem to like that. > I can't really try out my card with MeV because it > (SBLive! value) doesn't yet support MIDI ports. I will > probably consider an OM 4/4 interface. But clicking > and entering notes with the mouse was easy to do and > as I said I like the look and feel of the windows > and graphics. What sound cards do support MIDI i/o under BeOS these days? > However, there's a risk in using an unusual paradigm > upon which to base a sequencer. For example, the way my > old Edit Track sequencer on the Atari ST implemented the > concept of "chains"--chorus, verse, bridge etc--to make > a complete sequence. I always had to go and read the > manual any time I wanted to re-jig the chains. It > wasn't just me either. Other users complained in SIGS > and newsgroups about the counter-intuitive nature of > the data handling of the chains. Other sequencers > handled the concept of music arranging more fluidly > and intuitively. Let us know how you feel about the MeV approach after you've used it a while. > One feature that not even the industry standard > sequencers offer is a keyboard grid window editor that > places the keys across the bottom of the window--just the > way you see them when you sit down to play. Then the notes > would line up just above the keys as you play and would scroll > up off the screen just like text when you grab a scroll bar and > move it down. > > I don't see this suggested feature as a replacement for the > conventional side-keys, left-right music scrolling window, but > rather as a supplement to it. A "landscape" view, if you will, > to complement the "portrait" view. I suspect I'm not the only > person who's always wondered why I had to twist my neck to the > left to see the keys appear the way they do when I play them. It's a tradition probably based on reading musical notation L-R, and the standard representation of timelines as being horizontal. A vertical timeline is an interesting idea, more like a player piano roll, and a better mapping of user interfaces if you are using a keyboard. Digression: Not all music is related to the piano keyboard, a decidedly awkward user interface for producing music IMHO. The piano offers a limited interface with buttons that require completely different fingerings to play the same song in different keys, and with a fixed intonation compromise. The piano inserts an unneeded level of complexity into understanding the way western music really works. Music is much simpler without it. Synths with keyboards are more flexible and it's certainly OK to use a keyboard as a sort of ruler in these sorts of programs. Just had to rant a bit because the keyboard interface has made it harder for a lot of people to really understand music. OK, rant over. Also keep in mind that MeV may eventually let you work with other events beside musical notes, such as audio samples and video clips. > Anyway, good luck with MeV. I'll keep watching with interest, > and I hope I've added some insights to the discussion. Thanks and thanks for your suggestions. Best Regards, -Jamie |