Analogue-sequencer

Dear Colin,
 
you obviously know more about live manipulation of midi patterns. I honesty didn't had the time to read or watch the specs in detail of the P3 or the Cirklon, so i will do my homework soon...
 
As far as Bill, having been involved in the Direct subject in the SOS Forums back in 2004, i followed all the different projects that Bill had in mind, including the Improvisor... Sadly most people didn't saw the musical opportunity about that, so quickly turned things down. 
But many poople follow the Forum back then, started an interest at that kind of music production. 
So, with help from Bill in some issues, some guy from Finland name Bert Keizer, finally come up with a Max/Msp version of the Direct sequencer, named Zyklus/Improvisor. You can try it in Yahoo groups "ZyklusImprovisor", for know is in beta version, its free to download. This has the handy feature of live transposing the recorded patterns.
I contact Bill since then and sadly he doesn't seem to have the time any more to develop new ideas. So, as far as Improvisor, is in Berts hands from now on.
 
I think Cirklon is amazing, as far as the hardware design and specs. If somehow add in this live transposition from a midi keyboard, will be awesome... I think that hardware is always better for live situations, there are not many hardware seqs in the market today. 
So, keep up the good work...
 
Kind Regards,
Nic
From: Colin f <colin@colinfraser.com>
To: analogue-sequencer@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 8:35 PM
Subject: RE: [analogue-sequencer] Cirklon harmonizing


    
 

> real time transpotition of the patterns is a "must" for a 
> live sequencer like the Cirklon. Nothing quite like this 
> exist in the market today and the ability to control via Midi 
> patterns from an external mother keyboard is something that 
> only Bill Marshall's Zyklus did many years before.

That's not entirely true... 
Many years ago, I had a Cheetah MQ8.
It had a few obviously Zyklus-inspired tricks - pattern transposition,
patterns as chord memory or arpeggio, and a couple of other things.
But the Cheetah also had the single most stupid feature ever seen on a bit
of music hardware.
It had 8 tracks, and 8 keys which could mute or un-mute the tracks.
But for the sake of saving a few pennies, they didn't put diodes into the
key matrix.
So it couldn't read simultaneous key presses. You couldn't mute or unmute
more than one track at a time.
Rendering it almost entirely useless.
The one good thing that came out of it was that I decided to give up on off
the shelf hardware seqs, and build my own.
P3 had pattern transpose via MIDI, and it's always been in the plan for
Cirklon.
I did wonder if Bill Marshall ever got his Improviser into production.
He contacted me about it in 2004, when he was looking for a manufacturer.
I was already developing P3 at that time, and more as an out-of-control
hobby than a business idea, so I didn't think I'd have time to get involved.
As I remember, none of the other people he'd contacted even replied to say
'no thanks', which put him off the idea at the time.

Cheers,
Colin

   
     

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