MOTM

Gur sez:

>>>>>>>>>>
i'm allso think that the regular 8  step analog seqencer is needed and
is a great tool to play music ,but i also think that the way this regular
sequencer'sare built is not smart enogh by 2 reason's-
1)all those pots and switch's for making only a 8 step reapting patern,this
is a waist of mony=hardwere.
a smart desighn can make a big change in the way of composing music by
analog sequencer and be much more economic.
<<<<<<<<<<

I'd disagree with you there. The classic tradeoff is economy versus
ergonomics. Number of controls versus panel real estate. Built in mixers
versus external. It's often harder designing the panel and controls of a
module than it is the internal electronics! You could use 1 pot to program
any number of things if you design a mechanism to switch it to do different
things. Then you get... a DX7 or Rhodes Chroma. You have gained economy at
the expense of intuitive and immediate gratification when using it. You'll
save $50 or $75 on parts, and curse every time you use it for the next 10
years<g>. There's nothing like a dedicated knob for each function. Here's a
link posted on Analogue Heaven recently, about Brian Eno's thoughts on
ergonomics:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/eno.html

>>>>>>>>>>
2)we are coming to the year 2000 and i think that its time to creat a new
way
for compositn music on analog modular systems.
ok but if we want to make this smart tool then the only way is goingdigital
and
thats a problem for us analog guys,many proudct on the market today
are making kind of "analog" digtal based sequencer maq16/3 mc-303....
but they all have the same problem of being non analog electronics.
all this problem are probley can be solved when a guy like Paul with an
analog
feel is desighning it.
the trick is to combine digtal and analog together in wich the analog feel
and modulraty well be and the smartnes and progress of digital weel be too.
<<<<<<<<<<<

A sequencer is an appropriate place to use digital electronics. It's simply
impossible to build without them. Use analog where appropriate, and digital
where appropriate. Understand that the part of the sequencer that steps
through stages and controls which stage is next is digital, and does not
have any direct connection to the audio path. The only concerns are when you
replace continuous analog voltages with a digital representation. Sometimes
you want an exact representation, in which case only analog may do, but
sometimes you want to quantize to some other representation, which is when
digital control is appropriate. I wouldn't fault the maq16/3 solely on the
basis of its being digital, but only if it didn't perform for me. I would
ask, "can I clock it fast enough to do wavetable synthesis without the DAC
choking", or "does it store the voltage with enough error so that I can hear
the difference".


Dave Bradley
Principal Software Engineer
Engineering Animation, Inc.
daveb@...