Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

>>if we are at this topic - anybody has info on the Roland MC-202 ?
Some say it's "poor man's TB 303" others it's a souped up SH-101.<<

well, it's about as far from a command station as you can get & still
be a hardware sequencer. the mc-202 (not to be confused with any of
roland's 90s MC-boxes) is a very basic synth & a very basic sequencer
in the same box, a little bigger than the tb303/606 & quite obviously
styled by a different designer (blue & matt grey, nothing shiny). they
started selling all of these around 1981 I think.

there's nothing "poor man's" about it. it's different, is all, & for a
random cultural/historical reason, not as desirable for certain
purposes. in fact, I paid slightly more for my mc202 than I did for my
tb303, & they were both under $100. it was 1985, though.... :-)
 
the synth section is a lot like the sh101, but without white noise.
this is a pity, because the way the sequencer works would lend itself
very well to percussive parts aswell as tunes. single oscillator, saw
& square with pwm, one- & two-octave sub oscillators. nice delay
feature on the LFO-mod. one 4-stage envelope, but with the option of
switching the vca to "gated".
no arpeg, obviously... funny little rubber keys, a bit like a qy70
walkstation... I used to play with mine on the train sometimes. back
in the 80s, mind. I developed a shorthand notation for writing tunes
down, because I don't read/write music properly.
 
the control surface is minimised for space reasons. the sliders are
themselves prone to failure, as they are on a lot of roland stuff from
this era. make sure they all do something if you're trying one to buy.

it has cv/gate inputs but since these are designed to write to the
sequencer from an external keyboard, they go via a quantising circuit
which is a nuisance if you just want to use the synth engine as an
expander. there is a mod (published elsewhere on the net) to get
around this, & to allow external control of some other cv-type stuff.

the sequencer section has two channels which share something in the
region of 1800 notes-worth of memory. there are a number of ways to
enter & edit sequencer data: 
realtime, steptime, tap-rhythm-&-edit-pitch.
the metronome is really annoying but can be defeated. 

the important thing to remember, when comparing this with the tb303,
is that you have two parallel giant patterns here, & no further
(song-type) arranging. another major factor is that the memory is
volatile. doesn't matter whether you fit batteries or not, the mc202
will forget everything when you switch it off. so you have to back it
up to cassette. you can give the dumps a three-digit "name", which is
really pants but better than nothing.
the cassette it came with (& I gave mine away, dammit, to someone who
collected fancy-looking cassettes) had some debussy pieces on it,
arranged for two monosynths. the mc202 itself plays one synth part, &
you can select which of the two sequencer lines it plays. the other
goes out one of the cv/gate pairs on the back (in fact, you can ignore
the built-in synth & use two external synths instead). ah- the two
lines don't have to be the same length- the shorter one repeats until
the long one has finished, but only if "cycle" is on. otherwise, they
both only play through once.

cut to the chase. it was marketed to complement the 303/606 (but
designed separately? looks like it...), providing, one might say, the
melody & harmony to their rhythm section. 
I saw bands using the whole set, along with an sh101, back in the
early 80s. 

it WILL NOT sound like a 303. the oscillator is fundamentally
different, as is the filter. the sequencer doesn't do slides & accents
in the same way as the 303. (there's something pre-emptive about the
timing of slides in the 303- someone else has described this better
than I can, but in short, it's difficult to emulate, & the 202 doesn't
do it well.)
without doing the tb303 a massive disservice, or in anyway judging it
(I actually like the noise it makes), there's no way the mc202 can be
made to sound as "crap" as the tb303. the tb303 has this cheap, funky
sound that roland arrived at while trying to mimic the sound of an
electric bass guitar, in much the same way as they arrived at the
classic sounds in the tr808 while trying to create analogue-synth
replicas of drum sounds. the 202 is pure-synth, & while it can't do
the fattest bass sounds on earth, has a rather pleasant lead sound
with that classic japanese single-oscillator timbre (even though it's
actually a curtis chip, probably!)

here's what I used them for:

tb303, I would write lots of short patterns & arrange them into a
song. you can do this on-the-fly or by programming, if you need to be
able to repeat a series of patterns in the right order. 
this (song arrangement) is easier if you turn the volume down while
you do it, otherwise it keeps playing you the pattern that you're
trying to replace at each step. you'll know what I mean if you've
tried it.
generally, I would use the 303 as a sequencer & run it's cv/gate into
a moog. I liked it's own synth engine but it didn't always suit what I
was doing. a favourite trick is to take the batteries out for a minute
or so, then put them back in. this scrambles it's memory & you get
loads of random patterns which you can then edit into useability. I'm
sure that's some sort of big techno industry-secret right there. :-)

mc202, I would EITHER spend ages writing two elaborate long sequence
lines into it, with all counterpoint, harmony, polyrhythm & so forth
OR write a very slow long lead line into it & run it unsynced against
other (midi) sequencer lines so that it sounds like someone noodling
randomly over more formally arranged parts. generally, I would use
it's own synth for one part & a moog for the other.

I did once try hooking the 303 up to the 202, so as to transfer a
carefully-arranged "song" from the 303 into the 202. it didn't work-
there's some offset on the 303's cv output that upsets the quantiser
in the 202. this, & the styling, makes me suspect that the two units
came from opposite ends of roland's factory, & that they ended up
being marketed together despite this incompatibility. they work fine
synced, side-by-side, just don't hook their cv/gates together.

as always, hth & ymmv.

duncan/r.m.i.

(PS fwiw, I let the 303 go but still have the 202 right here. I also
have jered's "mobius", which is as accurate a copy of the 303's
sequencer as I have come across, & I have quite a few h/w sequencers.
I am holding out for one of the new tb303 clones that someone is making.)