Yamaha RM1X

[Jay Vaughan]

> In a jamming context I totally agree. But I'm more looking at a midi
> brain to rule everything in a desktop format. Actually not even to
> buy, more to eventually build a poor man's cirklon or a cross over
> between cirklon and a tracker. I'm trying to learn from the past to
> see if there's any area I should focus.

Recording while playing back is the key thing, in my opinion, missing from almost all of the desktop sequencers.  Where it exists, its awesome.  Where it doesn't, it sucks.

Another thing is RAM management.  A MIDI sequencer, today, really shouldn't force you to allocate RAM upfront - i.e. "preselect how long a sequence will be".  It should just have a massive buffer, and you can go back in time to the beginning of the buffer, pull bits out that you want to introduce in sections, musically, and so on .. with no alloc/free required of the user beyond "Include this bit in the future" and "Chuck this away, I don't like it.." 

Well I could go on and on.  The thing is, if you're making a new MIDI desktop brain, make it really, really a brain and not a pocket calculator.  This means, give it balls too.