Any suggestions for a great Software Sequencer to control my Prophet 6 module and other vintage synths? Looking, of course for great midi integration. Stand Alone and Plug-in for Protools.
Just returned a Hapax. Looking for more flexibility.
Drambo
7 Likes
Fruity Loops aka fl studio will run as a VSTi within another sequencer, including pro tools I assume.
Max
7 Likes
1 Like
It’d help to know specifically what you need more flexibility around. The Hapax does a pretty good job sequencing pretty much everything MIDI can do, so if it’s not enough the solution might be something pretty niche. And details would help find it.
2 Likes
Five12 Numerology
10 Likes
Some great sequencer suggestions here:
Good point, Jemmons --I am a total novice to all this. I am a professional guitar player looking to augment some demos with minimal keys and fills from time to time. So I’ve been looking to a step sequencer because my piano skills are wanting. Primarily going to use it with a Prophet 6 and Nord stage. I find it hard to get any expression out of the Hapax unless you play live, which I have no staying power to do. Not sure if the fact that it is missing functions like Glide, Ties, Nudge, and LEGato (on the Oxy One) … Obviously, a lot of these can be controlled on the hardware synth through the envelope, etc. But the Hapax feels imprecise, especially if I am not doing fast attack/fast release type sequences. I have tried to dive deep into live passages to understand their DNA through “zooming in” – there is overlap and duration differences – but it is a tedious process. And as much as it is trying to be more visual with the grid – when you get to longer sequences, I find it difficult to navigate. Though that will improve with time. I love getting off the computer and out of PT, but I may need more visual cues and flexibility if it is afforded in a software solution. Trying to figure it out –
It’s a bit unclear, which control your sequences should have over the instruments particularly.
Prophet 6 and Nord Stage should have many so called CC parameters (midi continous controller), which are documented in the midi-implementation chart of the manuals. Since I don’t have your instruments, the following is a more or less general description.
I have the predesessor of the Hapax, which is the Pyramid and I guess that the Hapax has even more facilities than the Pyramid. (From now on I will refer to my experience with the Pyramid).
On the Pyramid we can define CC-lanes for specific CC of an instrument, like the obvious filter frequency, but if the synth supports others too, we can set a CC-lane exactly to the control of our choice and record CC moves step by step, but also live.
Live recording works not only by playing a keyboard. We can do it after setting all the notes in the grid and in a second run. We can play back the track, listen to the pattern, and wiggle one of the controllers, which we have linked to a particular CC. If we like it, we can hit “overdub” and the sequencer only records our “wiggling” and adds it to the track of notes.
On the Hapax this should work similarly.
If the timing is not as exact as needed, and the midi-jitter is too big, and cannot minimized, another sequencer might be necessary. I use for linear sequencing a MPC and for step sequencing OXI One. Both control a couple of synths in parallel without timing issues. A very different workflow may be interesting as well, check out the Tracker from Polyend 
1 Like
I’m not an expert, but I think in MIDI glides, ties, and legato are all achieved the same way, by overlapping notes. Very simple.
What that sounds like, is dependent on your synthesizers settings, not the MIDI.
Hapax has nudge, rotate, and warp. Its extremely well equipped!
I think if you need something more visual, you’d have to have the piano-roll in a DAW. They can all do it pretty much, Cubase is particularly good for editing MIDI, but any DAW should work.
Of course, the downside is having to use a mouse, plus bad timing of MIDI sent externally.
Hope you find a flow you enjoy!
1 Like
EDIT: Laser beat me to it. What they said.
I think the Hapax is a heck of a box to be jumping in with as a novice. In some ways, it’s very straight forward (a big grid of buttons). But in others, as you mention, that can be confusing/disorienting and getting subtle performances can require a lot of understanding not just of the nuances of the box, but of sequencers, MIDI, and synthesis in general.
The Hapax (and most modern stand-alone sequencers) are piling a whole lot of tricks into a small interface to try to be a “DAW in a box”. So part of the key to understanding them is first to understand what is possible with a DAW, how you would do it there, and then what special things the box is doing to make it possible in hardware.
And it sounds to me like maybe you don’t need a “sequencer” per se as much as a DAW, anyway. Especially when learning, having a mouse, screen, piano roll, and a bunch of menus provides much more direct and obvious control over the data you’re sending to your synth, and helps make clear the delineation between things you can sequence (notes, velocities, automations) and things you can’t (portamento, attack times, etc.).
Plus DAWs have in-depth documentation and deep communities to help get you started and answer questions / searches on YouTube. And most have free or cheap version for “just” sequencing external gear or only using a small number of tracks, etc. all of which sound like they would fit your purpose.
The down side is that you’d have to engage with a computer as a part of your music making, which is not always desirable to all people. But given you’re looking for software solutions anyway, it’s sounds like a good fit.
The next question would be “what DAW?” Logic, Bitwig, and Ableton Live feel like the big players as far as sequencing external gear goes. The only one of these I have extensive experience with is Logic, so I can’t help you with pros and cons. But many here are quite familiar with them and I hope will chime in.
1 Like
Nodal 2
This is very helpful. I’m gonna put a lot of hours into the Hapax this week to see if I can make it work. Not sure. That said …
For any suggestions for a software solution: (1) I’d love to stay in Pro Tools for just simplicity interfacing with the world around me, and (2) YES – a great big, flexible PIANO ROLL type software instrument or plugin solution (MAC) is probably what this 50 year old brain needs. The key to this is the ability for the software to control the hardware synths.
Thanks for your help and any more suggestions on the software front. I may well keep the Hapax and work on software at the same time.
C
One other thought. This post has really been helpful in clarifying my objectives. Thank you all for that. But I realized I am using a sequencer for a different reason than most of you folks. I am not dong either electronic music, nor live performances with the unit. So when I think of things like Warp and Rotate as being “very well equiped” – its not really for laying down tracks for traditional recording. It’s for live or more electronic live setting and/or a more fluid recording. My objective is precision – to match other instrumentation and very specified markers well established by the time I want to lay down these tracks. Within those constraints there is tremendous room for flexibility and even improvisation – but the restraints are tighter. Up to now, when I thought “sequencer” – I thought major precision – per step would seemingly be pretty precise. But I am not sure it is with these units. I’m thinking my goal should be to lay down tracks in a Hapax that form the basis of then … recording them directly into Pro-Tools, probably on a more segmented basis. All very interesting.
Could something as simple as say the Retrokits rk008 - basically a midi recorder - be enough?
Plug it in, record your midi from a hardware controller sequencing your synths, then transfer the midi files to Protools for subsequent edits?
When you say precision, do you mean precise timing?
And therefore getting the midi controlled synths to play exactly in time to the live-instrument audio you’ve recorded? (Which ofc will not be exactly on the grid due to the nature of live playing)
If this is the issue… dont worry as its an issue many of us face.
But there are various ways to solve it!
Could you detail your objectives?
AFAIK Pro-Tools was not the first choice for MIDI-based composing for a long time. It was more of a multi-audio-track-recording, mixing, mastering DAW and supposed to replace hardware of a traditional recording studio.
Just as an example, Cubase follows a similar approach but is specialized for MIDI and supports a couple of “markers”, which are specific for MIDI-tracks and allow very accurate definition of paramters for single notes. It’s comparable with writing sheet music and using articulation symbols.
One point to consider when writing MIDI-notes to a grid is that in most cases the output may be very sterile and very different to a playing style of a human artist. IMO the best results on a piano-roll and on the grid are achieved by composing pieces in a classical J. S. Bach style, or techno where exact timing rules. Other styles, paricualarly jazzy, R&B, or funky grooves require a fine positioning of notes off the grid to generate the expected feeling.
Another thing to consider is the timing along the piece of music. If a song does not have the same speed (BPM) from the beginning to the end, this can be supported by specific markers of a DAW only if the DAW or a sequencer in general provides those special markers. To record audio from musicans and later edit MIDI-notes to match a performance, which changes speed, is a challenge of its own.
Yes, to Laser. I am looking to play or at least create the midi-controlled synth to play exactly in time with to live-studio I’ve recorded; specifically guitar and mandolin. It usually is pretty close to the beat, though not exactly quantized of course.
And SoundRider nails my dilemma. The output is VERY DIFFERENT to “playing-style of a human artist.”
I knew I was using gear designed for electronic music in a more “OUTSIDE the BOX” application. But I did not think I would have such a challenge of timing. I am also experiencing problems of literally knowing where I am in a longer sequence on the Hapax. That, I assume, will get better over time.
But it’s not easy to let go of the Hapax after 30 days of working hard to get the feel of it.
The one thing that I did that created some remarkable, yet not sure how useable, results … as I imputed sequences from my guitar/mandolin note for note as an experiment. When I used short fast attack, fast release material … it is awful, of course. But more legato presets from my Prophet 6 gave me some extraordinary, unexpected results. Though not really usable for the piece.
One of my primary objectives was to lay down very legato, very minimal, synth type underpinnings to our stringed/plucked instruments. This type of thing needs much less precise timing … but could yield results. In this case, I am just weighing the benefits of doing this in a HAPAX or not. The Hapax might just be more of an idea machine … and if I recorded it in Pro Tools, I could easily move and place each passage, or even phrase, as needed.
I appreciate all of your thoughts.
Thanks so much to all of you, especially jemmons, SoundRider, and Laser for your kind thoughts that have been very helpful.
C
P.S. It took me a long time to get proficient at Pro Tools and everyone I work with uses it. I will check into Cubase, but alas it may be more than I can handle.
There are some options to get the feeling of “human touch” right.
If we only drop our notes exactly to the grid, particularly with a synth or sampler, we receive too often a machine-gun like precision of repeated sounds. This is almost everytime killing a groove … well … if it’s not artistically intended of course to have this machine-gun like impression.
If I “program” notes, the first thing I do to overcome this is that I copy the articulation of an artist, playing something similar.
Meaning … all notes are - even if they stay on the grid - not the same. Some are accented, some are a little behind or in front of the beat. Often there is an articulation pattern, which we can analyse, “program” for one measure, and repeat it for many other measures maybe with some tiny variation each time.
DAWs like Ableton and Cubase support “groove quantization pattern”. Those pattern store all the articulations and rhythmic fine tunings of a set of measures and allow us to copy-paste those “groove quantization patterns” to other parts of a song, saving all pitches but applying the groove to the events. A great time server.