Now that I have used it more I can afford some informations.
The Squid is an oriented sequencer. If you want to produce complete gig with it, that’s not it’s function. It is possible, but you will need to develop work around and strategies and you’ll still be confronted to inconvenients.
For example, as it is mentionned in above video of Ricky Tinez, there’s only a Prog Change per track. It’s a first problem. Second, if you can afford a pretty nice numbers of patterns per track (64), that permit to makes several musical parts of your gig, you’ll certainly run out of patterns, mainly if you want lot of variations in your songs, all depend on the music style you produce. So you will have to stop sequencer and change project.
There we reach the fact that this sequencer is DJing oriented.
Not a problem, just a known fact that we mustn’t forget when buying.
This sequencer doesn’t have a lot of capabilities, but what it does, it does very well. This gear has been very well thinked and all possibilities very well implemented. A real pleasure to be played. The UI is simple and easy to learn. This sequencer is a very immediat/intuitive/efficience gear.
It’s main function, imho, is the creation/production of patterns and their paradigm. Then, play with.
My musical practice is multiple, so as I find it very usefull to start project, to find ideas (i’m one of those who does’nt really clearly know in adance the details of the thing i’m producing), this sequencer is a good option for easy research and its main force is to produce variant of the initial idea. That is the case when I wanted to iterate a first drum pattern in a lot of slightly different others in view to write little and orecise variations in a song (pretty efficient with the MD trick we take about here
In this situation, Squid offers a real possibility to test a lot of slice configuration in very few instants. But it’s exactly the moment where you will find the Squid isn’t able to construct a song with lot of variations.
So now I reach this points :
- 1 this sequencer is usefull in my research, because it offers me the possibility to create very easily bunch of variations of a pattern. It’s a kind of draft. But maybe it’s a bit expensive to just have a sketchbook. Fortunatly I find one second hand realy mint at good price.
- 2 subsequently, this sequencer cannot be alone in my production practice. I need another sequencer to record it and produce long songs, mangling the roughdraft that Squid gives me. Fortunatly, i’ve some.
- 3 this sequencer cannot be reasonably compared with others (Pyramid, Cirklon) because it respond to it’s own objective : quick creation of patterns and mangling them in live, exactly what Toraiz propose to sell. In that way, all Squid video by Toraiz really well shown the capability of the produce.
- 4 I find it very efficient too in the playing of experimental improvisations (one of my great pleasure).
- 5 will I keep it ? Can’t I do the same with my others sequencers ? I’m still in doubt. It gave me ideas to use differently my other sequencers. It has it’s marvelous immediacy of testing lot of variation without destructive modifications (like 16 undo, or modifying chords immediatly).
So always the same problem for us, when does the ultimate sequencer wil be done ?
Finaly : a very good sequencer, a bit expensive for what it does (and it’s all plastic and fragile constitution). A cool toy if you can afford it, immediat satisfaction, cool creative accidents, specialist of modification and runing process of endless pattern mangling.