Status: R

Hello,

  My name is David Wasson. Jody Kravitz has asked me to comment on MIDI
sequencers, so, I'll see what I can add to the subject.

  Some of the instruments I have arranged for using MIDI sequencers include
a 97 key Mortier dance organ, a 125 key Verbeek dance organ, a Mills Violano,
a North Tonawanda 87 key band organ and my own 34 key "monkey organ", and
my 98 key band organ. Both of which I have built from scratch to my own
key scales. The first three instruments have direct MIDI interfaces (boring),
and the last two instruments, which are my own, play from folding cardboard
music, and paper rolls respectively. The templates for the cardboard music
are generated from MIDI files and a 9 pin EPSON printer. The paper rolls
are perforated from MIDI files by a perforator I have built.

  The first sequencer program I ever used was Cakewalk. This is a very
versatile program. This program has very sophisticated event filters that
allow you to effect MIDI events based on your own specific and sometimes
complicated criteria. One of the other powerful features, if you are the
programming sort, is the ability to write your own programs and incorporate
them into Cakewalk, this is what Cakewalk calls CAL, (Cakewalk Application
Language). I am not the programming sort, but, a few of my friends are, and
this has come in very handy. The thing that I was particularly disappointed
in was the "Piano Roll" view. This is the view that is most important to
me. Not only is there a lot of video quantizing going on, but, it is possible
to see only one track at a time. Also, the events are displayed horizontally
instead of vertically, which would have utilized the monitor screen more
efficiently. Its available in both DOS and Windows versions. I own and use
both depending on what I'm doing.

  I have a little experience with Master Trax, I think that it's "Piano Roll"
suffers in much the same way as the others.

  I tried to talk to the people from Cubase, but, they were only interested in
talking with people who owned their product. (How are you supposed to find out
about their product?)

  A good program with a decent roll view is one recently written for Windows,
is Vision. This was previously only available for Mac. Some of the problems
with this program is it is not fully MIDI compatible as far as transferring
track names and a few other things. This company apparently is arrogant enough
to think that you would never want to export your file to another program as
a standard MIDI file. It does have a good roll view though, displaying
different tracks or parts in the roll view simultaneously. The different parts
are displayed in the roll view in different colors. It does not yet have all
of the features of the full blown Mac version.

  I use Musicator for all of my music printing. This program does a great job
of this, but the roll view suffers the same as the others. It is available
in DOS or Windows version. I use the DOS version.

  The program that I finally discovered has a good roll view is called The
Final Cut. It is not a very sophisticated sequencing program. And in some ways
is almost too simplistic. The roll view displays the note events vertically
like a real roll. It also allows different tracks to be displayed in this view
simultaneously. Like the program, Vision, it displays the different track data
in different colors. The Final Cut has of all the programs I have tried, the
best "roll view". The program was written or released by Legend Software.
Unfortunately it does not run under Windows, so, the size of the MIDI file is
somewhat limited. Also it expects your interface to be an MPU401 card. At last
check it cost only $100. The phone number is 1-403-450-0736, ask for Bruce
Johnson. I think he is located in Canada. Ask him when there will be an up-
grade, or when it will run under Windows so people with laptops can use this
software. If anyone can convince him to release an upgrade, let me know!!

                                          Sincerely,
                                          David F. Wasson
                                          619-481-1663