I think you have taken my questions the wrong way! I am in no way demanding that these features be implemented. Nor was I trying to imply that I would only build this sequencer if these features existed.
In the last time it happens very often, that people ask questions like “does MIDIbox XX support feature A like my favourite device B”. This is what I find a little bit frustrating, because it definitely sounds like a demand, and leads the dialogue into a wrong direction.
So, let’s talk about these topics on a different basis. I especially find it very important, that you now have descibed your ideas in more detail, this makes it much easier for myself to think about an adequate solution, instead of forcing me to work out a concept which could match with your wishes.
I did not realise there was an exclusive list for Seq 2, I will try to sign up for that.
there is no special list, I just send the snapshots to people who asked me for beta testing.
ok this is kind of cool: Let’s say I had a 16 step pattern that is looping. If I put a tranpose of +2 on step 1, then everytime the pattern repeats, all notes following the transpose message will be transposed +2. So after one pass everything is +2, after second pass everything is +4, after 3rd pass through it would be +6 etc. What the notron does is provide a low and high note transpose limit that cause the cumalitive tranpositions to “wrap” around once they have reached a certain octave (e.g. if it has reached it’s high limit, it will shift all notes above the cutoff point to whatever the lower limit is and start rising again, in this way you get amazing moving patterns). The limits make sure the pattern does not keep transposing upwards or downwards to infitiniti.
You can see an example of this in the no!tron (a reaktor ensemble)
It is not so easy to provide two additional parameters (min/max limit) for such a minor feature. The reason is the way how I’ve organized the memory. Currently each track allocates 32 bytes for parameters, in the meantime only one spare byte is available anymore, and this is reserved for really important things, which could be added in future.
I don’t want to reserve a larger area for track configuration data, since this wouldn’t allow me anymore to store 128 patterns in a 64k BankStick (as programmer you propably know, how important the 2^x values are)
However, your idea can be realized on a different, and in my eyes on a much more flexible way. There is a CC for semitones, and another CC for octave transpose. Thanks to the internal loopback port it’s possible to play these CCs from one track, and to send them to another track.
This means in other words, you can control the octave or semitone transpose from a second track. By setting the clock divider of this track to a high value, it’s possible to change the transpose value after each 16 steps of the “note track”.
One track can send up to 3 CCs
In addition, there are things possible, about you’ve propably not thought about yet. 
E.g., the control track can be forwarded with a special progression pattern (what you see in the last video), or randomly, or manually, or …
This is again based on the concept that if you pitch something up or down, it stays at that new pitch unless you tell it to change. So if I had a pitch bend of -3 on a step of my pattern, everytime that step is reached, the whole pattern will be bent down an additional 3 semi tones. -3 then -6 then -9
So if you set one step to be -3 and then another stpe to be +3 bend, the pattern will be tranposed down and then back up by pitch (the net pitch bend is zero at the end of the pattern). If these steps also set different transpoistion rates (slide times) then you will get cool organic slides in the sense that the pitch bends will be moving at different rates for different notes. If a step has a pitch bend event AND its gate length is long (and you are controlling a polyphonic synth patch) you should get long gliding notes overtop of your sequence.
In general I don’t support pitch bend anymore, since the MBSEQ works internally with 7bit values, so using Pitch Bend results into the same like using a CC mapped to a detune (finetune) parameter of the synth. The concept is flexible enough, that I could add a new event mode which sends Pitch Bender events, but I don’t see much use for it.
But this is only some background information, and not the answer to your question.
Do I see it right, that you mean a semitone transpose - than it would work in the same way like for 2) — yes, it’s possible to control a “CC length”, which means: CC will be set to the step value for a given gate time, and thereafter set back to 0
Sustain: Each step holds its note on (until perhaps the step is retriggered, yo don’t want midi overflow)
When combined with pitch bend events you will get liquid riffs.
Currently this has to be done by setting the gate length to maximum, so that the step will be tied with the next step. By doing so, a note can be held over the whole track length.
But it wouldn’t be so difficult to add a “sustain flag” - I will do this
Kill: The same as suddenly cutting your midi cable in half, e.g. note on messages to a synth will sudenly be stuck. This is a cool way to get a pattern to suddenly have a strange breakdown… the effect it causes is also dependent on your synth you are controlling. e.g a pattern will suddenly be paused holding whatever notes were on at the time
problem here is, that the sequencer has to memorize the played notes if they should be killed on command. This consumes a lot of memory - since there are 5 MIDI Out ports, and 16 MIDI channels, 10240 notes = 1280 bytes would be required (so much RAM is not free anymore).
A “All Note Off” CC could do the same, but most of the synths I own don’t support this…
Alternatively Note Off events could be sent over all channels and ports, but this consumes a lot of time (for 10240 notes: 10 seconds)
This would be nice to have. Most sequencers get notes to sustain longer than a step length by tying steps together.
(this is possible)
In the case where your seqencer has indivdual control over note length, combining a long note length event with a pause of a certain step amount will give cool sustained notes.
Eg. Step one of a 12 note pattern has a 4 step pause and it has a long note event. If you played the pattern, you would hear a sustained note for a 1/4 of a bar (4 steps of a 4/4 pattern), then it would play the remaining 12 notes (a weird way to play a 16 step pattern using only 12 steps).
If you start to play around with timing options like this you can begin to generate some really interesting patterns.
unterstood. Problem here is, that I don’t know, where to store the pause within the layers.
Only possible position would be the gate delay, but it’s already 5 bit (due to the 96ppqn resolution), and the remaining 2 bit are used for the double/tribble/quadruble step triggering.
What I could do is to add a mode, which turns the double/tribble/quadruble step triggering into a 2x, 3x, 4x pause, but I don’t know if this is really flexible enough. And it would mean that I have to do a lot of changes at different places within the firmware, since such a change hasn’t been considered at the beginning.
great! so I could go to one step of the pattern and set it to be delayed by a certain negative or positive amount and then go to another step in the pattern and do a different +/- delay?
It depends, for delay you can only set static values or the “groove intensivity” parameter, which can be changed via CC (think about the loopback possibility). Negative delays are not possible.
For Velocity and Length you can set percentages (20%..160% in 10% steps) or the groove intesivity parameter (again)
Best Regards, Thorsten.
