The GRID SEQUENCER

By Matucana
Released as Freeware October 2002
Based on a dream of Tim Conrardy

I had a dream..October 2002

I walked into a room of what appeared to be a pawn shop. Many mechanical and strange devises were strawn about on tables and shelves. I heard an interesting sound and looked up and saw to my eyes what looked like an "old" ARP 2600 synthisizer. It was a large rectagular box with many knobs and even small speakers on each side.It had a "gold" appearance and shimmered in the pawnshop lights.What was interesting about this "box" is that it had a large grid in the middle of it. The grid had many small pins inserted into it.Getting closer to the instrument, I pushed a button. Sounds started coming out of the speakers. Analog Bass Sounds. I tweaked the filter controls.Squeaks and squaks came out of the speakers.Then I took a pin from the grid and inserted it into another hole of the grid. The sound changed. The notes coming out were different. Then I realized that the grid was actually creating the notes. I could insert a pin in another location and that would change the notes coming out. I looked up and heard the sounds coming out of the speakers.I could almost feel the notes. Then ...I woke up!

Feeling inspired, I posted to the Atari-MIDI programmers forum and told them about the dream and felt that the grid concept might be a good idea for a different type of sequencer and narrated some possabilities. To my wonder, Matucana ( also know as Hellmuth on the list) replied and actually created a program based on my dream! The result is The Grid Sequencer. Instead of pins, you use the mouse to "insert" the pins into the grid. Whats more, it is an interactive instrument with many possabilites then I could dream of ( literally) You could say it was a dream come true!

The Grid Sequencer
Features:

1. Start,Stop with space bar or mouse.
2. Random Grid entries
3. Random Pitch entries
4. MIDI Channel selection
5. seven clock rates
6. Eight BPM settings
7. Patch Change (SND)
8. Transposition +12 to -12 
9. Selectable Start and End points 
10. 17x24 grid 
11. Selectable pitch row.
12. Pitch/Scale editor in seperate window
13. Midi Clock Out
14. Save performance as Standard MIDI file.
15. Save as Grid Sequencer format.
16.All functions can use mouse or keyboard shortcuts with help screen.
17. General MIDI ( GM) patch display screen.

The best thing to do is to download the program and start playing with it.Get used to the keyboard shortcuts.(Press help to access the keyboard shortcuts) Try some different scales, as Matucana makes it easy to try new scales with the [Generate Pitch] selection from the File menu. The random settings can be used as well. Simply by pressing D on the keyboard will generate a whole new sequence based on the scale used. This as well as using the transposition shortcuts , you can create a composition which can then be saved as a Standard MIDI file. The Grid Sequencer also works well with percussion voices. Set the channel to 10, and you can generate some interesting percussion patterns.

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