Conference napalm::commusic_v1

672.0. "Korg SQD1 Sequencer - Commentary" by REGENT::SIMONE () Thu Jan 22 1987 20:01

    What follows is my response to a query for some info on the SQD-1.
    I can't give a whole lot more information because I only got to
    play with it for one week.  When I told our guitar player (the owner
    of the SQD) some of the drawbacks he immediately returned it to
    the store.  A couple of days later we had an MC500, but more of
    that later in the message ....
    
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Hi Ron. Assuming that you have not yet taken the plunge and bought the MC500,
here are my comments on the SQD-1.

First the conclusion:

The SQD-1 is very appropriate for a musician or band in live performance
provided that you do not need to use it for every song.  There several reasons
for this restriction:

1. Memory can only hold one song at a time, and it must be loaded from the
disk before playing.  No chaining or autoload feature, as with the MC500.

2. Tempo is not programmable.  This means that once you have loaded your
new song, you will have to remember what the tempo is, move the display
switch so that the display shows tempo, then turn the tempo dial til you
it reads the right value.  This tempo dial, by the way, is very imprecise
and quite often the action of removing your hand from the dial will cause
the tempo to jump to the next increment.  Also, it only handles even numbers 
of beats per minute.

3. Only five songs per disk side.  After 5 songs you will have to remove
the disk, flip it and reinsert it.  In addition there is no "disk append"
command which would allow you to concatenate two songs into one to minimize
loading operations.

- Any one of these problems alone, could be overcome, but between loading
each song from disk, setting tempo and flipping disks you may have an ulcer
by the end of the night.

Other drawbacks which will inconvenience you during sequence creation:

- When replicating measures ( 2nd, 3rd verses etc.),  a block of measures
cannot be replicated in a single command, only a measure at a time (and
this requires two keystrokes).

- No microscopic editting via front panel, thus no velocity scaling to control
relative mix of sounds, as on the MC500 etc.  If you wish to modify anything,
you must delete it and reperform it.

- No post-quantizing of real time data.  If you wish to quantize to eight
notes, you must set the record mode to 8 steps per measure PRIOR to real time
recording.  The data is quantized on the fly.

- During step time program entry, no programmable note gate time.  If you
want staccato eighth notes, you have to enter sixteenth, rest, sixteenth,
rest etc.  I believe the gate time is always 100% of note value (unlike
the QX21 which allows a choice of either 80% or 100% gate time, and the
MC500 which I think allows anything from 0 to 200% (can't remember)).

OK, everything I've said so far is negative, but we are doing a comparison
with a machine that costs twice as much.  On the bright side, it will hold
16 channels of midi data per song, and it does have a disk drive which provides
reasonably quick access to 5 songs per disk side.  If you are looking to
add a few sequenced songs per set, and you can accept the limited editting
facilities, then save yourself some money and buy the SQD-1.

If you are in a one or two man band and are looking to replace your bassist,
drummer or keyboard player, then the MC500 is definitely the way to go.

By the way, since I entered that note, we decided on the MC500.  We opened the
box yesterday, and found no Owners Manual.  OK, that never stopped me before,
and since the machine was asking us to insert a system disk (for booting) I
inserted the disk which looked most like a system disk, whereupon, the machine
said "DISK I/O Error 3, Refer to Owners Manual".  Arrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

I'm waiting on a call from our guitar player who is supposed to bring it
back to the store today.

Hope you have better luck with whatever you decide on!

Guido