Numerology 4 - Part 1: a search for a MIDI sequencer

In this small series of blog posts I will write a little about Five 12 Numerology 4 MIDI sequencer for mac. First I must say Numerology is really dream come true for me. Before going into details about Numerology I'll tell you how did I end up here where I am now: what are my basic demands for a sequencer and what did I try before finding Numerology. 

Stay tuned! 

http://www.five12.com

I've used Logic Pro quite many years now but I've allways felt that something is missing when I'd like compose new music or just experiment with musical ideas. When it's about starting from zero or "clear table", I kind of like more non-linear pattern seq approach than linear timeline DAW like approach. I like to start with beats and then fine tune nuances like note lenghts, rhythmic accents, swing ratio and also play with synth parameters like filter cutoff and resonance. This being said eventually my compositions will become so complex that simple old fashioned pattern sequencer cannot handle them. I am also a live stage musician and I'd really like integrate my compositional process to live stage usage.

Before I found Numerology there were few candidates for taking these challenges. There's of course Ableton Live which I downloaded as a demo couple of times. Still I did not move to Ableton for few reasons; mainly because it was quite expensive and also because there were some problems with my hardware (most likely because my lack of knowledge). Allready having Logic I wanted to search for simpler MIDI sequencer to just play my hardware. Logic still plays a major role when I move from compositional stage to more recording phase of the project. With Numerology you cannot record or edit MIDI tracks and its audio recording / editing possibilities are limited. It not a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

Arturia Spark MIDI controller

Arturia Spark was kind of a solution for a while but it was obvious that it could not sequence MIDI and there was no enough spark for me after all. I still have the software and it still has value to me as a drum library. But let's see, Arturia has announced that Spark 2 is coming on March 2014!

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/products/spark/intro.html


Then I had a short period with iOS: I was excited about the idea of small and portable but yet usable touch screen device for sequencing my music. After quite thorough search there was one seq app which seemed promising to fullfill my needs: Genome MIDI sequencer made by David Wallin. Genome isn't trying to be all-in-one iOS DAW, it's only MIDI sequencer. It's pattern based but also cabable of dealing with more complex song structures. So what was wrong then? To be honest, it was very promising then and it still is but sadly there's no real development happening. There were some instability (frequent app crashes), obvious bugs and too many places to improve in general. I gave few suggestions on their forum but it became obvious that you'll have to wait forever. I think the reason is that MIDI app development simply isn't good enough business to put that much personal time by those developers. Are those apps too cheap? I would happily put 50 or even 100 euros for really powerful and bugfree, liable seq app. Well, if I hadn't allready have Numerology. But if you still search for a MIDI seq for iOS, Genome might be worth checking. It's perhaps just perfect for you. I really hope future proves me wrong and Genome will realize that great potential which it obviously has.

http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com

Story goes on. Next I thought that the most liable sequencer solution would be hardware based and so I went to buy a second hand Elektron Monomachine. This became my compositional tool and live seq for couple of months. And probably it would still be that if I hadn't found Numerology. Elektrons have good reputation as a tight seq and you have lot knobs and live controllability. I won't go into details here but to my surprise there were also some strange bugs. So after all things were not allways running so smoothly and Elektron hardware seq wasn't 100% liable. Still the main reason for continuing my search was that composing melodies and harmonies was just too time consuming to be effective. For example, Monomachine cannot record patterns via MIDI so you have to type them manually. This can be little frustrating to keyboard player like me.

Elektron Monomachine

http://www.elektron.se