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I like this kid mark (above), he knows his stuff and believe me, he's not kidding when it comes down to the question of "What is the best hardware sequencer ever?" The Q-80 series without a doubt!! I own an MMT-8, a Q-80, and a Q-80 EXe. I do professional studio work and have recorded 4 Albums using these sequencers so believe me, I know them all inside out. Without getting as technical as Mark, he's right about the MMT-8 and its limited 8 tracks, but even worst is the fact that it has no disk drive to store your sequences once you've used up all your memory. Oh sure you can use tape interfacing which for you non-technical guys simply means that you can connect the MMT-8 to a standard cassette deck and save your sequence signals on a regular tape. Well what happens when you're live! "Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, please give me 15 minutes to download my next 5 songs OK". If a hardware sequencer doesn't have a disk drive built in, you're screwed!! especially live. The Q-80 series of course overcame that problem, and the extensive memory capacity of the EXe makes it perfect for live performances. You average 10 songs a set, the sequencer can handle 10 songs and 100,000 notes, download your next set right after your break and you've got a beautiful night of hastle free performing unless of course you've got a jerk in the crowd that insist on hearing a song you don't have programmed. With my Q-80 I had to use motifs quite a bit to save on memory usage per song (the Q-80 only has 25,000 note memory capacity). Even with extensive use of motifs, if you're creating complexed sequences, you'll only be able to get maximum 5 songs loaded before you hit the 25,000 note mark. With the Q-80EXe, forget about motifs man that takes more time than just counting the bars of a song, inserting that number into each track, punch record track by track, and just copy the repetative areas like verse and chorus. I can bang a song out real fast like that. I put my drums on seperate tracks, foot on 1- no reverb, cymbals on 2, snare on 3, keyboards on 4, 5 open, 6 strings, 7 horns , etc. Here's a live trick. I do a classic hits show including Lionel, Al Green, Chicago, you name it. With a repetoir of over 60 songs, sometimes you can go blank on the keyboard chords. That's why I sequence the keys on track 4 and leave 5 open so if necessary on the fly (I get distracted and forget- hey it happens to the best) I can light up track four, switch to 5 and fake the funk for a few until I can regroup. Here's a live hint. It's your vocals that will make or break you, not your prowess on the keys. Last 2 things. Get a sound module with high polyphony like the Proteus-2000(128 Voice)for rich layering. Lastly, Only quantize your drums and bass exactly on the notes, everything else use the Q-80's tolerance quantize feature. This allows you to correct timing errors but still maintain a natural playing feel and at the same time aleviate dropouts. A dropout is what happens when you sequence too many notes together at the same point of a song. It makes the timing feel real choppy and the song sound like its programmed. The tolerance quantize feature eliminates this problem completely. With my MMT-8 I had to deep edit all the piano and string notes and manually move them slightly to avoid the dropouts. Well get yourself a Q-80EXE and I guarantee you you'll be happy you did.
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