[PD] sequencer app for osx

[Martin Schied]

I'm also looking for various midi and OSC sequencers (not only for pd) 
at the moment and have found some promising and some not-so promising 
applications:

-Promising:
Ardour is going to support midi (currently only in svn) - didn't try it 
yet, but I will do soon. Interface looks very usable on screenshots.

Midi editing in EnergyXT2 was also fine - but it can't send midi until 
now as far as i know. It's nonfree (about 50$):
piano roll, with blocks: yes
drag start and end points to control noteon/noteoff points: yes 
(doubleclick creates new notes)
quantize to a grid of any size you want (and off): yes hot-key: yes
lines down the bottom control velocity: yes
super-intuitive scroll: yes (mouswheel + keyboard)
super-intuitive zoom: yes, but no vertical zoom (?)
ability of fullscreen editing in a separate window: yes, but I wasn't 
able to expand distinct tracks, but I think that's possible too.

Qtractor seemed to be very usable too in current version (0.2.0, build 
2008/08/10):
piano roll, with blocks: yes
drag start and end points to control noteon/noteoff points: yes
quantize to a grid of any size you want (and off): yes hot-key: no (or i 
didn't find it)
lines down the bottom control velocity: yes
super-intuitive scroll: yes (mouswheel + keyboard)
super-intuitive zoom: yes, but no mouse-wheel-shortcut
ability of fullscreen editing in a separate window

Currently I'm using Mackie Tracktion (using wine under Linux) for midi 
recording and editing, but its GUI is too CPU consuming for bigger 
projects.
piano roll, with blocks: yes
drag start and end points to control noteon/noteoff points: yes
quantize to a grid of any size you want (and off): no fixed gridsize, 
but changing gridsize at different zoom-levels (very intuitive) hot-key: 
yes
lines down the bottom control velocity: yes
super-intuitive scroll: yes (mouswheel + keyboard)
super-intuitive zoom: yes
ability of fullscreen editing in a separate window: no

-Working but not my flavour of using a Sequencer (didn't try velocity 
editing and shortcuts)
Rosegarden
MusE

-Not so promising:
too many... (-;

some links to some links:
https://puredata.info/Members/syntax_the_nerd/seqwiki/Sequencerwikihome/
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/linux/MIDI_SEQUENCERS/

hope I could help someone.

Martin


Damian Stewart wrote:
> Martin Peach wrote:
>
>   
>>> (since i haven't yet found a pure Pd sequencer i'm happy with)
>>>       
>> What makes you sad about Pd sequencers? Maybe it's fixable.
>>     
>
> have you ever used Ableton's MIDI sequencer? it's a piano roll, with blocks 
> for notes. drag start and end points to control noteon/noteoff points. 
> quantize to a grid of any size you want (switchable with a hot-key) or turn 
> off quantization completely to finetune timing (for that little 'humanized' 
> extra, whatever that might mean). super-intuitive scroll and zoom with a 
> single mouse button drag in the top. the main features in this i'm 
> interested in is the quantization grid control, and the ability to super 
> fine-tune note durations.
>
> lines down the bottom control velocity. if you have two notes on the piano 
> roll trigger at the same time, it's super-easy to choose which note's 
> velocity you're editing.
>
> i don't believe it's do-able in Pd, not without a ridiculous amount of 
> work, and i'm too lazy to do the work myself (and if i wasn't, i'd do it 
> from scratch in a different programming language eg Processing or C++, 
> rather than fighting Tcl/Tk).
>
>   
>> Why not run three instances of midifile or even textfile with the same 
>> data?
>>     
>
> yes, this is what i'm already doing. the problem is generating said 
> midifile/textfiles in the first place.
>
>   
>>> - easy access to velocity and note duration
>>>       
>> Do you mean that the thing should output the duration at the same time 
>> as the note-on, or the file should be readable in a text editor?
>>     
>
> no, i mean that i should be able to easily see and edit the duration and 
> the velocity without having to think or do much work. see above..
>
>