Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Choosing a Sequencer

Now I have a reliable audio setup, I need to choose a sequencer. In the Linux world, there is quite a choice, both free and commercial - Rosegarden, Qtractor, Muse, SEQ24, EnergyXT (commercial) & Renoise (commercial). There may be others, but they seem the most widely used.

I'm looking for something that has a quick and simple workflow, is reliable and can also work with audio files. I don't mind using a commercial program if I need to.

I used to use Tracktion in my Windows days, and loved the simplicity that it offered - vitually everything was accessed from the main screen without needing to delve into various menus. The only thing that let it down slightly was the MIDI editing was a bit weak, but I would happily use it again now. In fact, it's a shame there is no Linux version available, after all it is built with the JUCE toolkit, which is a cross platform development library which is available for Linux.

I'm probably going to rule out SEQ24 straight away - it is a MIDI sequencer only, and to be honest when I briefly tried it I didn't get on with the workflow.

I am going to try Renoise first. I've heard good things about it and it supports native Linux VSTs. I've never used a tracker before so it should be an interesting ride...

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