I’m thinking about getting a sequencer for my LP and wanted to know what everyone else might be using. Right now my Moog is my only synth.
It’s very tempting considering a machine drum (as it can also do drums), but they are kind of expensive. Does anyone have one, and if so, how nicely do they work for sequencing external gear?
The Future Retro Mobius looks awesome, but it’s only one-track, so if I wanted to sequence in something else later, it wouldn’t work so well.
Then there’s the Future Retro Revolution, which gives you an extra 303-ish synth, and has a slightly cooler sequencer (reverse/remix buttons, etc) but you can’t sequence the 303-synth and a Moog at the same time (one or the other).
Then there’s also the MFB64, though user interface wise it looks a bit complicated and I think the Mobius looks better there.
So, I wanted to ask, what are you folks using, if anything? Thoughts?
I personally use a Korg EMX
Note that I owned it before the LP, so it’s merely another use for it
It’s a great little workstation, with plenty of nice drums, excellent FX to tweak them, and 5 parts
You can use 1 part to control the LP, which leaves 4 EMX synth parts (each one with oscs, filter, etc…) and 9 drum parts
Sequencer has 16 steps, 8 bars, song mode…
I can’t say how this solution stands amongst other gear cause I just don’t know
But I can say that it works for me (I’m not a big sequencer user, I use it for some bass patterns to get that sequenced 80’s feeling sometimes)
The FM Mobius is a great product (I own one). If you don’t know the specifics, the Mobius has 256 16-step sequence memories and 16 song memories (up to 3550 notes in length total). It offers both MIDI and CV/Gate outputs, and the CV can either be V/Octave (Moog) or V/HZ (older Yamaha and others). Gates can either be positive or negative.
Each sequence can be 1-16 steps in length, and adjacent sequences can be daisy-chained or assembled into songs. Each step can have an accent or a glide (or both), and all steps can be muted/unmuted while the sequence is running. Tempo goes from 20 to 250 BPM.
The Mobius can be sync’d to an external clock, which possibly answers your question about adding/overdubbing other sequences (unless I misunderstood you - I’m assuming that you’re using a DAW here).
The CV/Gate outputs work very well with other CV/Gate gear like the Voyager, LP or Moogerfoogers, and the MIDI and CV/Gate outs can be used at the same time.
The Mobius’ interface is straightforward. Notes are selected using the MIDI Note naming convention (C2, D#3, G4) instead of tweaking knobs to adjust the correct pitches, but this also means that the Mobius produces discrete voltages that correspond to half-steps (1/12ths of an octave) instead of a fully-adjustable voltage that you would get from a knob. Since most folks will use a sequencer like this to sequence notes, however, I doubt that will be an issue (if it is, you need a sequencer like the Moog 960 or clone).
IMHO, the Mobius is a very reasonable choice for a rack-mountable, easy-to-use sequencer for the LP. My 2 cents…
Glad to hear you like the EMX – definitely a cheaper option. I was kind of worried about the tubes being unreliable but maybe that’s not really a factor. Also some of the drums are apparently sampled, so I wasn’t sure if the variety would be annoying or not, or if it did well at producing sounds that were less “techno” (given it’s billing) – there are definitely some decent YouTube videos from it though.
Mobius looks fun – my main question is how you’d deal with polyphonic stuff other than just playing over it – which isn’t a bad thing either really – or how easy it would be to sync a pattern up to another drum machine (should I ever get one) – though apparently it can be set to trigger them.
with just one synth and a moebius I think it wil be get pretty fast boring.
however this could be a good starting point to set up a more bigger studio, but you still need something to record your audio of course.
Look for a seq. with built in sounds (korg roland etc,) or look for software so you can overdub your phatty, if you want to keep a small set up.
Yeah, I also have Logic, which has some decent software and can be used for overdubs.
Hardware’s more fun at the moment as I see computers enough during the week… Basically I don’t want to be stuck with their evil MIDI editor and clicking mouses when it’s 100 times slower
As for the EMX tubes, I don’t know how reliable they are
In any case they aren’t really useful, it’s pretty much a gimmick, and 99% of your time you just don’t use them
I know that I do own the EMX since 2003 (2004? I can’t remember) and I have no issue with it, except that I’ve noticed lately that the output signal has dirtied up a little
The manual is silent about what would happen if the tubes were to fail
What it says is that you shouldn’t try to remove or replace them, and that they aren’t serviceable
Since the troubleshooting section for “no sound” doesn’t mention them, my guess is that the unit would still work
