Martin Schwenke

Ideas for a MIDI Sequencer

The sequencer doesn't exist yet, but here's the plan.

The sequencer will be written in a lazy functional programming language. When finished, the sequencer will allow songs to be "programmed" at a very high-level, in that same lazy functional programming language. This means that it should be possible to "program" a backing track in less than 1 hour (hopefully a lot less), producing a MIDI file. There will be no facility for real-time recording, and there is unlikely to be a facility to import MIDI files.

Since I originally had this idea, I've started messing around with Haskore, which is written in, and allows you to express music using, Haskell. I now plan on adding the following things to Haskore:

• Explicit handling of drums, including a library of drum beats. I plan to provide a scheme where it is easy to map in drum fills so that they are played in a `drummerly' way.
• Creation of (simple) chord sequences, having the chords played in a variety of standard, simple styles.
• Mapping of bass sequences to fit chords, mostly consisting of transposing a couple of standard bass lines for a song.
• Un-quantising (is that `groove quantisation'?).
• "Un-quantising" note volumes.
• Harmonies (maybe).

I'd be interested in hearing any comments.

Note: Unless there's a link on this page to the actual software, then it isn't finished! Right now I've only just started, and I don't have a lot of time to work on it. When it's finished I'll probably release it!

URL: http://computer/people/Martin.Schwenke/sequencer.html Last modified: Friday, 18-Sep-1998 15:42:30 EST