2005-07-29 #1

Towards the P3

I recently had a chance to play with Paul Nagle's P3 sequencer(*) … after having spent the best part of a week rewriting my MaxMSP-based Pulse Sequencer in Java/MXJ. An obvious question - and one that I've seen asked - is: is there any software package with the same functionality as the P3? One answer is "yes": clearly one can knock up MaxMSP code to do arbitrary sequencing, and the Pulse Sequencer is easily as powerful as the P3, albeit in completely different ways. But a better answer is "no": the P3 is a sequencing box, with knobs, buttons, and embedded firmware, and there's no way that a software package can come close to the ergonomics of dedicated hardware: it's true of synthesis, and it's true of sequencing.

It should be said, also, that a hardware sequencer is going to have tighter timing than something like MaxMSP which is doing a lot of work per scheduler pulse, and which can't prepare output ahead of time.

(*) Described as an "analogue sequencer", which is, IMHO, misleading: there's nothing analogue about it other than the design of the controls.

(The picture, by the way, is a close-up of Phil Smillie's custom-build P3.)