Using Squarp as an old school sequencer?

I wonder if I could use squarp as a MIDI sequencer to play a playlist of a MIDI songs live like the old ones Roland MC50 , Yamaha QX1,5 ETC ?

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Welcome! People here regularly perform complete sets using their Pyramid as the master midi sequencer, but their approach is undoubtedly different than those legacy boxes. I look forward to hearing what they have to say!

I tihnk its better, to detail what you features you need, and work out how closely these match the pyramid.

whilst you can bring in external midi, its not really a feature of the pyramid to ā€˜playbackā€™ existing midi.
its quite likely the midi will have to be adapt to play well on the pyramid.
(depending what you want to do exactly)

honestly, if you want to just playback midi, there are devices around that probably will do that cheaper, and easier :slight_smile:

In Track mode you can use it as a linear sequencer. You can transfer midi files to Pyramid project files and you can play the song. Here you can find a good description by a user:

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yes, but there are limitationsā€¦
so one midi file = one track on the pyramid, and so is bound to a single midi channel.
also the pyramid can handle 13000 midi events, and has a limit on bar numbers.

also frankly, copying midi files over and just ā€˜runningā€™ as is on the pyramid is likely to lead to frustration.

as i said, its not designed for thisā€¦

esp. when you compare to say the easy you could get a rPI to play back a midi file, and only cost $35 :wink:

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Yes, there are some limitations but can be handled. As itā€™s written in the linked post, the limit of 384 bars means about 13 minutes at 120 bpm, I think itā€™s more than enough for a ā€œnormalā€ song. 13000 midi events canā€™t be an issue either if you use only notes. I use this method for some cover versions (or we can say karaoke songs :slight_smile:). I download the midi file from the internet, prepare it for Pyramid (naming the tracks as track01.mid, track02.mid and so on) and copy all of them in an empty project folder (previously saved on Pyramid) on the SD card. I have 6 synths and a drum machine, I assign them to the corresponding tracks and MIDI channels, I set the tempo and the bar length and thatā€™s all, I can play them, itā€™s quite easy (and also program change is possible with separate tracks, so I can use more than 7 tracks in one song). Iā€™ve created many songs this way, working quite well. For my own songs I use the mute-unmute states in SEQ mode, I build them up from scratch, but for these covers Iā€™m a little bit lazy to build them up, itā€™s easier to copy the existing MIDI files.

Thatā€™s OK, Pyramid is not designed for it originally, but it can be used for it for sure, and as I already have it, it doesnā€™t mean extra cost (yes, probably I wouldnā€™t buy it just for this, but anyway itā€™s a reliable and powerful sequencer so worth the money).

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Well sure you can transform MIDI song files to a format suitable to Pyramid, but itā€™s something you have to do for every single file you intend to play. Also, Pyramid has nothing like a playlist functionality. So if the use-case is ā€œautomatically play a bunch of MIDI songsā€ then Pyramid is totally ill-suited to that task.

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