Music Sequencer - Modern Sequencers

Modern Sequencers

See also: #Software sequencers, Audio sequencer, Digital audio workstation, and Audio plugin

With the advent of MIDI and particularly Atari ST in 1980s, programmers were able to write software that could record and play back the notes played by a musician. Unlike the early sequencers used to play mechanical sounding sequence with exactly equal length, the new ones recorded and played back expressive performances by real musicians. These were typically used to control external synthesizers, especially rackmounted sound modules as it was no longer necessary for each synthesizer to have its own keyboard.

As the technology matured, sequencers gained more features, and integrated the ability to record multitrack audio. Sequencers mainly used for audio are often called digital audio workstations (or DAWs).

Many modern sequencers can also control virtual instruments implemented as software plug-ins, allowing musicians to replace separate synthesizers with software equivalents.

Today the term "sequencer" is often used to describe software. However, hardware sequencers still exist. Workstation keyboards have their own proprietary built-in MIDI sequencers. Drum machines and some older synthesizers have their own step sequencer built in. There are still also standalone hardware MIDI sequencers, although the market demand for those has diminished greatly due to the greater feature set of their software counterparts.