The Linn Sequencer is essentially the Linn 9000 without digital drum voices. But is drum machine sequencing software the right starting point for designing a MIDI keyboard recorder?

Readers who were foolish enough to be enticed off the straight and narrow by the words 'Linn Sequencer' on the cover of rival magazines in recent months, will already know something of the machine before you read this review.

You will know, for instance, that this Linn is the company's first instrument that doesn't feature digital drum voices — which is, after all, the innovation which made the US firm famous in the first place. The reason is that this is essentially the Linn 9000 drum machine and sequencer, without the drum machine bit.

Now, when this reviewer looked at the Linn 9000 last Spring, he concluded that two of its outstanding features were the real-time programming of drum patterns, and the fact that your patterns and keyboard sequences are both stored in one machine. Since then, the 9000's sound-sampling has proved disappointing (its eight-bit resolution compares dismally with the 12-bit system used by the much cheaper Emulator SP12), and we still haven't seen the promised step-time programming functions, whose omission was so sorely felt back in April. On top of this, I've still yet to come across a version of the software which doesn't crash every time you perform certain sequences of commands (causing certain superstar producers to heave 9000s out the door when the machines crash with entire songs unsaved), though further software updates to cure these last remaining ills are, as they say, coming soon.

All in all, then, the Linn 9000 has proved something of a disappointment: a machine that promises an awful lot but delivers considerably less, and even then only in fits and starts, as a good many frustrated owners will no doubt testify.

Yet now we have the Linn Sequencer, a Linn 9000 minus the drum machine, which in one fell swoop removes both the really praiseworthy aspects of the earlier instrument. This leaves us with a spec that enables you to record up to 32 tracks of polyphonic data in real-time only: the step-time programming for the Sequencer is promised, not present (doubtless it's much the same software package for both machines). Those of you who follow my reviews — there must be one or two by now — will have heard me complain before of American designers' "jazz-rock" mentality, whereby tape recorder-style sequencing is the only facility supplied. Well, for the time being we'll have to put the Linn Sequencer into this category too, I'm afraid. Currently, the machine's basic format allows the realtime recording of up to 100 sequences of as many as 999 bars each, with 32 polyphonic tracks on each sequence.

In general terms, the Linn's design succeeds where so many others have failed in keeping music recording as akin to the use of a tape recorder as possible. This is reflected in the provision of buttons labelled Play, Record, Forward, Rewind, Locate and Stop, rather than more conventional (and less useful) sequencer terminology. In fact, the only things you still have to select using a data selection process are track number (1 to 32), and MIDI Channel number (up to 16) for each track.

Naturally, you can only have 16 separate tracks triggering synthesisers independently on separate MIDI channels; any additional tracks need to be transferred to tape in separate takes. However, you can use the individual tracks to record different parts of the same instrument's performance, and have them permanently separated yet both sent down the same MIDI channel for replay.

In practice, the Linn records extremely accurately in real time. It's capable of capturing the smallest nuances of your playing (provided you set error-correction to its minimum value — see later), and if that's your principle requirement, this machine should fulfil it admirably.

And until the full step-time software becomes available, a function called Single Step acts as a great boon for stepping through notes individually, to sneak in and correct the odd slip without the need to re-record a whole section.

But there are problems. For even as a substitute for a tape recorder, as A N Other Magazine has already described the Linn, the machine has several significant shortcomings. For instance, whoever heard of a tape machine that makes you specify the number of bars of music you're going to record, before you start? Not me, that's for sure. Yet this is precisely what the Linn demands of you, even if you go for its default value. Not even the Casio SZ1 (at £250 — remember!) makes such a ridiculous imposition on your creativity. Just imagine it: there you are, in the middle of a really great phrase you'll never find again, when suddenly your sequencer stops recording, and replays the drivel you played while you were just getting warmed up.

Still, if you do manage to play something world-shattering while the Linn Sequencer is actually recording, you can at least snip off the unwanted material before and after it, and then loop the good bit round and round, or append it to another good bit that's been similarly tailored.

There are problems on the display front, too, as the Linn offers little visualisation of what's going on across those 32 tracks. The pitifully small liquid crystal display has been used efficiently by Linn's software writers, make no mistake, and offers all sorts of helpful hints on the current recording status quo. But you can only see the status of one track or parameter at any one time, which, when we're dealing with 32 recording channels and a whole host of editing functions, really isn't good enough. And when step-time composition does arrive, goodness knows how you'll be able to see what you're doing.

Anyhow, quibbles aside, you can overdub on a track as soon as you've recorded it by the simple process of changing the track number and MIDI channel number, as shown in the display. This is an extension of the Portastudio or 'sketchpad' approach to sequencing, and for those who like to work in this fashion, I'd say the Linn is probably the fastest unit. It certainly beats the Yamaha QX1 hands-down in terms of sheer operating speed and user-friendliness. With the Linn, knocking a song together track by track is a relatively painless process.

Among its fine array of track assignment, copying and editing facilities are an excellent bar insertion/copying system, by which bars can not only be moved from one location to another, but also shifted around between different sequences — handy if you're toying with a couple of intriguing melody lines, without really knowing which context they'd work best in.

Presentable performances of ideas are made easier, too, by the error-correct facility — which, unfortunately, works as you record. Now, this is a matter of personal preference. If you auto-correct during recording, you lose any feel you might have been able to salvage from a freak good performance. On the other hand, the instant play back of a corrected performance means you can kid yourself (and others) that you're a far better player than you actually are. Personally, I reckon that if you're going to auto-correct everything to Hell, you might as well program everything in step-time anyway — though as it stands, of course, the Linn Sequencer won't let you do that. Still, providing your playing technique meets a certain basic standard, the Linn's method is faster. At any rate, this particular auto-correct function seems to work pretty damn well: everything comes back at you with almost inhuman precision, regardless of how sloppily you've played it.

To erase individual notes from a sequence, you have to hold down the notes in question while the sequence is at the point where the unwanted notes appear. In other words, a system not unlike that used by Yamaha's digital drum machines, by which you have to tap the Erase button at exactly the same time as the unwanted drum beat sounds, in order to remove it from your composition. Whilst this sounds easy enough, it can be tricky to execute in certain situations, especially if you're relatively unfamiliar with the Linn's workings.

If you've been taking note of my criticisms thus far — the erase operation, the fixing of bar numbers before you start, auto-correct as you record — you'll begin to realise what we have in the Linn Sequencer. Yes folks, a box with a load of drum machine software in it, hastily modified to make it suitable for recording keyboard information. Or to put it another way, a sequencer that still thinks it's a drum machine. Great for drummers and studio engineers who want to get into sequencing keyboards, but hardly what the world's keyboard players have been holding their breath for.

Chaining sequences together is done in a drum machine-like manner as well, though in this instance, having such a step-by-step approach is a positive advantage. This, together with a facility to name your individual patterns with such mighty legends as 'verse' 'chorus' and 'middle 8', means you're unlikely to make any mistakes in getting the shape of your song together, and even if you do, these are easily rectified.

You can also use short sections from sequences in your songs, so that you don't need to re-record small musical 'quotations' or half-verses from scratch to place them elsewhere in your composition.

Other definite plus points include a MIDI Transpose facility (sadly not yet storable within the Linn's memory), and a long list of pattern-programmable parameters that includes tempo (adjustable over a resolution of as little as a tenth of a beat), tempo change, time signature, and so on.

Thus, it's really in the transformation of a bunch of sequences into a coherent piece of music that the Linn begins to earn its (rather expensive) keep, in terms of both timesaving and artistic control.

The 3.5-inch disk drive is used for storing all your sequence data, and the Linn Sequencer is clever enough to format its own disks, so the cost of the floppies is the only 'hidden' extra storage expense. One disk is capable of storing over 110,000 notes, which is probably enough for most, non-Wagnerian purposes.

Exhaustive tests failed to reveal any MIDI code which the Linn was incapable of dealing with. Aside from the inevitable note-on and note-off commands (with velocity as standard), aftertouch, pitchbend and mod wheel data, sustain pedal and program changes, the Linn also understands other, rarer continuous controller codes, and various system exclusive operations.

Synchronisation with the outside world is another of the machine's better considered aspects. There's a full implementation of MIDI real time messages (complete with the vital Start, Stop and Continue commands and Song Pointers), and a facility for older gear (working on a clicks-per-quarter-note scale) to be triggered; this can be extended to include individual trigger pulses.

Another promised update (still not available for the 9000 last time I looked) is SMPTE. However, all the practical hassles inherent within music recording via SMPTE (too many to discuss here, I'm afraid) make this an omission not really worth losing sleep over. My advice? Buy yourself a Roland SBX80 or an SRC and control everything via MIDI Song Pointers, which are immeasurably more reliable anyway.

A Computer Interface on the back panel would seem to portend a more comprehensive visualisation of sequences, but no one seems to know much about this at the moment. I'll tell you more when someone tells me.

Concluding this review is a difficult task. It's clear that, far from being beyond criticism, the Linn Sequencer has a number of glaring design faults which severely restrict its usefulness in a wide variety of applications. It has no step-time recording facilities yet, its recording format requires the user to put up with a number of operational annoyances, and it lacks a large number of the writing, editing and assignment features that make using the Yamaha QX1 such a rewarding experience. And in comparison with the features and price of the new Roland MC500, the Linn Sequencer starts to look very expensive indeed.

Yet as a digital recorder whose job it is to store lots of MIDI information quickly, faithfully and usefully, the Linn is a joy. It is astoundingly accurate, and it puts up fewer boundaries between technology and musical creativity than almost any machine I know of. You can use this sequencer in much the same way as you would any other musical instrument, and not ever fully realise (let alone worry about) just how complex it is.

So why aren't I more enthusiastic about it? Maybe it's just that, to me, a sequencer is first and foremost a compositional tool, not a piece of recording equipment.

Price RRP £1995 including VAT

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