Early sequencers The early music sequencers were sound-producing devices such as
automatic musical instruments,
music boxes,
mechanical organs,
player pianos, and
Orchestrions. Player pianos, for example, had much in common with contemporary sequencers. Composers or arrangers transmitted music to
piano rolls which were subsequently edited by technicians who prepared the rolls for mass duplication. Eventually consumers were able to purchase these rolls and play them back on their own player pianos. The origin of automatic musical instruments seems remarkably old. As early as the 9th century, the
Persian (Iranian)
Banū Mūsā brothers invented a
hydropowered
organ using exchangeable cylinders with pins, and also an
automatic flute-playing machine using
steam power, as described in their
Book of Ingenious Devices. The Banu Musa brothers' automatic flute player was the first
programmable music sequencer device, and the first example of repetitive
music technology, powered by
hydraulics. In 1206,
Al-Jazari, an
Arab engineer, invented programmable musical
automata, a "
robot band" which performed "more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection." It was notably the first programmable
drum machine. Among the four
automaton musicians were two drummers. It was a drum machine where
pegs (
cams) bump into little
levers that operated the percussion. The drummers could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. In the 14th century, rotating cylinders with pins were used to play a
carillon (steam organ) in Flanders, and at least in the 15th century,
barrel organs were seen in the Netherlands. In the late-18th or early-19th century, with technological advances of the
Industrial Revolution various automatic musical instruments were invented. Some examples:
music boxes,
barrel organs and
barrel pianos consisting of a barrel or cylinder with pins or a flat metal disc with punched holes; or
mechanical organs,
player pianos and
orchestrions using
book music /
music rolls (
piano rolls) with punched holes, etc. These instruments were disseminated widely as popular entertainment devices prior to the inventions of
phonographs,
radios, and
sound films which eventually eclipsed all such home music production devices. Of them all, punched-paper-tape media had been used until the mid-20th century. The earliest programmable
music synthesizers including the
RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer in 1957, and the Siemens Synthesizer in 1959, were also controlled via
punch tapes similar to
piano rolls. resembles strip chart --> Additional inventions grew out of
sound film audio technology. The
drawn sound technique which appeared in the late 1920s, is notable as a precursor of today's intuitive
graphical user interfaces. In this technique, notes and various sound parameters are triggered by hand-drawn black ink waveforms directly upon the film substrate, hence they resemble piano rolls (or the 'strip charts' of the modern sequencers/DAWs). Drawn soundtrack was often used in early experimental electronic music, including the
Variophone developed by Yevgeny Sholpo in 1930, and the
Oramics designed by
Daphne Oram in 1957, and so forth.
Analog sequencers During the 1940s–1960s,
Raymond Scott, an American composer of electronic music, invented various kind of music sequencers for his electric compositions. The "Wall of Sound", once covered on the wall of his studio in New York during the 1940s–1950s, was an
electro-mechanical sequencer to produce rhythmic patterns, consisting of stepping
relays (used on
dial pulse telephone exchange),
solenoids, control switches, and tone circuits with 16 individual
oscillators. Later,
Robert Moog would explain it in such terms as "the whole room would go 'clack – clack – clack', and the sounds would come out all over the place". The first electronic sequencer was invented by Raymond Scott, using
thyratrons and
relays.
Clavivox, developed since 1952, was a kind of keyboard synthesizer with sequencer. On its prototype, a
theremin manufactured by young Robert Moog was utilized to enable
portamento over 3-octave range, and on later version, it was replaced by a pair of
photographic film and photocell for controlling the pitch by
voltage. In 1968,
Ralph Lundsten and
Leo Nilsson had a polyphonic synthesizer with sequencer called
Andromatic built for them by
Erkki Kurenniemi.
Step sequencers The
step sequencers played rigid patterns of notes using a grid of (usually) 16 buttons, or steps, each step being 1/16 of a
measure. These patterns of notes were then chained together to form longer compositions. Sequencers of this kind are still in use, mostly built into
drum machines and
grooveboxes. They are monophonic by nature, although some are
multi-timbral, meaning that they can control several different sounds but only play one note on each of those sounds.
Early computers played the earliest computer music in 1951. On the other hand, software sequencers were continuously utilized since the 1950s in the context of computer music, including computer-
played music (software sequencer), computer-
composed music (
music synthesis), and computer
sound generation (
sound synthesis). In June 1951, the first computer music
Colonel Bogey was played on
CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer. In 1956,
Lejaren Hiller at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign wrote one of the earliest programs for
computer music composition on
ILLIAC, and collaborated on the first piece,
Illiac Suite for String Quartet, with
Leonard Issaction. In 1957
Max Mathews at
Bell Labs wrote
MUSIC, the first widely used program for sound generation, and a 17-second composition was performed by the
IBM 704 computer. Subsequently, computer music was mainly researched on the expensive
mainframe computers in computer centers, until the 1970s when
minicomputers and then
microcomputers became available in this field.
In Japan In Japan, experiments in computer music date back to 1962, when
Keio University professor Sekine and
Toshiba engineer Hayashi experimented with the
TOSBAC computer. This resulted in a piece entitled
TOSBAC Suite.
Early computer music hardware In 1965,
Max Mathews and L. Rosler developed
Graphic 1, an interactive
graphical sound system (that implies sequencer) on which one could draw figures using a light-pen that would be converted into sound, simplifying the process of
composing computer-generated music. a first fully developed
music synthesis system for interactive composition (that implies sequencer) and realtime performance, using 3C/
Honeywell DDP-24 (or DDP-224
Digital sequencers In 1971,
Electronic Music Studios (EMS) released one of the first digital sequencer products as a module of
Synthi 100, and its derivation,
Synthi Sequencer series. After then,
Oberheim released the DS-2 Digital Sequencer in 1974, and
Sequential Circuits released Model 800 in 1977
In Japan In 1977,
Roland Corporation released the
MC-8 MicroComposer, also called
computer music composer by Roland. It was an early stand-alone,
microprocessor-based, digital CV/gate sequencer, It was capable of eight-channel polyphony, allowing the creation of
polyrhythmic sequences.
Music workstations In 1975,
New England Digital (NED) released ABLE computer (microcomputer) as a dedicated data processing unit for Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer (1973), and based on it, later Synclavier series were developed. The
Synclavier I, released in September 1977, was one of the earliest digital
music workstation product with multitrack sequencer. Synclavier series evolved throughout the late-1970s to the mid-1980s, and they also established integration of
digital-audio and music-sequencer, on their Direct-to-Disk option in 1984, and later Tapeless Studio system. In 1982, renewed the
Fairlight CMI Series II and added new sequencer software Page R, which combined
step sequencing with
sample playback. While there were earlier microprocessor-based sequencers for digital polyphonic synthesizers, their early products tended to prefer the newer internal digital buses than the old-style analogue CV/gate interface once used on their prototype system. Then in the early-1980s, they also re-recognized the needs of
CV/gate interface, and
supported it along with MIDI as options.
In Japan Yamaha's GS-1, their first
FM digital synthesizer, was released in 1980.
MIDI sequencers In June 1981,
Roland Corporation founder
Ikutaro Kakehashi proposed the concept of standardization between different manufacturers' instruments as well as computers, to
Oberheim Electronics founder
Tom Oberheim and
Sequential Circuits president
Dave Smith. In October 1981, Kakehashi, Oberheim and Smith discussed the concept with representatives from
Yamaha,
Korg and
Kawai. In 1983, the
MIDI standard was unveiled by Kakehashi and Smith. The first MIDI sequencer was the Roland MSQ-700, released in 1983. It was not until the advent of MIDI that
general-purpose computers started to play a role as sequencers. Following the widespread adoption of MIDI, computer-based MIDI sequencers were developed. MIDI-to-
CV/gate converters were then used to enable
analogue synthesizers to be controlled by a MIDI sequencer.
Personal computers In 1987, software sequencers called
trackers were developed to realize the low-cost integration of sampling sound and interactive digital sequencer as seen on
Fairlight CMI II Page R. They became popular in the 1980s and 1990s as simple sequencers for creating
computer game music, and remain popular in the
demoscene and
chiptune music. Modern computer digital audio software after the 2000s, such as
Ableton Live, incorporates aspects of sequencers among many other features.
In Japan In 1978, Japanese
personal computers such as the
Hitachi Basic Master equipped the low-bit D/A converter to generate sound which can be sequenced using
Music Macro Language (MML). This was used to produce
chiptune video game music. and a
graphical user interface for the software sequencer. and
Commodore 64. The spread of MIDI on personal computers was facilitated by Roland's
MPU-401, released in 1984. It was the first MIDI-equipped PC
sound card, capable of MIDI sound processing After Roland sold MPU
sound chips to other sound card manufacturers, it established a universal standard MIDI-to-PC interface. Following the widespread adoption of MIDI, computer-based
MIDI software sequencers were developed.
Visual timeline of rhythm sequencers == See also ==