What was your first sequencer or DAW?

[KTS]

..........

commodore 64 with a sequential circuits interface and sequencer.......around 1985 or so

then onto an Atari 1040st with SST sequencer software.....87ish ?

then a big layoff until i got Acid Pro 4 in 2003

now i'm using Acid Pro 5 and EnergyXT..........

[Blank_Frank]

Some keyboard I had as a kid that had one sound and would play 99 notes. With no gaps.

Roland SH-101 & MC-202 - Killer combo

Alesis MMT8 & HR16 - Ditto

My first PC software was something called SeqMax Presto (did anyone else in the world use this software?), with a dedicated ISA MIDI card.

Soon upgraded to Cubase 3.1 (pre-VST), then Cubase VST 3.5 & 5, then SX 1, 2 & 3.

Have also owned, and used to a lesser degree, FruityLoops (since...whatever came before 2.0!) and Ableton Live (3 & 4 and thinking about 5).

[Dazza66]

What i've used in the past:

Casio VL-Tone (no, really) -1979
SH-101 + TR-808 - 1982
Drumulator - 1994
Another SH-101 + TR-808 - 1994
Jupiter-6 - 1995 (sold all the hardware by 2001)

Nooooooooooooooooooo! You don't regret selling that gear? They've been overused a lot but I remember fiddling with a friend's 808 once and it sounded real good. Judging by the 2 dates, you should be able to buy another sh101 + tr-808 in 2006.

Do I regret selling that gear? No, not really, but I'm sure if I still had all those instruments I'd still use them a bit. We are all spoiled for choice nowadays with the amount of DAWS and VST's we have, but 'getting your hands dirty' with tweaking and syncing those analog beauties together was a real creative experience. Well, now you come to mention it, maybe I do regret letting them go....

[CorrosiveGod]

Emagic Logic 4.8

[pwdm]

1st seq was a sh101+tb303+tr606

what a combo they where...well not so much the tr606

[Meffy]

If you'll allow me really to stretch things, a program I wrote around 1971 or '72 in APL\360 (the legendarily obscure programming language with all the Greek letters and funny geometric shapes) which played programmable rhythms on an IBM Selectric terminal using the escapement, carriage and typeball solenoids, and such.

Monophonic, as my computing center had just one terminal. =9_9=

About the same time, or maybe earlier, I built a rather cute (but very simple) little hardware synth with pseudo-random sequence generator. Wish I still had that. Traded it for a video camera back in the early 80s. *sigh*

After that I did a good deal of messing about writing for Commodores and Apples and an Atari, then early PCs. Nothing very usable, all one-of-a-kind stuff except one shareware item that didn't exactly take the world by storm.

My first commercially made sequencer was Cakewalk Pro Audio. Don't recall which version. It was around 1993 or '94, not sure. Been a Cakewalk user ever since.

[Improv]

Rock and f**king roll!

I've got one of those! Had it since 1992. Fonky little sound box!

I should dig it out of the closet and start using it again-by now it's so old it's probably retro!

Hehe. still got mine too, it looks rather the worse for wear by now though.

I lost track of the hours that I spent staring at that little one line display trying to program.
Gack!!!

That's when I got an Atari STE and EditTrack Pro. As soon as I saw the program on screen and realized that I could see everything at once instead of part of one line, I was hooked!

[GaryG]

which played programmable rhythms on an IBM Selectric terminal using the escapement, carriage and typeball solenoids, and such.

hee, i wrote something that pulsed the relay in a BBC B micro (used to control a tape deck) in the early 80s... got some neat little rhythms going with that. Change the values in the for/next loops to change pitch and duration. Happy days...

ignoring the casio vl-tone, some useless sinclair spectrum sequencer, and the korg poly800s built in affair, the first seq. i used in anger was cakewalk express, a freebie that came with my AWE32 card (mid 90s?) Sowed seeds...

.g

[Unkie Al]

Sequencer: a DOS version of Cakewalk that was graciously sent to me in 1993 by TwelveTone Systems for a layman's article on MIDI I was doing.

DAW: The original SAW that ran surprisingly well on a 386-40 under WIN 3.1.

[op519]

Rock and f**king roll!

This was actually my first introduction to music making. My uncle bought it at a Goodwill (canadian charity type second hand store) for $1CDN. They (goodwill) thought it was a video tape probably due to the video tape type case. I honestly loved this thing. Dunno why.

From there Magix Music Studio 2000 or so then Logic Audio Silver 5 I think, then Logic Audio Platinum, and finally resting with EnergyXT & Project 5 although occasionally using LAP.

[wrench45us]

wrote my own on a Commodore 64 based on the Terry Riley 'In C' piece. Set of patterns where in an ensemble each player plays a given sequence as many times as they wish and then moves to the next one.

so i would play in the patterns and then program 3 voices (in selectable modes Lydian, mixolydian etc.) to play each sequence a randomly selected number of times.

and went from there till it eventually got too complicated to use

then a few decades later i ended up working here where at one time 3 other developers had basement Sonar studios

[michat]

-.

[beej]

Well I see the ol' Casio VL-Tone was the foundation of many downward gear lust spirals...

[paradiddle]

[quote="paradiddle
Do I regret selling that gear? No, not really, but I'm sure if I still had all those instruments I'd still use them a bit. We are all spoiled for choice nowadays with the amount of DAWS and VST's we have, but 'getting your hands dirty' with tweaking and syncing those analog beauties together was a real creative experience. Well, now you come to mention it, maybe I do regret letting them go....

True there's a lot of choices. You can do things you possibly can't do with hardware and it's much more convenient. If not for a pc, I don't think I would have the means to record things or play synths.

Anybody can get by using freeware mostly or buying a soft like energy xt or tracktion for a modest price.

[Meffy]

Happy days... :)

Indeed! *pawshake* But I'd not trade 'em for all the goodies we've got now. Ohoho, not a chance!