Steinberg Sequel

OVERVIEW

Like Ableton Live or Mackie Tracktion, Sequel has a “one screen to rule them all” philosophy, making it an ideal match for laptops. Along the very top, there’s a control strip with tempo, transport, menus, and similar options. Just below this, the upper part of the screen is a fairly conventional track view for viewing and editing digital audio and MIDI clips, while toward the left there’s a “mini-mixer” strip where (among other things) you can mute, solo, and do surprisingly sophisticated track automation. Along the bottom are six tabbed views of various functions; you can show this section, or hide it if you want to see more tracks.

INSTALLATION

Sequel comes on a DVD-ROM, and includes Syncrosoft-branded copy protection, but with no hardware dongle. You must have an internet connection to authorize the program, whereupon Syncrosoft works some copy protection mojo on your hard drive and the program runs. You cannot transfer this protection to a Syncrosoft dongle (I tried), so choose wisely before installing the program because once you’ve installed it, it’s mated with that computer for life — I installed it on my desktop machine; in retrospect, I probably should have installed it on my laptop. Steinberg does make allowances if you change machines or if your hard drive crashes, but you’ll need to contact them to de-activate the old code and receive a new one.

After authorization, go to the Sequel website, where you’ll find some helpful FAQs and other goodies. Incidentally, Sequel comes with a paper manual as well as an electronic version.

INCLUDED CONTENT

So how to do you fill these tracks? Of course you can record your own audio and MIDI parts and load various file types, but Sequel also comes with 4.77GB of content consisting of 4,500 audio and MIDI loops (with another 500 that get unlocked upon registration), track and effects presets, and over 600 “instruments” driven via MIDI tracks. Actually, “instrument” isn’t quite the right term, as they’re presets for the built-in HALion One sampling engine. However, you don’t interact with the HALion engine directly, so it feels like you’re working with individual instruments.

This is not “so-what” content. In fact, I reviewed Sequel for our sister magazine, EQ, from the standpoint of it being a royalty-free music library disguised as a sequencer. When you purchase Sequel, the licensing agreement lets you use the content any way you want in musical compositions. While there’s the expected dance-oriented material — much of Sequel’s marketing addresses the “beat” generation — you’ll also find rock, jazz, world, and even country-friendly material. Furthermore, Steinberg has left the door open for expansion packs, so we may see a sequel to Sequel.

Speaking of expansion, you can’t use third-party plug-ins, nor can Sequel serve as a ReWire client. However, an update scheduled for the third quarter of 2007 will allow you to open Sequel projects in Steinberg’s full-bore professional DAW, Cubase. Clearly, somewhat like Reason, Sequel is meant to be a “closed system.” The advantage of this tight control is stability: Remarkably, despite being a version 1.0.1 program, Sequel never crashed or froze on my Windows test machine.

To find whatever needle you’re looking for in the impressive haystack of content, Sequel’s Media Bay offers a searchable database of sounds. You can add and tag your own sounds as well, although you can’t tag them with multiple attributes. You then apply category filters. For example, you might start with bass as a category, then synth bass as a sub-category, then ambient/chillout for the style, and lounge (or more) as the sub style. As you add filters, the list of options narrows, at which point you can audition the various choices and decide which one will work best in your project. Once you find what you want, you simply drag and drop it into the track view.

IN USE

Creating a song puts the program through pretty much all of its paces. Having already generated several dance-oriented pieces with Sequel, I’d thought I’d see if it was up to the challenge of something a little bit rock ’n roll.

I used Media Bay to find some basic rock drums. I particularly liked one loop, except that it had a cymbal crash at the beginning; I wanted something more basic. Then I found another loop with a basic beginning, but too much going on at the end. As it’s simple to trim beginnings or ends and do splits, either with or without a snap-to-grid function (what makes this really easy is the “smart” nature of the cursor, because where you place it in a clip determines its function), I combined elements of each and came up with a good rhythmic bed. You can also “roll out” both audio and MIDI loops for as many repetitions as you want.

Next up: Some bass and guitar, both of which were fairly well-represented (particularly nu-metal loops). Media Bay didn’t come up with many rock keyboards, so I turned off some filters and experimented. Before long, I found a cool piano fill, a nasty synth sweep, and a staccato Clavinet part. There was also a quirky electric piano sound, but as I didn’t like the MIDI sequence that went with it, I simply recorded a new part.

On to effects: synced delay on the bass in one section, and some resonant filter sweeps on the Clav. The effects are quite comprehensive (see “Gory Details” below) but even better, so is the automation, as it’s easy to automate effect parameters as well as the usual volume and pan.

There are also the expected standard features — a mixer, solo/mute/record ready switches, tempo, individual track inspector, and the like. I was particularly pleased by the transpose functions, as all the content provided with Sequel follows right along, unless it’s not supposed to from a musical standpoint. For example, drums don’t, although you can alter the drum pitch if desired.

As I also wanted to use a few loops from my AdrenaLinn Guitars sample CD, I found that importing is relatively painless, but there are a few caveats: Sequel recognizes the tempo of Acidized files, but not pitch, so you’ll need to transpose such parts manually. Also, REX files are imported in their unsliced form. I was somewhat surprised that bringing in straight AIFF files generally did conform to tempo, though. When they didn’t, there were warp and sample editing options to trim audio files to fit tempo, as well as different stretch options for different types of program material. For example, I brought in one four-bar loop that stretched to five bars. I told Sequel “make it four bars” and all was well.

I did additional editing, threw on a little master maximization, and considered the job done.

CONCLUSIONS

Sequel probably won’t replace your “big” DAW host program . . . although for some people, it might. It’s slick, quick, looks cool, and despite having a smooth workflow, is deep enough that it’s not a toy. Although it incorporates some of the Cubase way of doing things, it doesn’t feel at all like a cut-down or “lite” version of another program, but has its own personality and flavor.

Regular Keyboard readers know that I’m conservative when it comes to nominating products for a Key Buy award. Given all that it does, though, not to mention the included content and low price, I thought Sequel was a no-brainer, and the editors agreed. While it’s fair to call Sequel a consumer- or beginner-oriented program, it combines instant gratification and advanced features in such a way that it could well be the gateway drug that eventually turns a beginner into a producer. Even for hardcore pros, it’s at the very least a guilty pleasure with a high fun factor, and at most, a valuable tool in anyone’s music-making arsenal.