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Like many of you, I am a DAW based studio musician, so I have no sequences to contribute, but I do have lots of info:
If any of you remember "Monster Dan" from the Transoniq Hacker days, he is still in business [links open in new window]:
http://www.monster-tracks.com/
He does pro arrangements of (American) top 40 hits. He has thousands, and has retained his SQ80 format (at least as of a few years ago when we exchanged emails). For a pro gigging musician, buying these sequences would be a good solution.
Margus Kliimask has very generously developed a Window's based ESQ/SQ80 sequence converter, but I think it is 1-way only (I'm on a W3 phone and can't confirm):
http://wolzow.mindworks.ee/
Finally, Gary Giebler still sells his very-capable MS-DOS based 2-way sequencer translation tools! He even has a new storefront with new tools:
http://www.midifile.com/
It's my guess that a contemporary computer will need an emulator to run them. I have used DosBox successfully for a ton of stuff:
http://www.dosbox.com/
I don't have the Giebler tools, though. Can someone confirm that they still work either with or without DosBox?
Perhaps gigging "musicians" who use sequencers to cover top-40 tracks should consider actually recording the backing parts themselves, once they finish evaluating their priorities. Or better still, hook up with a band. After all if it's their bread and butter, maybe they should expect to have to do more than a couple of 4-hour gigs a week.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, don't forget that songs can always be copied from one sequencer to another via MIDI. Just sync the sequencers together, hit record on one and play on the other. Every note that gets recorded will be consistently off by a few ticks (which generally won't matter, especially if you just re-quantize everything.)