yamaha qy700 the best hardware sequencer in the world?
a kind of review of the yamaha qy700 in comparison to steinberg cubase and the yamaha rm1x, or how prosper finally ended up as a hardware sequencer user.
© Matt Perry, 2006
since i started with the poor internal sequencer of my sci sixtrak in `87, i was blown away by steinbergs cubase, wich i acquired in 1994 running on an atari st1040. that was like heaven and caused a massive explosion of creativity. i loved it and i still do. my simple midi setup at that time:
sci sixtrak, roland alpha juno 2, kawai k1r, atari st 1040 > ibanez mixer > tape deck
© Bill Bertram, 2006
i just had to set the left and right locators, record a few massures, quantize them, copy them a few times. next intrument. how easy and efficient. a “now line” runs from the left to the right through the timeline, that is filled with bars, which contain notes/events. every track controlles an instrument via midi. simplicity is the best friend of creativity!
© michael-michaelis.de
at that time, i used a mixer and a stereo tape deck to record what i had created. i did
not even save a single song on disk. the result was an idea, caught on tape in only one trial. after turning off the gear, there was a song on tape, with all its imperfection and noise. i worked on ideas fastly without adjusting any detail, or fault. i still have more that 40 tapes with tons of homemade songs. a diary of my teenage day!!
over the years, cubase became much more complex with its vsts and audio tracks.
by now, it offers endless possibilities by clicking on buttons. the simple atari midi sequencer grew into a professional virtual studio. and with this, my workflow changed.
instead of working on ideas anymore, i tried to produce a perfect piece of music, over and over adjusted and modified. my creativity died over this and at the end i quitted with
making music.
years later….
no doubt, cubase was great. cubase´s way of sequencing became a world standard. the
user interface was copied many times. but i was tired of using software, i was looking
for something different. something real. i wanted my simple midi setup back, and get rid of the computer. hardware only, thats the trick!
my choice, the yamaha rm1x
this wonderfull box hosts a very sophisticated sequencer combined with a sound
engine and real time controllers. the rm1x is a very complex piece of gear from 1999. if you are interested in the rm1x, go to the channel of “meecek” on youtube. he´s the greatest rm1x manipulator.
the sequencer of the rm1x is based on pattern/sections. every of the 16 sections
(A to P) controlls up to 16 tracks/instruments. thats cool, because you can jump
between sections in realtime and remix your song on the fly. thats why this thing
is called a sequence remixer > A is the intro, B is the 1st verse, C is the refrain…
a song is a chain of sections you can freely combine > A A B C A B C D E E F A and
then convert to a song.
Although i liked it a lot to play around like this, i missed the “now line” of cubase
running through a song. there were no locators that i could set. after a while i realised
that i didn´t like this kind of pattern based recording. no doubt, the rm1x is great, but
i am not a club dj. so i went further looking for something else.
and i found this wonderful oldstyle looking sequencer, that seemes to come right
from the 80s with its charisma of a cash register and plastic buttons as huge as
shopping malls.
the yamaha qy700
and i fell in love again. not this kind of wild passionate love that i felt when i
encountered steinbergs cubase in ´94. this time, it feels like coming home, like a friend
who will stay with me forever. the yamaha qy700 is a solid rock, that runs stable, even
if the world would come to its end.
forget the luxury of a software sequencer. working with the qy700 meens doing
number work. my hand has five fingers, and i need them for counting measures all
the time.
working with this machine makes me feel like alan wilder or vince clark. this is
how i always imagined the studio work of the 80s. its a time travel, because everytime
i want to edit something, i first have to choose the right job number. i even have to
press enter to verify my decision. it is a cash register, wonderfull!
when it comes to my beloved workflow, which i described above, here is how its done with the qy700.
the “punch record mode” allows me to set two locators and record inside the chosen area.
job number 01 does quantize the chosen area / measures.
job number 11 does copy and paste my measures.
the wonderfull “track view display” of the yamaha qy700 gives me some kind of an
overview. the coloured line is my new “now line”. the bars which stand for events/notes run from the right to the left. thats a bit like the cubase user interface. the qy700 controls up to 32 midi channels of external gear and it saves my songs on disks, thats so lovely retro!
the yamaha qy700 offers a “song orientated” workflow and a useful track view display.
it brought back my creativity, fun and this certain 80s feeling. all this makes it best the hardware sequencer in the world…..to me!
always remember: simplicity is the best friend of creativity!
prosper
see also: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_articles/nov96/yamahaqy700.html#
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UPDATE: 12/2012
It has been quite a while since i wrote this enthusiastic review on the qy700. and the good thing is, that i still use it extensively. i realised that most of the vititors of prosper-donge.com are searching for articles about a reliable and decent hardware sequencer. the qy700 is one of these candidates. slowly i really feel that many other synth nerds and geeks are searching for an alternative to their software sequencers and plugins. myself, i got soooo bored by clicking the mouse, that i quit working with a computer when it comes to making music. to me, it has nothing to do with music, when only my forefonger is in action while making a track. my forefinger itself can´t feel, nor get lost in inspiration. might be that yours can, lucky you!
if i suppose that it was boredom of software sequencing that led you to this article, i think i should add a bit more of my subjective impression about this wonderful device.
if you red the article above, you know that i sold my Yamaha rm1x for a qy700. after working with both for a while i have to admit, that i thought of getting back the rm1x. but why?
the rm1x is much more hands on and is made for realtime tweaking. it simply has more “jamming” character than the qy700 has. both devices would complement one another very well. until a certain stage of work, the rm1x is perfect for getting inspiration and tweaking parameters in realtime, i.e. during the first stage, when an idea is found.
the rm1x might be faster when it comes to developing an idea. in addition it is easy to play around with the sections in order to create different parts of a song and finding out which combination works. it is way easier to mute certain intruments/midi channels than with the qy700. and there is another thing about the qy700, one has to know. if you set the locators in song mode for looping a certain area, the qy700 will produce a little “offset” while jumping from the end of the loop to the start. it disrupts the loop for a few miliseconds, but that is enough, to be disturbing. that means, you cannot use the loop function in song mode for live tweaking.
But when it comes to fixing everything in a song and to working on details [editing single midi events, midi cc, or sysex] the qy700 can´t be beaten in my opinion. the user has the the absolute in depth control over every single parameter. there´s nothing you couldn´t achieve with this monster.
i am curious about other users and their experiences with one of the devices. one question i would have is: is it possible to save a song in the rm1x and then load it directly to the qy700?
and damned! how does the accompaniment feature of the qy700 work? does anyone outhere even know what it does?
any help appreciated! contact me, please……
regards,
prosper
Comments
26 Responses to “yamaha qy700 the best hardware sequencer in the world?”
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prospers favorites
very nice and personal article. I got mine for under 200 dollars this week and am now waiting for it to arrive. I have been using quite a lot of software too in the past and now feel the need to turn off the computer and move to hardware.. Thanks.
hey sengle,
you made my day!!! your the first to give a comment to something i wrote here, and its a nice one, thank you so much!
last week i brought back my roland vs1680 to life and managed to sync it with the QY700. now i have 32 tracks of midi and 16 tracks to play with! i often think that musicians and producers 30 years ago would have killed for the possibities we have these days, but creativity has nothing to do with state of the art equipment, thats what i learned so far.
If you ever have a question, feel free to leave it here! thanks again and best regard to wherever you are!
prosper
cool. Actually the roland vs1680 is something I’ve been thinking about getting.. although to be fair my ultimate dream is the yamaha AW4416 (big screen again, as on the QY700).
Actually, I do have one question about the QY700, now. I heard that floppy with sounds or styles (for fills, etc.) came with the machine when you bought it new? Do you know if that’s true and if I might miss something if I don’t get them?
cheers
The road to hardware midi sequencers is clustered with unneccesary add-ons, from sampling to sound engines. After your article im going to give the QY700 a go. It seems incredible that there arent many modern day alternatives and we are tasked with going back in time to find the most suitable devise to do the job. Im hoping that the qy700 can allow me to do song mode and also ,if i decide to in the middle of a song, just go with a loop for a while if I want to keep going on one pattern and then return and finish the song. Also a problem with the rm1x seems to be that when you are recording , you cant hear all the other tracks. thanks for the article.
hey fingertooth,
thank you for your comment. there is one thing that might be important for you concerning the song mode. the two locators that i described allow you to record between them. If you want to use them during playback, the sequencer “stucks” between at the end locator and the turning back to the first locator! So the song mode won´t allow you to set locators “on the fly” at a certain point in your song, playing them for a while and then go back to “linear” song again. There will allways be an offset during a live performance! So, the song mode does only work linear during the playback!
But if you have a song to work on, you can easily switch to pattern mode (song has to be stopped for switching) . there you can create
a pattern in pattern mode and then kind of export (put phrase) it anywhere into a song.
hope that i could help you. thank you very much for your comment,
prosper
hey sengle,
get an AW4416 i heard got things about it! i bought my qy700 second hand without an aditional disk. the qy700 offers so many preset styles that i think you will get along with them. don´t mind this disk!
greetings,
prosper
Great story, thank you. Tools like these bring us face to face with simply getting down and making music.
Hey Prosper,
After reading your comments I bought myself a qy700 from a friend and I am going to experiment with it. Is there any way to convert yamaha style files to the qy700 format?
Good luck my friend, Long Live the Cash Register (qy700).
hey mjferns,
thank you for your mail. i hope that the qy700 will suit your demands. it may take a while to get into it. it is so different from software sequencing. concerning the yamaha styles i am sorry, but i have no knowledge about it. i only know what is written in the manual, sorry!
there is a very likable guy called jim atwood, he is located in nagano/japan. i follow his blog, because he is a keen hunter of vintage gear. he lately acquired a qy700 and i could imagine that he might knows an answer.
http://jimatwood.wordpress.com/tag/jim-atwood/
if the qy700 passes your tests, you might be interested in another kind of file storage than the old disk drive. here´s an inspiration:
http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=42
thanks again for your comment! greetings to wherever you are! you made my day!
prosper
hey headspace,
that is the root of the matter. when it comes to making music, the qy700 will not draw off your attention. it is just a tool that records midi, nothing more. and i don´t need more.
making music helps me to get away from it all. and that´s what i need from time to time.
its not the gear that makes you happy, its the idea that counts.
grettings to you,
prosper
Hey Prosper thanks for your reply and Atwood web site. as for the floppy, presently I am using an external floppy to USB drive to store files on the computer.
I want to buy a QY700
can anybody help me with that or is almost impossible to get one?
Thanks
Jorge
hey jorge,
you can find them frequently on ebay! myself, i needed 6 month to find a good one.
if you are searching for a good hardware sequencer with a minimum of operating comfort it is worth to be patient!
good luck and thank you for being here!
prosper
Hey Prosper, Thanks for the Response.
will follow the advice.
Jorge
So glad I read this article . It’s funny I started off creating songs on the QY700 and moved on to Cubase, and I know where your coming from when you say you were trying to create the perfect piece of music instead of channeling your creativity. For some reason my lack of inspiration today lead me to google ‘ best hardware sequencer ‘ and remind me of what I already knew. I often wonder where it would have lead to if Yamaha had continued to develop these things , maybe none of us would be using Cubase and the like. Most of my work still originates on the QY and yeah it is definetly the rock of my humble studio. Thanks for the warming article.
hey tolaman,
thank you so much for your comment. you are so right! a new yamaha “qy1000-st” with the rock solid case of the yamaha combined with the old cubase version for atari > plus 8 midi ins/outs and a sd-card for saving the songs! yamaha does own steinberg since a couple of years, so lets go boys! for me, since i use the qy700, sequencing itself is no more the question. the qy700 is the tool that does all i want.
now, i could start to produce one song after the other. i have all the possibilities people could only dream of in the beginning 80s. people would have killed for the gear that i stack in my bedroom, even though its 10 years old today! a simple nootebook is enough to produce an international hit these days. so at the end its not the gear, nor the tools one uses. its inspiration! and that is sometimes hard to find!
i did a demo for the yamaha cs6x a while ago. this synth and me, we live in a love/hate relationship. anyway, while making this little piece, i realised
that i did the same with the sci sixtrak in the end of the 80s. only one synth! it can be an ispiration to make a piece with only one synth! simplicity..
thank you for being here, tolaman!!!
prosper
Excellent article thanks!
I read this because I have a big problem with my qy700
I cannot save nor format any floppy disk (verbatim 1.5mb)
I tried a lot of differents floppy and when I confirm “format” the qy restart. It is a big problem because the memory is full, any idea for solution? Can I save song and load via sysex with cubase for example? any help would be so much appreciated! Thanks
hey saw6,
thank you for reading the article! honestly i do not know anything by myself that can solve this damned problem.
- sorry for mentioning, but did you turn the write protection on the disks to the right position? O.K, sorry!!
- i read about the floppy drives, that they are MS-DOS drives. that means, you can try to exchange the faulty floppy drive with a used one.
- one thought, maybe the storage is filled too much, means that there is no space left even for formatting any disk. maybe you should free some space by extracting some midi CC, sysex data from a song, or by deleting some single tracks of one of the songs.
- i did not find a way to dump songs via midi to cubase etc., but perhaps you can record a song track by track into cubase > sync them and than play each single track in realtime into cubase. that will save your songs, even though it might be a very tedious way. after that, you erase this song from your qy700. this might free the space, the qy700 needs to formatting a disk.
i am by far no expert in these things, but the permanent restart of the qy700 after confirming “format”, seams to me that the ram is “cramped”. it reminds me of my computer that acts up, when the ram runs out of space.
hope, you might find someone who really can help you,
stay tough!
prosper
To be honest.. a great option instead of the RM1x would be an E-MU Command Station.
Very powerful and would be less redundant.
Hey danjugle,
thanks for your comments. Yes, i heard god things about the E-MU Command Station. at vintagsynth.com it get 5 stars. i suppose, that all these knobs make it even more
accessible than the rm1x. generally, in the right hands, all these wonderful devices begin to shine! myself i would estimate, that i only make use of 30% of the capabilities of the qy700.
i while ago, i brought all my stuff to my fathers house. i had to focus on other things. but as you can read, i still buy and explore gear. i can´t help doing it!
i fell in love with these roland samplers and i neglect all the other devices a bit. the vs1680 is part of these devices. but this year i will build up a little studio here in my cellar, …oh, i meant spacestation.
greetings, and thank you for taking part,
prosper
Thank you greatly for your mentions of the RM1X and the QY700 Prosper! :D
Yes I AM searching for a new hardware sequencer! I’ve used software sequencers in ’86-’87 and again from ’89 to 2012 and hardware sequencers (including analog) in ’88-’89; on and off in the early 90′s and again since 2010. (The Alesis MMT-8 which I’ve just returned to again, and the RM1X briefly, in late 2011. I do still own it, as well.)
I’m tired of PC sequencers, having owned many of them. Being a modular synthesizer builder / owner, I’ve recently gotten caught up in the world of the Korg Electribe, getting the old ES-1 in an auction 2 weeks ago and ordering an EMX-1SD this past Monday.
My desires? To return to the old days of the Alesis MMT-8 style sequencer; where I can mute/unmute things that are playing back live, during any ‘improvisational recordings’ as well as for programming songs.
A few of the things that you mentioned about the RM1X I had forgotten about. (I’m not interested in it’s internal sounds, at all, as I create almost all of my own sounds, myself.) I may grab the RM1X back that I loaned to our neighbour, last week.
The QY700 though does sound quite interesting! I’m going to head out and see all of the info. that I can find on it. 32 channels would be very nice to have! I currently have the ability to drive 4 separate channels towards my modular synth, but I would like to increase that to at least 8. With only 16 channels available, that would leave only 8.
Anyhoo… sorry that I’m babbling away endlessly. I’d just like to express my appreciation for your posting the comparisons, between the RM1X and the QY700! :D
Happy composing, Prosper! :D That’s the area that I am, returning to. Simple; quick and easy. Like it was in the early to late 80′s for me. :)
Hey Rik,
babbling away about synths and sequencers, or modulars is exactly what i like, when it comes to electronic music! Wow, you are building your own modulars, that´s something i am more and more interested in.
concerning the QY700, one has to understand, that the strength of this device is the linear and detailed song mode. but when it comes to “realtime” or “live tweaking”, i think other sequencers are ahead. muting a single channel for example, is far slower than on other sequencers. “improvisational recordings” are only possible in QY700´s pattern mode, and in this field, the RM1X is definitely the one to go with. some people prefer the RS7000 over the RM1X, since it provides the “running light” programming of the TR808.
slowly the amount of my equipment is increasing again, so i am happy to have about 32 channels of midi. but on the other side, i imposed myself the obligation to not making things complicated again. I often think, that the “golden age” of electronic music is far over, since the availability of plug ins and cheep virtual sound sources of our time make it harder to find our own style in an ocean of boundless possibilities. thats why i do love my (old) hardware and hardware sequencing, because every device has its own restrictions and strenghts and the challenge is to make something out of this limitation.
so, thank you for your input and of course for beeing here. feel free to babble away as much as you like!!
greetings from space,
prosper
I purchased my first qy700 3 months ago, and just last week i found and purchased a second from ebay (just in case) . The possibilities for a creative mind are endless. I too was having creative issues using my pc, i tried the live route and my productions felt bland and clinical, then i remembered back to 1999 when i was working at a record store in windsor ontario for the summer, an artist by the name of thomas brinkman was in town recording an album with a local artist named richie hawtin, an all with him he had a qy700 as his main sequencer . This article peaked my interest and got me to purchase my first one a few months back, im enjoying listening to old thomas brinkman tunes and am able to pick out the qy700 at work. Thanks for the article
Hey Albert,
thank you for reading the article. I think the qy700 has tons of possibilities, and i would feel happy, if this device helps you to express your musical dicton. so, if you ever explore the accompaniment function of the qy700, please let me know how it works. than i will immediately post your tutorial and dignify you with a photo as the “qy700 user of the month”, because this certain function is an enigma to me, although i read the manual several times!!
thanks again for being here and taking part. greetings to overseas,
prosper
Hi Prosper,
Thanks to you I’ve also discovered the QY700, and installed a Lotharek SD drive into one. It’s an incredible machine, exactly the type of thing I’ve been looking for.
Could I ask a favour – I’m having trouble getting the Lotharek SD Rev F drive to work. It’s physically installed and I’ve put virtual floppies on the SD card, and I can select them on the Lotharek LED display, but the QY700 is not reading nor writing to the Lotharek drive. What are you formatting the virtual disks to be (e.g. 3″5 1.44MB DSHD FAT12 or 3″5 720KB DSDD FAT12?) and which version of the HXCSDFE.CFG did you use (e.g. the default, the autoboot etc.). Or was there something to select with regard to the jumper block?
Thanks.
Hey Ben,
thank you for reading the post and for the comment! unfortunately i have no idea on how to help you, because i don´t use the flopyy emulator myself, although i already thought of. i am sorry!
perhaps you can contact the guys at Lotharek. they might have experiences with exactly this issue.
once again sorry, and thank you for being here,
prosper