Stewart Wilkie

What is it?

It's a synthesiser, a drum machine, a sequencer, the size of a video cassette, powered by batteries or adapter, and it uses sampled sounds. I acquired the QY10 for 3 reasons:

1) It has good sounds and drums for the cash;

2) It's portable – very;

3) It's MIDI equipped.

Cost

It costs only £249 and there is a recently launched master MIDI keyboard (2 octave, velocity sensitive, pitch and modulation wheels) from Novation priced £149.

Features

It has an 8-track sequencer with 32-note polyphony, a tone generator with 28-note polyphony plus 8 voice timbral, 30 PCM voices plus 26 realistic drum sounds, a simple chord entry system, and editing facilities. There are 76 pre-set backing track patterns allocated to 4 of the tracks with 4 other tracks for melody lines, bass lines or chords. You can create your own backing tracks and sequence them together in a 'song' (it has capacity for 8 songs). All backing patterns are created in the key of C7 which is transposed to the chord selected in the sequenced song.

You can copy, create, insert, and combine tracks. Quantisation is provided, and the step time record is easy to learn (especially for AMPLE users). Real time (replace or overdub) recording can be done in a limited way from the front panel - but clearly for performance you need a keyboard.

Drawbacks

The mini-keyboard on the front panel is monophonic. You need a MIDI keyboard for polyphonic play although there is a unique chord entry (single key) option for recording to the 4 sequencer tracks. The pitch bend needs a MIDI keyboard wheel.

There is no disc drive incorporated. I found that, despite its 8-song capacity, memory is eaten up by complex compositions and extra storage is eventually needed. This is fine if you have an Atari ST - a free librarian disc called Squirrel is available and Apple Mac or PC-based sequencers allow data transfer. It would be nice if a 'dump' program was available via the MIDI In on the Music 2000 MIDI interface.

Conclusion

This is a great machine for step-time composing anywhere, with full stereo playback via headphones - I use it in the office at lunchtime. Complete and complex compositions can be produced in step-time alone using measure, beat and clock positions. The QY10 could be used as a sound module expander alongside the Music 5000 driven from AMPLE via the Music 2000 MIDI interface. The drum instruments alone are good, strings not bad, brass great and the trumpet is excellent. I like it!