jumpatron

Thanks for the answers. The only thing I can still think of regards drums - will they show up on the keyboard LEDs?

I think this might the best layout of the ones presented, too. I imagine they are buttons that one would press quite often, so at the right they are easy to access and not in the way. In fact it might better than having them horizontally, because then you're hand would be constantly blocking the keyboard when pressing them. Oh and obviously the octaves will follow the buttons, with the highest octave keyboard at the top and the lowest at the bottom. I can see that my unfamiliarity with Midibox is showing. Still, I wonder if there are pages where the keyboard and its LEDs could provide some additional functions (arpeggiator, custom delays (e.g. if your delay repeats 8 times you'll see 8 green LEDs on the keyboard, pressing a key turns the LED red and mutes that repeat, so you could have 6 repeats - mute - one repeat) or easy access to presets on certain pages)?

Thanks for the clarifications regarding glide and accent. Sounds good. That sounds sensible. Regarding extra buttons: - Would the octave buttons be hard to fit on the interface? - A button to jump into 303 mode from whatever page/view you are in (and pressing it again jumps you back to where you were before, so you can easily switch between two pages). Or would live/record buttons serve the same function? - Midi remote functions button? So you can use the keyboard buttons to launch patterns, input characters or whatever (maybe a feature for the "do later" pile) Here's a sketch with a few more buttons (octave buttons + live and record). The octave leds would probably make more sense in a horizontal line, e.g. under the central encoder, but it would be difficult to place any buttons near it without moving the keyboard down a lot (thereby making the the whole thing much bigger than it needs to be). So I've placed them on the side for the time being. I also coloured some of the LEDs, but they're kinda hard to see.

Another possible use for Duo-Colour LEDs: Instead of showing accent (as accent is indicated by the accent button led, though it doesn't show which notes) ,they could show octave. The keyboard could have two different duo-colour LEDs e.g. the lower octave Green/Red and higher octave Green/Blue. So the keyboard shows e.g C3-C5. When you play a note below the range the LED colour is red. When you play a note above this range it shows up as a blue LED. D2 = D3 key with red LED D3 = D3 key with green LED D4 = D4 key with green LED D5 = D4 key with blue LED So you end up with a keyboard that has a 4-octave range. The problem with this approach is if you are playing several octaves of the same note. If you play D2 and D3 there would be no correct way to show this as they occupy the same key on the interface. Or three octaves of the same note. But I guess this is a problem with any approach.

Thorsten, I like your style! I agree with everything you say. I had a feeling this might be the case. Btw, how do you slide to the next step in a polyphonic sequence? Say you are playing three notes on one step and two notes on the next? Or say you play three notes on the first step (C D E) and three on the next (C# D# F), and want to slide: 1st 2nd C -> F D -> C# E -> D# Is that doable in the interface? How is accent defined in MBSEQ btw? Is it just 127 Velocity, or does it also affect filter envelope settings - in which case one would have to define the related CCs for each synth one is using (so basically a user-defined button)? This is what I imagined, too. Haha, I was thinking about these originally as well, but I thought I'd leave them out because the feature list was already getting long.

Thorsten, that would be great! The 303-view actually is what made me think that it might possible to implement this. BTW I don't have an urgent need to build a SEQ right now so if you are going to work on some of the features you certainly don't need to rush on my behalf. By "rest" I meant no note, empty note, skip note or whatever. Although I guess this could be accomplished by not entering a note and just pressing the "next" button. However I noticed that a "tie note" button is missing, and also my keyboard design appears to have invented a new note between B and C :tongue: By getting rid of that note there is more room to space out the buttons (although there would be even more room if I moved the keyboard all the way to the right, but my brain demands that it be symmetrical with the big central encoder). Here is a slightly updated design (including the perhaps redundant "rest" button):

Thank you for the replies. I think I will need the Quad IIC, as I have many small synths I would like to control, so 6 MIDI outs would be very useful. The SEQ PCB is currently sold out at Smash's shop (production run in progress). The main reason for having the xox keyboard on the SEQ is that it makes composition a lot easier, I find it distracting to look away when I'm "in the zone". But I can see that the keyboard would be a bit difficult to impliment. I guess just having the LEDs showing the notes currently played would be enough (24 LEDs for two octaves, perhaps positioned above the LCDs), and that would be doable using a DIN and DOUT module? But again I don't know if all this would require coding. As for the case, aluminium panels look a bit expensive, although they obviously look and feel cool. But I'm scared I'll screw something up and waste a bunch of money so it might be safer to get a lasercut acrylic case for my first SEQ.

Hello everyone, I've been looking into building a Midibox SeqV4. I've built some DIY synths in the past (the common ones) so I think I'm up to the task. Still, I'm a newbie in many areas so I have a few questions regarding building the thing: To build a Midibox like the one shown on the main website I need to get these parts?: PCBs: - CoreLPC17 Module PCB (from Smash's shop) - SEQ CS PCB (from Smash's shop once they are available) - Quad IIc_MIDI PCB (from Smash's shop) Chips and microcontrollers: - LPCXPRESSO (from embeddedartists) - 4 x PIC16F88 (from Smash's shop) Basic parts: Encoders, buttons from Digikey/Mouser/wherever Resistors, LEDs etc. from Reichelt (or from Digikey/Mouser/wherever if it comes to same price (customs...)) 2x LCDs (will any brand of LCD do?) SD Card To make things easier: parts kit for CoreLPC17(from Smash's shop) (long wait time?) parts kit for Quad IIc_MIDI PCB(from Smash's shop) (long wait time?) Case: Order one somewhere The second thing regards customization. If I were a pro, I would want to build a SeqV4 with a small 2-octave xoxbox-style keyboard with LEDs that show which notes are being played in the current step. It would have octave up and down buttons (with leds indicating which one is active) + rest, slide and accent buttons + last and next step buttons. Although frankly just the keyboard with leds would be great. The keys would be the same buttons used everywhere else on the front panel, just turned vertically (I can paint the black ones white if they don't sell white versions). Of course the problem is I'm not a pro and I don't know how I would go about making this, because I don't know how to code or to make PCBs. So if it were a quick and easy task (probably not) I would ask someone on the forum to help me make this. If it's not easy for someone to impliment then I'm happy to "just" make a basic SeqV4. Thank you for your time.