MidiStep

What it does

An aleatoric polyphonic step sequencer and MIDI processor, so it makes no sound itself and needs an instrument downstream. Lanes cover notes, octaves, velocity, gate, dividers, repeats and delay, with a chord lane where chords are drawn onto individual steps and played as blocks, strums or arps. Steps can be on, off, tied or random, almost every control carries a dice with its own probability, range and default, and patterns chain with cycle counts. Notes stay inside a chosen scale unless the scale lock is switched off.

In the demo

Jade drives Pianoteq, then a bass and a drum kit, from it inside AUM. She ties runs of steps into long notes, draws chords in the chord editor, then hands the note choice over to the complexity dial so the app picks them. She also exports a pattern into Helium and modulates a filter over MIDI CC.

Worth knowing

It is a chance machine before it is a sequencer, and it has no undo. Anyone wanting to enter a fixed part note by note will find the randomisation gets in the way.