avasopht wrote: ↑24 Oct 2021
But I think this contention needs to be settled with a mighty forum poll to settle this debate once and for all.
In generations to come all will remember the thread where we decided whether a groove box is just a sequencer
Let me pull rank here, to say I've had the 2 things. Roland historically has the Sequencer/arranger/groovebox under the same umbrella of MC.
MC because they called them Micro Composer's, and the first iteration of those things were step sequencers, where you would punch in the notes you want it to play. Pretty much as you'd do with pattern mutator without the mutating part.
My first MC was the MC500 I think, that already had 8 midi tracks, and was at the same time a step and score sequencer, which meant you could use it exactly as you would pattern mutator (you can punch in stuff in 1/nth steps, and you can record in time while tempo goes on). These would record midi, and you could have song sections and etc. So without the visual part you could have what you have today with reason's sequencer but without audio or the visual part.
The grooveboxes (I had a second hand MC-303 in the late 90's) were a different kind of thing, and while the sequencer in the MC-500 allowed you to work in a pattern method, it was not the sequencer default method. Their default method was the step and tempo sync'ed (score) method. So the grooveboxes, though they have a sequencer, this sequencer was pattern based. The other thing is with a groovebox at that time, you could create complete songs, because they not only had the pattern sequencing part, but they also had sound sources (drums, bass, leads, etc) which a pure sequencer like the MC500 didn't have.
You also had arrangers and sequencers with keyboards. But the groovebox was intended for a different group of users, I guess. I had them all ( I would compose stuff with things from the groovebox, and my D10 and then XP10 with the MC as the head).
Roland had a different kind of arrangers, their E line which was a bit different (I had the yamaha counterpart, a PSR-400) and a friend of mine had an E96 - amazing keyboard, though very plastic sounding. An arranger (the different brands coined different line names) is a keyboard with a pattern based sequencer, that has intelligence to "understand" a chord pressed by the player. Then it creates a background arrangement, and the player can control what the keyboard is doing, inputting the chord with the left hand, define what variation of the pattern the keyboard plays and so on (usually they would have intro, verse 1, 2 3, several breaks, 1 or 2 choruses, bridge and ending). Again a different way to work, to play music but a good tool for composing and fairly used in wedding and parties.
There were versions without the keybed, midi controlled, most times used by accordionists that had a midi device in the instrument (the accordion would be played closed, but sensors in the keys would send midi data to the arranger).
IMHO, these all evolved from basic sequencers but are more than that.