Although individual tracks are rounded to a whole bar, it's possible to adjust the length of the track by rebarring and deleting any excess data. While many sequencers force the length of all tracks to comply with that of the first, Junior has independent track length and independent looping. Real-time recording is done from the Sequencer window, where you'll find a list of 64 tracks each with its own name, MIDI channel, initial patch number, mute and solo status and loop setting. What's more, you can record multiple MIDI channels at once onto each track. However, that still leaves you with 64-track recording in real- and step-time (Junior substitutes a more primitive step-time sequencer for the Pro's grid system) and a recording resolution of 240 clocks per quarter note. The most noticeable omissions are the Pro's grid-based step-time input, graphic controller-editing and SysEx librarian features. What is so impressive about Junior (apart from its parentage) is that, considering it costs less than half the price of the Pro (which retails at £250), it doesn't appear to lose that much in terms of sequencing power.

US company Passport Designs, veterans of the MIDI software business, have released a scaled-down version of Master Tracks Pro which goes by the name of Master Tracks Junior and retails for £99. Clearly there's a middle-ground in terms of price and power which manufacturers have neglected - until now. Now, do you pay out a lot of cash for a sophisticated sequencing package which quite possibly has more features than you really want, or do you pay out not a lot of cash for a budget sequencer which doesn't quite give you everything you'd like. You've decided that you want to get into computer-based sequencing.

Master tracks