Tiny Midi Sequencer

Music is nowadays easily done with all the specialized applications that come equipped with various effect racks, high-quality instruments and environments that only require you to press a few buttons and carefully listen. As such, Tiny Midi Sequencer is a lightweight application designed to work with MIDI instruments and let you create audio tracks.

A neat advantage is that you don't need to install the application for it to properly run, so your system registries remain intact. This also means you can keep it on a removable storage device to use on the go, along with projects you're working on.

Truth be told, the application manages to make a rather poor impression right from the start, when you are asked to select general specifications for your new track, such as number of beats, tempo and default scale. All fine up to here, but when editing values, you can write down nearly anything, including text, so you need to know what you're doing.

The score is generated according to your specifications. There aren't any options in plain sight which is rather confusing. You get to place notes on the scale that stretches far beyond the borders of the window. What's more, the workspace is of fixed size, which makes it difficult to keep track of your progress.

There is no easy way to select other types of notes, other than figuring out they are bound to keyboard buttons and no option to suggest this. Breaks are automatically placed, as well as links, with the output result mostly being generated with a great deal of luck. However, there is an integrated context menu which holds all functions.

You can start new projects or open existing ones, or load MIDI files for processing. Edit options give you the possibility to perform operations like copy, paste, delete notes or set general volume. This is also the way playback is triggered, with hotkeys available which only seem to function at their own will.

To sum it up, Tiny Midi Sequencer is only at the beginning of a long journey to becoming at least practical. With the abundance of alternatives at a mouse click away, it makes short fuzed individuals quickly look away, both because of the rough design, as well as the poor implementation of features. All tools are forcefully bundled up in a mixture called a context menu, but if you really want to exploit it to its full potential, the help manual can shed some light.