KS2

Hooking up an instrument to your PC usually emits sound in the MIDI format. Windows comes with its own library of instruments to use in MIDI editors. Sure enough, songs can be found under the MIDI format as well, and KS2 is a method of loading such tracks, and editing in a sequencer, with different options at your disposal.

One of the main advantages is that you don’t need to spend any time, or invest effort making the application work. With no setup required, it can just as well be launched from a thumb drive on other computers besides your own, letting you take an entire project to work from different places.

The visual design doesn’t make it stand out from the crowd, but the general layout is intuitive enough. Most space is covered by the sequencer, which neatly follows the play bar during playback, and plays custom slide animations for neat transition effects, at least as far as visuals are concerned.

You need to work with your own MIDI files, because the application only comes with a single sample. What’s more, there are no preset effects, or any kind of templates to work with. All audio resources depend on the files you choose to work with. Needless to say that they need to be under the MID format.

Unfortunately, the application is a little rough when it comes to editing. On the one hand, elements are incredibly small to identify, let alone move around, and this can get frustrating when grabbing, resizing, or moving notes in the sequenced.

On the other hand, mouse movement is captured, and converted with custom parameters. This makes it move rather slow, with a noticeable difference as soon as the cursor enter, or leaves the application window, with no options to configure in this regard.

Bottom line is that KS2 can be used to rearrange notes in MIDI files, adjust tempo, or even change instruments. However, the way this is done can put your patience to the test, starting with mouse movement alteration, to the disturbingly tiny elements which make work pretty difficult.