SEQUENCER LOVE

At your website your say, "Octopus' most outstanding trait is probably its recognition by an authoritative audience as a musical instrument. The merit lies in the fact that comparable products are traditionally perceived as "just" intricate electronic devices." Can you explain this more in detail?

"Right upon going public with Octopus we were delighted to receive feedback from many people whose names we had known for years, but who had never heard of us! The even greater gratification came when they ordered and received their machines and reacted along the lines of "wow - where has this machine been all this time!".

"As it turned out, the main reason why they feel this way is the instrument character of Octopus, in times where music, especially electronic, is so much linked to technology, in so many obvious ways. Of course is Octopus a highly complex piece of technology at the core, but its unique interaction model facilitated by its hardware interface does hide most of that away.

"It seems that our focus on embodied functionality does pay off after all. And in case you were going to ask - the omission of a display is one of the conscious decisions we have taken along this very particular line."

What's under the hood? Given the power of the machine, is it a laptop in disguise?

"The "engine" is an ARM7 32-bit processor, clocked at 50MHz. It uses 2 MB of Flash and 2 MB of RAM. Not quite a PC for today's standards, but a great piece of technology tailored to its purpose."

There are and have been other similar hardware sequencers around. For example Doepfer's Schaltwerk. Nice but it lacked good support and software updates. How do you do this for the Octopus?

"We have released the OS software as open source. We see this as a significant step in securing the long term value of Octopus as an instrument, and an investment. The technology is not only powerful,


but open to many future extensions people may think of now or later and without any need to have us on board in the process.

"At the same time we do provide and control the "official", original version of the OS. Having just seen the fifth release of the OS, we come to act more and more as gate keepers of the model, and guarantee its consistency, while staying very open to suggestions and ideas from the user community. In fact, a significant amount of features you find on the machine today has been proposed, revised or even approved for release by our users."

We've played around with quite some gear over the years and found trigger sequencers have a steep learning curve. Once you know how it works, it's fairly easy. But it takes a while to figure it out, especially with the cryptic manuals that sometimes come with them.

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