Analogue-sequencer

>>What's your setup around the P3?<<

here's what I do with one of ours, in the live rig (actual
live-on-stage setup, this):

master clock is a korg electribe es-1, because it tap-tempos tempo
changes smoothly with a big soft button with which to achieve this. we
do this so that if something starts off with drums/bass/guitar & no
electronics, we can still bring them in & have them be more-or-less in
time with everything.

the clock goes to a through-box. 
one feed goes via a repeater & off to the guitarist's echo-pro & jam-man.
one feed goes via a doepfer pocket controller to another through box.
the through box feeds a maq 16/3 & a five-input merge box, with the
output of the maq on one of it's other inputs.
two controller keyboards also go into this merge box. the fifth input
is normally unused.
(the second through box & the merge box both live inside the back of
the maq, which also has a doepfer quantizer across two of it's cv
outputs, in case we want to use it with a couple of moogs).

the output of the merge box goes to the p3. this means that everything
gets pushed through the FTS of the p3. actually, I usually have this
disabled & use custom-tuned patches in the sound modules instead. it
is useful, & quite fun, to set the p3 capturing bits of someone else's
keyboard playing or maq-twiddling, & have them drive different sounds
or even influence other sequencer tracks. in practice, this can get
quite random.


the output of the p3 goes to the modules. sometimes we'll use a
proteus rack module, but sometimes I'll use an emu command station
instead, so that some pre-arranged parts can be acommodated without my
having to remember what's where in the p3. 
(I have found this to be a frustration, not because it's difficult to
do, especially, but because the p3 doesn't let you name things & I
really need that sort of reassurance on-stage.)

I used to use an mmt8 for this latter scenario, but I like the command
station (despite it's garish yellow box) because everything's in one
place- sequencer, controller knobs, patch editing, custom flash roms...

the situation's similar in the studio, in that the p3 sits in the middle. 
here, though, the master clock is likely to be a korg multitrack
(simply because the studio work tends to be either post-production or
collaboration). 
this clock goes via a genoqs octopus, through some effects units &
another repeater & /into/ a controller keyboard.
(there aren't many controller keyboards that have a mergeable input
even amongst the USB-devices. this is a novation x-station, which is
also a very decent VA synth & USB-audio interface, with proper XLRs,
mic-preamps, phantom power, stereo effects & so on.) 

the output of this keyboard, carrying keyboard data, clock & octopus
data, goes to a pocket controller & a maq 16/3, again with the merge
function. 
this is then merged with the output of a peavey midibase (sic) & into
the p3. the p3's output feeds all the modules & samplers in the
studio, aswell as the command station when it's there.

(with the midibase making mistakes sometimes, & this despite
meticulous cleaning of it's frets & strings, the p3's FTS is
invaluable. colin, that standalone FTS box would be very useful....) 

thus, I can record stuff into the P3 for arrangement, &/or into the
command station for later (live) use. 
anything (setups, mainly, rather than tunes) I want to transfer from
one p3 to the other goes via a yamaha data-filer. 
I tend to record the octopus into the command station because it's
more of an instrument than a sequencer, & is not really a place to
keep tunes & arrangements. things can get quite nicely mangled if the
p3 is also doing things to whatever's coming out of the octopus.

all the midi cables (live & studio) carry 8V DC on the "spare" wires
(from a dv-camera/laptop mains unit that works off any mains voltage),
so that all the controllers, merge & through boxes & so forth get the
same regulated 8V supply with no wall-warts necessary. the 8V enters
the proceedings up the back of the p3. the power supply is expensive
enough to be reassuringly well-built, but is also universal enough
that, should it fail, another one is never far away. of course I have
spares. 
don't try this at home etcetera..... you will almost certainly find
that some manufacturers either don't even fit the extra contacts in
their midi sockets or, if they do, they're not wired up to what they
need to be.

duncan.