Myself included. You see, the SQ16 was one of the most feature-packed home keyboards to date, so to cram all those features into an instrument with no menu system meant one thing... buttons. Lots of them. Too many, probably. One look at the SQ16 and you new it had lots of features. There's very nearly a "one button per feature" ratio! Certainly the instruments cluttered look scared many people off.

The SQ16 was a complete departure for a home keyboard. Basically, although it was a fully integrated unit, it functioned as if it were 5 machines in one; a sound module, an accompaniment module, a 16-track sequencer, a SMF-compatible disk drive and a MIDI mother keyboard. Sixteen buttons across the centre of the instrument selected which MIDI channel you were playing with the keyboard, and which one you could use the "Channel Status" controls on. "Channel Status" let you select one of over 200 voices and adjust the volume, reverb, chorus, pan and tuning of that channel. This was acheived using either a numeric keypad or the data dial.

Cunningly, the keyboard could be split at any point. As many MIDI channels as were available could be assigned to either side of the split point, so you could theoretically play eight sounds simultaneously with each hand (or 2 with one and 14 with the other)! The instrument was 16-part multi-timbral, and split its sounds across two banks. Bank 1 contained piano, guitar, chromatic percussion, synth, strings and bass voices. Bank 2 contained everything else. Each bank had its own 28-voice polyphony, so you had a theoretical 56-voice polyphony across the whole machine.

Moving on the the accompaniment styles. You had 100 complete styles, plus another 169 part-accompaniments (which had no intros, endings or fill-ins) or drum patterns. Using the sequencer you could create and store up to 8 of your own styles and save them to disk if need be. These styles were all very playable, and each featured 2 variations, 2 intros, 2 endings and 4 fill-ins! Turning the automatic accompaniment on meant that MIDI channels 9-16 were taken over by the accompaniment section, however.

The sequencer was feature-packed and a sinch to use once you got your head around the controls. You could record on any number of channels at any one time either using the keyboard or by connecting a device via MIDI. Time signatures of 1 to 7 beats per bar were possible. Once you had something recorded, full cut and paste options were available, as was quantizing, transposing, velocity correcting, individual note transpose/delete, punch in/out, overwrite and channel data re-recording. Step- or real-time recording was possible, and an undo facility was included. I've actually never wanted to do anything that the SQ16's sequencer couldn't do, although due to the machines unimaginably slow processor some tasks can take a while to execute.

The fun doesn't end there. There's a 15-mode DSP effect processor which is of dubious quality - some of the reverbs are best described as "crappy". But it's some of the other clever features that make me go "ooh"!

Like "Configuration Tables". There are 4 built-in, and these assign program change numbers, transposition and drum mappings across the entire sound module section. The tables included are PSR-SQ16 (no kidding!), Yamaha Portable Keyboard, Yamaha Disk Orchestra and General MIDI. You can also create mappings of your own and save them to disk. This means that the SQ16 can theoretically become compatible with any other keyboard ever! I will include some new mappings in the software section of my PSR-SQ16 area.

The "Note Processor" is the SQ16's "harmony" feature. However, that description is selling it short by quite some margin. Not only does the Note Processor feature many different harmony types (including country, block, trio, octave) but note effects such as trills, glissandos, echo and pan effects. The major benefit is that these effects take place in real-time as actual MIDI data, so they record correctly into the sequencer and also work with anything connected to the PSR-SQ16 via MIDI.

I could go on, mentioning the two footswitch sockets and footswitches that can be assigned to virtually any function on the keyboard, or the all-important disk drive that can read Standard MIDI File formats 0 and 1 along with Yamaha's own ESEQ format, or the multi-part transposer that lets you transpose each individual MIDI channel, the internal sound module as a whole or the keyboards MIDI output, or the "Fingered 2" accompaniment mode where the bass line will follow the lowest note you play regardless of the root note of the chord. But by now you've probably got the idea. The SQ16 is one heck of a keyboard, and today you could pick one up (no doubt in considerably better condition than mine!) for about £450.

Usually when home keyboard meets sequencer workstation neither part is worth writing home about. The SQ16 broke that tradition, and no keyboard since has done a better job.

Copyright © 1999 Gilly on the Net
Most recent revision 22 February 1999