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fascinated by the yamaha qy10… they made a battery-powered midi sequencer that fits in your pocket, but doing that in 1990 required big sacrificies: only 8 tracks, 30 crunchy instrument sounds (+ 26 drums), no fx, a single-line lcd. i love the demo songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X13vLaTOVIs
‪it's not even general midi-compliant. it was a year too early for that (gm hadn't been standardised yet), but even if it hadn't been, they clearly didn't have enough rom space to fit samples for all the gm instruments. and that makes it more interesting! they had to pick wisely‬
here is the list of the included instrument and drum sounds from the manual. this is all it has. it's a really tiny selection!
‪it didn't matter that its instrument selection was small, dry and crunchy, or that the sequencer was very limited, though. this wasn't meant to replace a proper synth or sequencer, it was a toy that the travelling musician could use to sketch ideas with while on a flight‬
it must have succeeded, because it was quite popular, and began a series. by 1997 the technology had advanced to a point where portability required far fewer compromises: i own a qy70, which has a big screen, 24 tracks, dozens of fx, hundreds of sounds, thousands of patterns.
‪the qy70 is superior in every way; not only is it vastly more powerful, it's also much easier to use. and yet, i might still get a qy10 someday. its limitations would breed creativity, and they give it a distinctive sound, something that can't be said for the qy70. and it's cute.‬
‪actually, the qy10 has one other strength: it has so few drum sounds that they could just print their names on the keys. drumming on the qy70 is frustrating because i don't remember the general midi note assignments for drums‬