[tenebrisalietum]

I had an MC-202 for a while as well.

Here's how hard it is to program, from what I remember:

- You had to enter your pitches.

- Then you switch into a different mode, and enter the durations of the notes.

- Then you switch into a still third mode, and enter whether you want the note on or off.

All this on a 5 character 7-segment LCD display.

Anything beyond simple bass lines was too difficult for me, but this machine was really good at those.

[darraghenright]

This is pretty accurate :D The third mode is the gate mode, you can choose a note to have a gate value of 0 to turn the note off, up to any value matching the length of the note.

One reason why I'd like a more expressive editor is to really play with stuff like this. For example could have two patterns, otherwise identical, but one might have a final note length of one less then the other. Then they would phase in and out with each other over a period of time, like some sort of acid house Steve Reich :D

Interestingly, since I originally posted I came across a really interesting mod project for the MC-202 that's currently work in progress. Sounds like an amazing upgrade, will definitely be checking this out!

https://tubbutec.de/mc-2oh2/