Is a midi track in a DAW called a sequencer?
Say we create a midi track in a DAW like Logic or Ableton and we record some notes to it via some midi controller. I'm wondering if that track is now considered to be a sequencer? And if we created multiple midi tracks, do we now have multiple sequencers?
Context: I've noticed hardware devices like Korg Volca, Electron Digitakt, and others are step sequencers. But what they are essentially doing is looping a series of notes. So isn't that what a DAW is doing on one of its midi tracks? (especially if we set that track as a loop).
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Let me take a try at this and hopefully I don't mix up my terms...
A sequencer is an application storing a sequence of events for tracks each of which sends MIDI data to a MIDI voice to be performed by some machine like a synthesizer.
The key point being that MIDI is a type of data or protocol. The sequencer knows how to communicate with the MIDI protocol.
Back in the days before home computers were powerful enough to process audio, applications like Cubase and Logic were themselves called MIDI sequencers - they were the software counterparts of hardware sequencers like the Alesis MMT-8. Both software and hardware MIDI sequencers at this point could handle multiple tracks of MIDI data, usually transmitted on different MIDI channels.
If I remember correctly, in the mid 90s when computers started to become powerful enough to also handle a few tracks of audio, the term "MIDI and audio sequencer" tended to be used - I believe 'DAW' become the preferred term later.
If we created multiple midi tracks, do we now have multiple sequencers?
because a 'sequencer' can also be a simple thing that stores a simple, one track sequence, that's a perfectly reasonable supposition! However, because in the case of Cubase and Logic, historically the whole program was considered the 'sequencer', and because people had become used to MIDI sequencers being multi-track, the answer is no - a sequencer track is simply considered to be a track, not a separate 'sequencer'.
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