Digital music technology -- sequencers, synths, MIDI, and the software that ties it all together -- puts studio-quality music-making tools into the hands of the next Beethoven or Pretty Lights. Philizond Software's SequetronLE is a great example. It's a freeware sequencer and authoring tool that turns your MIDI-enabled keyboard into a full-featured live musical instrument with multitrack recording, editing, looping, and much more. Instead of moving from music keyboard to PC keyboard, you can control all of SequetronLE's functions from your music keyboard. SequetronLE also turns your computer keyboard into a programmable music keyboard. It has a built-in metronome, MIDI port management, a key mapper, multiple keymaps, built-in beats and other patterns, and so much more. Though it's freeware, SequetronLE isn't the software equivalent of a toy piano: it's a sophisticated MIDI-based musical instrument and recording suite that's capable of producing high-quality multitrack recording.

When you run it the first time, SequetronLE opens in Novice mode, with fewer commands and a simplified screen tailored to the program's Quick Start Tutorial; we could turn off Novice Mode from the Config menu. SequetronLE's main interface features a four-track recording display and a basic control suite. There's also an optional virtual keyboard that we could quickly expand or contract in size, automatically adding or subtracting keys at the same time. A handy pop-up displayed Template/Virtual Keyboard Shortcuts. That turned out to be handy; although we ran SequetronLE's output through a MIDI-enabled external interface, our PC lacked the dedicated MIDI ports that integrate music keyboards with PCs (and Sequetron's Ports controls) and we lacked a MIDI keyboard to hook up to it. But that describes a lot of potential SequetronLE users!

We clicked Run on the Control box to start SequetronLE and enable sound from the virtual keyboard. We started a rumba beat and began to mess around. We switched off the Novice mode, enabling tons of recording presets and more options under every feature. SequetronLE offers a lot, but so does its Help menu: Documentation, video links, performance info, and example configurations shared by other users. As with music in general, practice makes perfect with Sequetron LE.