Try seq24. http://www.filter24.org/seq24/about.html says:

set out to create a very minimal sequencer that excludes the bloated features of the large software sequencers, and includes a small subset of features that [he has] found usable in performing.

Thanks for that . I did download your seq 24 last year , but struggled to get my head round it. Do you have any tutorial videos on line or any templates to set it up like the front page of cubase ? Does it a have piano roll etc , key edit drum page etc?

PS I appreciate you replying and when I read about Seq 24 , I thought that this could be what I am looking for.
I think there is a really big problem talking about Midi sequencing and sequencers as all forums, software etc seems to want to ram softsynths and audio sequencing in all their replies . I will look at Seq 24 and see what I can do with it .

Might be also worth checking http://breno.sarmen.to/midi/.

Sekaiju is a basic MIDI sequencer for Windows.

Note: Sekaiju defaults to Japanese. To change to English:

1. Go to the (S) menu and choose Language.
2. Set "User Interface" to English and "Text Encoding" to "1252-Western Latin-1 [recommended]" (or another encoding, if you know what you want.)
3. Restart Sekaiju.

It's great to see the community responding and offering suggestions. Well done!

I would like to thank people for their replies and I will be trying to run the sequencers to see if they can replace the absurd situation with both Cubase and Ableton.
I think it is easy to overlook the seriousness of the situation that now after 27 years or so of midi sequencers since the atari (give or take a year or two) the market leading sequencers run erratically and demand we become computer experts .Trying every trick in the book to get sequencers to run without timing issues etc
It is not a good advert for Midi that we are have three midi only sequencers available that users have made to deal with the bloat ware problem.I have been using sequencers since the late 80s . Anyhow this looks to be a good forum I hope midi remains the key focus on here (as it should)
Wouldn't it be nice to see midi sequencers taking there place again, In the very early 90s there was a shop we used to go to in Leeds called MIDI tech and they sold Ataris and all the sequencers. Work flow was better . I make dance music and still get records out 20 years on. I am seeing a lot of people who sold hardware for laptops and softsynths, returning to hardware.
Look at the synths now on the market, I bought my first synth in 83 .There as never been a better time for synths and a worse time for sequencers.

PS Someone might want to say 'maybe it's you ' your doing something wrong? I have a serious amount of experience and at the end of a day products we buy should work and run smoothly .I am quite sick of the amount of time sequencing issues take up . It's absurd as MIDI is simple and when we have used tech of twenty plus years ago that is beating the rubbish of today hands down, well something is fundamentally wrong. Buying ABLETON.REASON etc for the midi only side of their products is ridiculous. Steinberg like I say do not even reply to emails on the subject .

Excuse spelling errors in the above. There doesn't seem to be a
way to edit posts?

qtractor, ardour

Well, I too find modern DAW software over bloated too.

So, I'm still using software from way back called XGworks, by Yamaha.
Designed way back in the late nineties, it was upgraded to XGworks ST in 2003, but with the acquisition of Steinberg, was never sold in the West.
I managed to pick up a copy from the Japanese Yahoo auction site a few weeks back and I'm gradually translating the .chm help files to English.
Many of the help files that came with SQ01, which was free with certain Yamaha synths a while back, are relevant.

Although all the set up files are in Japanese, it loads 98% in English, and works okay on Windows 7.
Too much bloat in Windows 8 and 10.

brandon wrote:

I have been using midi for many years and I am one of many who really miss the Atari for its ease of use ,as a result of its basic but powerful midi only sequencing.
I would pay good money to have a simple rock solid sequencer that had no bloatware /No latency/ no silly softsynths etc
It seems we are forced to buy software with 90 percent more on it than we need. Ableton. Reason. Cubase etc […]

Piano roll Key Edit. Horizontal track layout out . Is it really that much to be asking for? […]

I share the same feeling. By the way, I tried Seq24 which was suggested in this thread, and did not like it neither: unstable (crashes on Ubuntu) and not intuitive).

You mentioned Atari I never used (I was too young at that time) and you mentioned piano roll: have you investigated in trackers? It's a bit similar to piano roll in some way, except it's displayed vertically and there is no bar to show note length. I remember I tried something named MadTracker (however, I don't remember why I ended to give up with it … may be because it was not easy to insert notes). May be you can give it a try: http://www.madtracker.org/about.php

If you have some kind of specifications in mind for what would be a good MIDI editor to you, please, tell, I'm interested in knowing it. I'm planning to try to create a low cost MIDI authoring application in the future (no planned date, as for now, I'm busy with RenderMan … something about animation).

If you prefer to write notation, check out Noteworthy Composer.

In your originally post, I didn't think that I found which operation-system you are using. In a subsequent post, I found that you mentioned Ubuntu (Reaper works in 32/64 bit OSX/Windows (I am not sure how far back in the OS versions it goes though). These programs I am listing are not able to work in Ubuntu without the Wine-emulator. Unless something changed as of this writing, Reaper is most compatible with Wine (when compared to Audition 3), Wine Rating on Reaper 5.x, I would avoid Audition 3.0 all together though. Audition 3 cost like $350, Reaper is either $60 or $225, Info on Reapers Licensing costs.

I used Audition 3.0 in the past. I am not sure about the piano key roll edit feature though in Audition 3.0 ( I stopped using Audition 3 back in 2011 for Reaper). There are a couple of things I didn't like about Audition 3 (maybe more, I just don't recall the others right now); not being able to select multiple tracks at once, 32-bit. Here is a link to the manual Adobe Audition 3.0 Manual Download in PDF, MIDI Sequencer is Chapter 10.. I think that in order to obtain a copy, one would have to initiate a license transfer from a current holder (I am pretty sure the license is Perpetual on Audition 3, not this whole Creative Cloud subscription model), Adobe is no longer selling licenses to Audition 3.0, and I am pretty sure Audition CC doesn't have a MIDI Sequencer in it added back into it though (they rebuilt Audition in 64-bit, and not all the features have made it back from the previous 32-bit version).

As far as Reaper goes, here is a link to a discussion about MIDI Sequencing in Reaper, Reaper MIDI Sequencers, with some slight variations on other topics in Reaper. Another plug-in for Reaper is on this page, Js: MIDI Sequencer Megababy and other versions, I'd really look into Reaper for ideas. I tested it out (just visually, no sound) and watched some videos, and read some about the availability of features, I think there is probably even away to programmatically access parts of the MIDI Sequencers with Javascript, or even C or C++, or Python (I'd have to get back to you on that as I'd have to reread somethings that I am not able to get back into right now.). One could even start working with the Actions panel with the SWS Extensions to really have some stored macros with all the JS (Javascript) plugins that come with Reaper. I am not positive, but thought at least I'd mention that there is probably a path between Python and the Actions section to use midi to trigger active VSTi or other effects/plug-ins that a MIDI track/file is using.

I apologize for any errors or typos. I hope this post helps. At least this offers some more options to look into.

Oh yeah, the Reaper JS: MIDI Sequencer Megababy has some type of piano roll feature in it, the only thing about that plugin is a limitation on the range of notes playable, but there may another sequencer plug-in for Reaper that I haven't read about yet.

In Reaper, there is an API that is written in Python, although here is a page that lists the languages that "extends" Reaper and has links to the manuals, but if you look into ReaScript, that's where one would start to find the path that links Python to MIDI to FXs/plug-ins of tracks. It is difficult to quantify what bloated means, as it could be different between myself and anyone else. As far as size on disc, Reaper's install folder is about 66.4 MB in Windows 8 Professional.