The Yamaha QY10 is a hand-held music workstation produced by the Yamaha Corporation in the early 1990s. Possessing a MIDI sequencer, a tone generator and a tiny single-octave keyboard, the portable and battery-powered QY10 enables a musician to compose music while traveling. History Released by Yamaha in 1990, the QY10 was the first device offering the facilities of a music workstation in a portable package. In response to its design, the music technology press coined the term "walkstation", a portmanteau of the words "Walkman" and "workstation". The QY10 sold well, indicating that there was a market for these devices, so Yamaha followed it up in 1992 with the more powerful QY20 and QY22. Subsequently, both Yamaha (most Yamaha QY sequencers) and Roland (the Roland PMA-5) have produced walkstations, although neither officially use the term for their products. In 1992, Novation took advantage of the QY10's success by releasing a companion keyboard, the Novation MM10. The top of the keyboard has a slot which securely accommodates a QY10, and short cables connect the two units together. With two octaves of full size velocity-sensitive keys, the MM10 overcomes a significant limitation of the QY10: its lack of a proper keyboard. Combined, they constitute a complete, if basic, music workstation. During the 1990s, electronic musical equipment became more dependent on large and sophisticated graphical displays. However, the QY10's display is a small LCD panel which accommodates only 16 characters of text. This made it feasible for the Kentucky LCD Interface Project to modify the QY10 with a speech interface as an assistive technology for the blind. The QY10 was discontinued in the mid-1990s. Sequencer The main feature of the QY10 is its eight track sequencer. With its "pattern"-based design, it was more suited to supporting song writing rather than creating full musical compositions. A pattern is a short sequence of backing music played on bass guitar, percussion and two other instruments. Patterns for various musical styles are built into the QY10, such as European house music, rhythm and blues and bossa nova. Users may also write their own patterns, which must be written in the key of C major. When playing a song, the QY10 automatically rescales patterns to match a selected chord. The eight tracks of the sequencer are thus divided into two groups: four standard sequencer tracks and four tracks dedicated to pattern playback. The latter are typically programmed as one