As a bumbling occasionally drooling dilettante with exquisite ears, I wonder if I'm capable of figuring this out. Seems a hopeful route otherwise .

Honestly, MIDI is dumb in beautiful way. Considering that generations of near-luddite stoner musicians with a strong craving for novelty figured it out, your lambda HN participant will be pushing out bleeps and bloops in 30 minutes of determination. The rest is just reading the manual and realizing possible combinations of features.

Can't speak for other sequencers, but Squarps have a very coherent UI and doc that make it easy to remember where the fingers go when setting things up and when actually playing notes.

Also note that I'm using your Linux excuse as an opportunity to justify my grown man toys but if we're being real you can probably achieve similar result using free software with a bit of research. Linux is a very capable music platform in theory, with kernel support for MIDI routing between apps and devices. The choice of music apps isn't too shabby either.

"near-luddite stoner musician" gave me serious flashbacks from my past. Eery.

Speaking of man toys, and Linux being theoretically very capable as a music platform, I'm reminded of this beast that I discovered very recently: https://zynthian.org/

It looks quite amazing, and maybe I will buy it after the tooth fairy drops me a bit of cash under the pillow. But upon seeing it I got that feeling - ok sure, loads of capalities, but would I actually figure that thing out, sure I've plugged in a MIDI device or two, finger-smashed a few beats, but did I actually have a clue what I was doing. This device would confront me these questions, I fear.

Nice box! If it wasn't for the zoo of machines already idling at my side, it would be on my list. Beware though of the one that does it all for it will be a poor guide when the time comes to commit to a sound and move on to building an actual song out of it. Discipline and motivation are easily diluted resources.