Also a fan of squarepusher! I can't find many info on the QY700 sequencing workflow, but I doubt it's what usually known as a tracker. I see some screenshots that look like a horizontal piano roll-based view. Trackers don't use piano rolls but instead a vertical textual grid-based representation (so time goes from top to bottom instead of left to right).

If it's like the older models in the series, it has a few different modes, one of which is the edit mode which is kind of like a tracker where you fine tune the notes and events that you first write in the step or the live sequencer

Hmmm yeah. It seems I've been looking at the QY700's pattern mode and was under the impression it was a tracker. It certainly resembles one and the results in Tom's music certainly sound like one. I know from experience that it would be absolute hell to program that stuff in a piano-roll, so it seems unlikely that he's relying solely on that. Hmmm...

Oh I wouldn’t put anything past him.

I've been a huge of the qy series for years. Bought a qy20 about 20 years ago in a thrift store because Tricky had said he wrote all his music in a qy10 (the even more rudimentary one in the series) and that's how i first learned to sequence music. Remember feeling very proud after finishing a clone of daft punks 'da funk' but also write a lot of bizarre experimental things, all gone now because i didn't know you need to open it up and replace the memory battery every once in a while. The limited, hard to use interface made you be very economic with your decisions, which spurred creativity, i would come up with ideas that don't happen when I'm in a modern DAW, just because I'd be staring so hard at those little numbers and tweaking then. Also had a lot of fun combining purely sequenced tracks with live recorded ones that I'd then tweak in the sequencer. The automatic chord sequence generator was fun sometimes but never really used it much. Then there was the way it kind of forces a series of song parts that you are supposed to use to structure your song (intro, main1,main2, main1tomain2 and outro if i remember correctly) which you could also bend to your advantage. I got a qy70 not long ago which i haven't given to as much love as my old qy20, but then again i was a bright eyed 20 year old with lots of time in his hands. The qy700, which i never used, looks like it's probably less clunky to use thanks to more buttons and screen real space, so i imagine it loses some of the creativity born out of extreme constraints part, but still makes you think different

I have both QY-70 and QY-100. Both great portable pieces to write full songs and arrangements. QY-700 is a studio powerhouse more like an MPC with way better music theory support. I think you can even have your custom groove templates and the live reharmonization is very cool. They are all very cheap I regularly see them in the 1-200 USD range.

I have both a QY-70 and a QY-100. They do have a tracker like view where you scroll vertically and can insert midi events including NOTE, CC and Sysex. Not exactly a Polyend tracker but a very similar idiom. The cool thing about the later QY range is they have the unique feature of reharmonizing your patterns based on chords held in your left hand. My favorite units for composing on the go as they are cheap, battery powered and have all the sounds and presets (drums, strings, synths, ethnic instruments etc) to compose full songs and arrangements. Rock solid midi sequencing as well. Some sounds are dated but good enough to have something going that you can polish up at home with quality vsts. Check out Galcher Lustwerk albums to get an idea about the electronic sounds included.

To this day I did not find anything comparable in features and portability, OP-1 and OP-Z is great but not as well versed on all fronts.

I wish there was a newer version with sampling, that would be perfect.

I have one, they are cute & easy to use, and have neat sounds, and full midi. Amazing kit.