How do you stop a playing pattern?

I know how to mute a track, but I can’t figure out how to stop a currently-playing pattern, other than to select an unused pattern in the same track. But what if every row in a track already has a pattern?

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I’ve been wondering this while watching both videos. I kind of assumed I’d have to leave an empty pattern at the bottom and laughed at it like “7 not 8 but sure.”

Select an unused pattern is what I do

I don’t own an Hapax yet (backordered), but this sounds a bit strange.

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tl;dr;
I like as is, but its a limitation… (esp given number of patterns)
users should provide feedback (via contact form please ;)) about hapax about their experiences.
this is v1, so start of the journey … not the end point :wink:


strange? not really, its the way I (and guess many others?) do it in Live as well… its quicker/easier than reaching for a stop button.

as a UI thing, I really like the way it is now BUT

I did have the same concerns, and have talked to Squarp about this…
It needs some care though…mute and a stopped pattern (or playing an empty pattern ) are different things. so how does this fit into the UI (without adding layers of complexity) … particularly with things like sections/songs.

personally, I think the ‘pain point’ here is:

  • there are only 8 patterns … so loosing one is a bit meh
  • perhaps internally the hapax can use empty clips, but still have a stop action on clip. i.e. its a ui thing.

I do think there are questions about mid-term, if more patterns could be made available and longer track lengths … even if the number of allowed events remains the same.
I’d suspect that will come down to user feature requests after they have used it for a while (*)


(*) there are always limits to everything (memory/cpu etc) , and of course as users we want an ‘infinite number of patterns’ (etc) … so somewhere a balance needs to be struck.
Im guessing the 8 patterns is partly down to if fitting the UI so nicely (no paging, see everything) … so a good starting point, to build experience from… at least as a dev, thats how Id have approached it.

Perhaps one of the buttons could function like Push 2’s “Stop Clip” button, where you can hold it down and then tap a track or row select button to stop any playing pattern in that track or row, or a pattern button to stop playing that pattern.

Force actually has a separate, dedicated row of buttons below each column that do this when it’s in Clip Stop mode. Other relevant modes for those buttons are Mute and Solo. Obviously, that’s not an option here.

Considering that I am constantly stopping clips during live sets, and I almost never mute or solo tracks, I’m hoping Squarp will offer up a solution for this. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, if the Mute button behavior could be changed or augmented to also or alternatively stop clips, that would work for me.

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I really like the visual look of 8(or 7) patterns X 16 tracks. It’s really easy to reason about and make sense of while arranging. It’s a limitation that fits my style perfectly.

That said, I also really really love the SEQ24/SEQ64 (old windows program) way of doing things where any spot on the grid can be any arbitrary pattern with any arbitrary instrument definition. This is nice for things like a kick/hat pattern in House or Techno. Most techno songs only need 1 or two patterns for kick drum, especially with fills/chance/etc. So then you lose 7 slots that could be used for a separate track that needs a bunch. When using this sort of UI, you need to rely on colors for organization.

But, with any limitation comes “creative” solutions. You can of course filter note ranges and divert to a separate midi channel or instrument via Bome, Blokas, Arduino, etc…