Pattern Brainfuzz

[Saulstokes]

Hi, I’m on about my 4th song with the squarp and I’m curious about other musicians’ workflow in regards to patterns:

So, when I start a piece of music I find patterns are fantastic as they keep all of the sequences organized under each instrument track. however, as the song gets deeper and deeper I find myself ready to jump out the window. I start accidentally deleting patterns because I’m on the wrong track or just absolutely confused about what is where. It gets worse and worse and without a realistic undue I’ve forced myself to save multiple copies constantly.

I tried avoiding patterns but my tracks get totally confusing and to me worse because I have rows of the same instrument if you know what I mean.

One thing I try to do is always place patterns on the same number slot as the sequence where that pattern lives. this way I know if I have a sequence on pad 4 - I actually go in and copy all of the patterns onto slot 4. this helps but is labor intensive.

ok, so the real question is around auto pattern. Technically this is what I’m doing but auto pattern just seems sorta worthless to me because if you copy a sequence from pad 1 to pad 5 the patterns don’t follow this copy so you’re left with patterns everywhere. So I don’t understand the benefit of auto pattern as it only works when your starting a sequence from scratch.

Unless I’m crazy and totally missing something which is likely the what’s happening.

to me, if I have auto pattern on and I copy a sequence from one slot to another it seems like all the patterns that are in the copy should also copy to the sequence pad number. ?

Important to note that I’m attempting to write music with 15 instruments in my midi chain so I have a lot of organization issues.

[darenager]

Pen and paper or spreadsheet can help to organise and keep track of where everything is. Personally I tend to have auto pattern turned off, and I only use patterns where they are needed, most often for drum, bass and melody/riffs, and I tend to organise them in order of complexity, so simpler drum parts on lower pattern numbers, complex on higher pattern numbers. For things like pads and other less changeable parts I use track mode, then if I only want a single variation use another track.

Still, I get what you mean, it can be tricky figuring out organisational aspects, but eventually I found a method that works ok for me, which can vary depending on what kind of music I’m working on.

Most often I get the “meat and potatoes” up and running just using 1 sequence, then copy and make variations after.