Hi @camzeech,
You say each track in your project has 20 patterns, and that these are all 18 bars long? Is that the case for each and every track? Obviously, i don’t know what your project is like but I can’t help wondering if you really need a new pattern for every track for each sequence change or whether all really need to be 18 bars long.
I have found myself tending towards longer track/patterns (maybe a bit like you) as I’ve got to know Pyramid (and the sorts of things I want it to do) a little better. This puts less strain on the limited number of ‘sequences’ you have with Pyramid, and changing them at less frequent intervals with regular sized (and longer) patterns means you can get some complex (and possibly evolving) arrangements going on. But, unfortunately, it might not be all that efficient with respects to the number of MIDI events your project will have to store in its relatively small memory. It might be that you end up with a fair amount of duplication of MIDI events across your patterns because you want some (small?) variations at some specific places in your project and there aren’t really enough (Pyramid) sequences available to use a sequence for every small variation you might want to make. So it might seem that you are a bit stuck if you want to make long complex arrangements with your Pyramid.
But I don’t think that is necessarily so. It might be that all the tracks in your project are ever evolving and that there is next to no repetition of any bars or phrases. If that is so there may be little that can be done. But presuming there is at least some repettion of bars or phrases in your project I think there probably are ways to reduce the amount of memory you are using with this project. Although that really will depend on what is going on in your project and where you want it to go.
A couple of rhetorical questions: Could you have made some of the (later) sequences you have there from any of the patterns that already existed in other sequences? Are there some patterns in a sequence that you have that could be made by switching from one sequence to another at some point within the 18 bars? You have 12 more sequences available and they are relatively memory cheap. So, for instance, you could create a new sequence to change one (or more) patterns over at the appropriate point during the 18 bars. Whether this would work will, of course, depend on what run modes (and possibly other settings) you are using (it will also mean another sequence and a little more messy chain of sequences). Thinking about that, playing with when sequences change and using patterns with different run modes can be a good way to create some variation from largely pre-existing sequences. But I suppose that would be of more use at an earlier stage than you are at currently with this project in question. It requires creating new patterns (if you need to keep the old ones with the previous run mode), though if I understand correctly from your description of your project, your existing patterns would behave the same whether they were in relatch mode or free mode because it seems your sequence changes come at regular intervals, every 18 bars and the patterns are (all?) 18 bars long (which would probably mean the trigger mode would also behave the same way).
Personally, when I have a few relatively long sequences arranged I tend to start looking for ways to create another (probably of the same length) by looking for places to switch between the sequences that I already have. I might have to create a few new patterns for some tracks to get the results I want, so I will probably be creating another sequence or two as well, but I’m unlikley to need to create new patterns for all the tracks. So maybe I might get another half minute or so arranged at relatively little cost (memory-wise), and I’ll have more sequences available to play with to help create ‘another’ future sequence. And who knows? I may need to create fewer new patterns to get something I like this time. It’s sort of like the opposite of diminishing returns, maybe. Of course, sometimes I’ll need to make something more like a completely new sequence with nearly a full set of new patterns, it really does depend. But I do like to try and recycle. But that’s me and one way I like to work with my Pyramid. What works for me might not for other people. One of the good things about Pyramid (and probably many other sequencers) is that it allows for many different approaches. However there are constraints, and Pyramid’s style of arranging (sequence mode) and its fairly small amount of memory are probably the most restrictive of these when it comes to making long, complex arrangements (at least those that have a fixed and repeatable order). The challenge, of course, is to find ways of doing things that allow you to get the sort of results you want within those constraints.
I must admit that I am looking at what you have said and seeing the words, ‘~15 tracks with 20 patterns each to run through 20 sequences’, and thinking that that sounds a bit likely to be a bit memory intensive and I can’t help thinking that maybe you may have some (unnecessarily) duplicated patterns amongst all that lot. I may have misunderstood or taken what you said (that would be the ‘each’, I suppose) too literally and I may be way off mark with what I’m saying and what I’m about to say. Apologies if that’s the case.
I wonder if perhaps you use the auto pattern feature, and keep it on (set to ‘at new seq’ in the misc settings). I could see this leading to a bit of unnecessary duplication of MIDI events, because in wanting to keep the patterns chaging in tandem with their matching sequence (which might help you keep track of where you are/what you might be editting) you might end up copying much, or all, of the content from another pattern into the new (empty but ‘correctly’ numbered) one. Now, you probably don’t keep auto pattern on and you are thinking that I’m a right patronising git with nothing helpful to say. Or you may be thinking, ‘I like that feature and I don’t make unnecessary duplicates’. And, to be honest, I have wondered whether I ought to mention it. But in the end I found myself wondering about those ‘20 patterns’ and ‘20 sequences’ and couldn’t help thinking maybe you did have auto pattern on and that it might be part of the problem. I think that whilst it can be helpful near the start of your tune-making it may not be later on. The thing is I don’t know why (or even really, if,) you have 20 patterns for each and every track and if the 20 sequences each change a pattern to the corresponding sequence number, or whether it’s just a coincidence that there’s 20 of each. So I probably should just say nothing, but then again, what if me saying something actually helps? I could have just asked but I felt that it might require an answer (and another reply) before we got anywhere. So I decided to risk coming across as a bit patronising. Apologies if I have, I do hope I haven’t.
(if they ever read this post), is for their future products not to raise warnings in case of memory issues (such as partial load, copy or paste), but to raise a real error. Either the content is copied, loaded, pasted successfully, or it’s not: any in between is unusable for the user imho.