Hi forum, firestARTer,
goal: user can shift-start on a row, and only the patterns in that row will start.
The current behaviour, where an empty slot in a row will be filled by 'the pattern in the nearest, lower-numbered row' is fine, of course.
However, in order to obtain clearly visible, controlled playback of ONLY the active patterns in a given row, it is necessary to add an empty pattern in the tracks you wish to remain silent.
Issue is that using a two-digit code like 00 or 11 for your 'empty' pattern space holder, takes a lot of space, and it's not easy to see which tracks are active and which are silent.
So proposal:
- add a small symbol (little dot, square, x, etc.) to the list of valid pattern names, to represent an empty/null/mute pattern, so that when you shift+start a row, all the columns are full, but it is easy to see which slots are silent. You hear what you see.
This is equivalent to a 'scene' in Ableton Live, where you click on a row, and all the active clips launch, but inactive tracks do not jump up or down in time to grab a clip, they just play silence for that row.
So instead of 00: 12 13 22 45 99 99 24 54 , where 99 is my empty pattern, it looks like
00: 12 13 22 45 * * 24 54 where * or something else small and unobtrusive, is a valid pattern symbol, and it's empty.
I think this removes the need for another mode e.g. "don't jump up", it's just extending the pattern numbers to include more than the 256 values 00-FF. Or if pattern numbers are stored as a chars and you have no more space, maybe overload a pattern that no-one uses, like 68 to become the new symbol.
Thanks, KevinC / minphase
goal: user can shift-start on a row, and only the patterns in that row will start.
The current behaviour, where an empty slot in a row will be filled by 'the pattern in the nearest, lower-numbered row' is fine, of course.
However, in order to obtain clearly visible, controlled playback of ONLY the active patterns in a given row, it is necessary to add an empty pattern in the tracks you wish to remain silent.
Issue is that using a two-digit code like 00 or 11 for your 'empty' pattern space holder, takes a lot of space, and it's not easy to see which tracks are active and which are silent.
So proposal:
- add a small symbol (little dot, square, x, etc.) to the list of valid pattern names, to represent an empty/null/mute pattern, so that when you shift+start a row, all the columns are full, but it is easy to see which slots are silent. You hear what you see.
This is equivalent to a 'scene' in Ableton Live, where you click on a row, and all the active clips launch, but inactive tracks do not jump up or down in time to grab a clip, they just play silence for that row.
So instead of 00: 12 13 22 45 99 99 24 54 , where 99 is my empty pattern, it looks like
00: 12 13 22 45 * * 24 54 where * or something else small and unobtrusive, is a valid pattern symbol, and it's empty.
I think this removes the need for another mode e.g. "don't jump up", it's just extending the pattern numbers to include more than the 256 values 00-FF. Or if pattern numbers are stored as a chars and you have no more space, maybe overload a pattern that no-one uses, like 68 to become the new symbol.
Thanks, KevinC / minphase

