I have been digging into the finer details of GA4 patterns, and can not seem to solve a problem with patterns when I have a section of music that is an odd number of measures – or to be more precise, is not equal in length to the longest pattern I use in the song.
I like to use the “Sync to Beat” function on most pattern pads so that they play in the correct time offset, even when I move the transport to a location other than the start of a measure, or start of a section (i.e. verse, chorus, bridge etc.) The problem I have is with patterns that have FEWER or MORE bars than that defined for the standard Verse pattern. Next thing I know, the patterns start at an offset other than the “Start” of the pattern.
Consider a set of patterns, “V1”, “V2”, “V3”, “B1”, B2" etc, each of which are 4 bars in length.
In addition, I have a few patterns that are 5 bars in length; X1, X2, X3
Lets say I have a song that is mostly verse & bridge, like the following, but I occasionally throw in an “X1” or “X2” pattern, so it looks something like the following;
V1, V2, B1, V1, V2, B2, X1, V3, B3
First off, I’ve noticed that I need to start the song on a measure that is an “even multiple” of 4 (e.g. Bars 1, 5, 9, etc) to make this work right from the start. That part is easy. But using my example above, when Cubase gets to the beginning of V3, GA will NOT start V3 at the beginning of the pattern. Rater it will start at the SECOND bar of the pattern.
If X1 we 6 bars in length, then V3 will start at the THIRD bar of the pattern.
What I want if for ALL patterns to have the “Sync to Beat” attribute set -AND- for each pattern to start at the beginning of the pattern when the song is played straight through, even when the pattern starts on a measure that is NOT an even multiple of its bar length.
Any ideas?