It’s also not like you’re coerced into using the same pattern over and over again to begin with, it’s just as easy to clone patterns as to create aliases, I almost never use the same pattern more than once. If you have 8 tracks playing a pattern and you want to variate one or two of them, what’s faster, cloning the pattern once and making the edits, or repainting each clip, making those two unique, and then editing? Clip based workflow introduces more steps to get the same result
You hit the nail on the head. Multi pattern sections are a pain to work with. Often you (I at least) want to shift a melody by just an X amount of lines: I have to copy the lines from the bottom, insert X lines on the next pattern, paste, damn now my pattern data is shifted out of the pattern, undo, paste in a temp pattern first, go back insert X lines, go back to temp pattern, select, cut, go back to pattern paste, repeat 3x…!! 
In an arranger it will be, click and hold the clip, move mouse, done! 
I like the idea of overlapping patterns of different lengths for visualizing poly rhythms, but I also think it’d be helpful when you want certain items to repeat. For example, if you wanted a kick drum every 16 steps you you could make one pattern that length and drag down in the matrix view to whatever total length you wanted. If you changed you mind later it would be easy to edit that one element.
I think the problem with using tracks instead of pattens is that you can only have one automation control, so if you wanted to do something with chords it’d be just as much work to keep all of those tracks organized and copying and pasting them together.
In the meantime, what about some copy and paste options for the matrix editor similar to the step size control in the pattern editor? It would control how many times asomething was copy and pasted and the empty steps between each copy. So for example if you have a 4 step pattern and you drag it down, move or copy it to another track within a 256 step pattern with “fill” it’ll paste every 4 bars until it reaches the end, but if you have it set to 6 it’ll have the 4 bars, move 6 empty bars and paste again until it reaches the end and so on.
Today I bumped against another very annoying issue that is indirectly caused by “The Great Wall of Patterns”.
It’s the automation editor. Renoise devs made a very cool line tool to edit across multiple patterns. However, since automation is mostly always multi-pattern it is impossible to make a cross pattern gradient of a value other then linear. Trying will be futile since you end up selecting the other pattern instead of changing the automation value. Also because the line tool is NOT creating a real automation line (it simple sets the value in the begin and end of each pattern it spans) you need to fix the begin value of each subsequent pattern.
If we break out of the pattern paradigm, we could get an automation lane like the instrument envelopes, otherwise we’re bound forever to linear value automations I’m afraid! 
Having the automation tied to a pattern allows you to create, “repetitive themes,” of automation… Patterns are everywhere imo… not just music… its literally “in our dna.” the beating of our hearts, the maze of our nervous systems… all patterns…
Music that repeats can be… is extremely exciting. that’s why… most music repeats itself… and forget modern day tunes… go listen to great classical composers of yesterday… patterns are everywhere in music, math, life…
I was thinking that too, sometimes it is preferable to edit the automation not being chopped up to the pattern length. I find it fairly common for a note sequence to repeat itself over several patterns while, for example, the filter automation changes constantly without a repeating. Think of dub step wobble, for example.
Back to the original post, leaving patterns out is not a good idea, it is simply a unit of time division: we have a beat, we have a bar, and we have a pattern. If we drop patterns out we’ll have a pulp of bars with nothing to distinguish them between each other. A big no-no.
Look at the pattern matrix and then honestly do you look at the pattern as a box or at the little lines, notes, that are in there? I guess the lines. Now imagine we take the block drawing out and make it just one big-zoomable-set of lines. You can put time code markers here and there or arrange a repetition in a clip. That’s how I would like to see the UI without patterns. I started this thread to highlight the structural problems/limits with the pattern approach. With the current automation bird-eye-view you see some real quirks and I reckon we hit some kind of wall for being innovative in the sequencing UI.
Don’t get me wrong, but the idea you have of patterns in the more logical sense I fully share. But 
. I don’t imagine them as a fixed set of tracks over a certain period. Patterns can occur on different levels in the music, even with different lengths. Therefore they need to become “scoped to” separate tracks: hey, this is the clips idea. In the end a clip is also some kind of pattern but on a per-track basis. Much more flexible. And if you want you can still group all your clips and cut them off at the same point to have the original pattern back (hence I bet you’ll never do that).
Even though we’re using computers with tons of RAM and processing power, there’s still a little niche, where this feature would be extremely handy. In size-restricted competitions (4 kilobytes and 64 kilobytes intros) where softsynth, note-data and various algorithms for procedurally generating audio and visuals are packed into small executable files. When doing music for such productions, having the beforementioned feature would be fantastic! Complexity/variation has to be balanced as it’s always at the cost of size. Repitions packs better than variation, obviously 
An example of what is possible (if accepting enough repetition)
That’s ofcourse a video capture. The executable requires a rather high-end graphics card
There is no structural problems/limits about patterns. You are simply trying to cram a FT/Reason/Cubase/etc sequencer paradigm into a tracker.
However, track automation does not work very well with the current approach, but I don’t think clip oriented one would be the only usable solution.
The Buzz Sequence Editor does exactly what you want - if only they would implement it in Renoise. It looks like we are going to be offered anything BUT the most simple solution (the Buzz method) and will never get a working solution.
Am I right in thinking that you’re an American?
No, he is from Netherlands.
Problem?
This is the second thread I have seen you post this in… today. Buzz Sequence Editor Vs Renoise
either way, it would be lovely to just jump inside a pattern and slap another pattern’s drum / any segment nondestructively on top of that pattern and have the original pattern’s drumpattern mute.
just like how it was in buzz tracker. it’s powerful stuff.
I don’t pretend to know all the history and details. I’m sure there’s lots more I can learn about making Renoise work for me.
There have been times when my drums fit nicely in one pattern, but my melody track spans two patterns. It would be nice if I could somehow link the bottom half of a pattern to the top half of the next…
Is there some command I am ignorant of? Some technique?
@ wubluv,
Have you tried, “merging,” patterns… It in your right click dropdown menu… 
not quite the same thing, can lead to repetitive drum patterns aka harder to make variations when you jump from a 32 row drum pattern to a 512 row drum pattern with 16 repetitions due to merging to make space for pads and melodies to fit into one pattern.
[quote=“Knetter”]
But then without pattern quantizing, so there will be no pattern borders anymore in the sequencer – it will all be lines (which can be zoomed out to birdeye’s view so you can see the whole song and all different tracks). In fact, the pattern idea will be history and perhaps only exists as indicator. Somehow this relates to the “clips” idea but then only basic functionality.
So, with my poor PS skills I created a mockup:
3253 
How do you know which of your patterns are on each track you are looking at? Your design just gives you a load of random lines (or might as well be random) to represent each pattern. Wouldn’t the Buzz Sequence Editor way be better? See my screenshots here:
And it would be really helpful if people suggesting new ways of sequencing patterns, etc. could actually try Buzz, to see how Buzz does it - you might like it.
As it is, I am endlessly frustrated by the pattern matrix in Renoise - admittedly it’s better than nothing, but it’s just so much slower than the Buzz Sequence Editor.
Reason’s Blocks concept. In Renoise.
This will allow you to combine repeated patterns arranged into a sequence with non-repeating elements of arbitrary length, by having a song layer sitting over the pattern layer (like the block and song modes in Reason), where selected parts of blocks can be overridden by notes in the song layer as needed, and song length audio tracks can sit in a layer over repeated patterns (if repetition is desired). Combine some features of the Buzz editor for keyboard entry of arrangements and your’re set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6UFCdD4Lykhttp://
Don’t care if this is implemented horizontally or vertically (could do both with a bit of extra effort), but this would be my number one feature request for Renoise, as it would mean I no longer have to go back and forth between Sonar and Renoise to finish songs.
Working in Renoise is wonderful, until it is time to start sequencing patterns into a song, at which point it becomes an exercise in frustration. An “arrange” or “sequence” tab between “edit” and “mix” which opens up either a Buzz or Reason style arranger would suit me to a tee.