How do you rearrange the pattern matrix so you don't lose ideas you like?

Ok, here’s the scenario:

I often have songs where I like two or three ideas, but I don’t necessarily want to use them - I want to shelve them, but keep them in the arrangement, as they’re good ideas but perhaps not the best ideas. Maybe even they could be used in a remix or a different song.

For example, song 1 has a sequence of 1 - 30. I’m not sure if 10-30 is working, but I like the ideas. So I want the ideas to still exist in the arrangement, but I’ll create an alternative arrangement in 31 - 41 - then I want to be able to render the two different arrangements and get some feedback from others, or just listen in full for myself and decide.

A ‘skip to pattern xx’ command would have made perfect sense to me, but I’m aware this doesn’t exist.

The problem with the pattern matrix in this instance is you have to literally copy and paste and move the sequences around - move your original 10-30 down, move the alternative into its slot, then render the sequence (1-30), and then move it all back. It’s a bit of a laborious option and requires you to make notes so when you come to the song some time later you can remember what was going on.

I feel like I’m missing something on the pattern matrix, but I’ve done some research and can’t seem to find what I’m looking for.

Any tips?

There is a feature to save the file as an alias. Is that not good enough?

I know you can make alias patterns - but I don’t know how to save a whole file as an alias? At any rate, I’m not sure managing multiple files sounds like a good time.

You could simply duplicate and unmute the tracks that you want to keep, create your second arrangement in the duplicated tracks of the same pattern, and in case of rendering just unmute the tracks that you want to render. This way you’ve got every possible arrangement in the same pattern and you don’t need to move patterns around in the matrix. As soon as you know what to keep, delete all the rest. And in case you’re sure that you won’t use an arrangement in your current song, but you want to create another song out of it in the future, simply save it under a different song title. It’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?

This was a problem for me until I really stopped using the mouse tbh, the whole pattern matrix and sequencer can be controlled with the control/arrow keys, shift to select etc, fn/shift/arrows to make big jumps/selections or go to start or finish etc, I also have lock keyboard focus disabled so I don’t have to press tab to change the focus view.

Wouldn’t “skip to pattern” be control+left/right (or clicking the arrows in the matrix) to increase/decrease pattern number?, after this you can rightclick>organize>make unique

To duplicate a whole range of patterns quickly focus the sequencer of the matrix (left side), press shift+updown or click to select and cntrl+d