I am influenced by drum-machines like Korg ER and ESX. This somewhat recreates that workflow feel for me.
Put a small 4 line pattern in front to get all stuff synced up and initiated properly, or have some necessary commands there, like jump to pattern etc.
Yeah deciding what pattern size to work with causes me some bother. Too short and i find longer phrasing annoying, too long and its harder to parse or keep track of variations. I should label more in the Pattern Matrix or whatever its called.