Hey @lgbrock welcome to backstage! 
You have indeed not missed anything, that is the only way to organize patterns at the moment.
I’m guessing this song mode could alleviate that, depending on what a possible future implementation may look like.
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I think this is something I’d vote for. It’s not the same thing as pattern repeats… they’d each be able to be unique, which would be useful for me personally. At least to have the option. 256 steps please : )
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I’m taking back my vote on this.
First, as @chris.lorensson pointed out, the current song mode implementation is much easier to work with. Patterns go left to right, dead simple.
Second, the issue with chance action isn’t really an issue for me. Usually in each pattern I have a track with the longest sequence that defines length of the whole pattern. I call it the ‘master track’. It can be anywhere from 4 to 32 bars long. Other tracks that contain chance actions in them are much shorter and chance logic applies as expected. For example, the length of the pattern is 8 bars. There is a 1 bar length track that has a step with chance action set to skip 1 play 1. The step will be skipped four times and played four times as the sequence with it will be played eight times. No problem at all.
And at the same time make the Poly receive and process incoming MIDI Song Position Pointers from some MIDI Master and set the current pattern in the sequence according to that.
+1 for MIDI SPP, it deserves its own wishlist entry, if not already in there! I would love to have Play timeline follow Live’s for easier song building. Live supports SPP via “song” mode for sync out. Would also make it possible to loop/focus on specific areas easily from the DAW.
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I agree this sounds like a great feature and it would add flexibility but as others have noted, the direct visual feedback of the chain is lost.
The original Novation Circuit allows the user to create a nonlinear chain of up to 32 patterns or pattern chains per track. It’s flexible but the user has no idea what will happen next by looking at the grid display. It also means the user has to memorize the chain in order to know what’s happening next during play and when editing. The strict 1 pad - 1 pattern rule implemented on Play is limited but also very intuitive.
With only 32 pads this is more or less necessary on the Circuit. With the 128 pads on the Play this is far less of an issue.
I agree, that a much simpler batch COPY process would be more useful than this option.
Totally agree. The current implementation is much more predictable and easier to deal with. And the ‘play a pattern X times’ part of the wish has a workaround
People want the pocket operators song mode workflow but that wouldn’t work well on the Play. Imagine you’d have to rebuild the whole arrangement each time you need to introduce some changes in the middle of the track.
And yes, the ability to copy/paste/move a range of patterns is the only thing the current song mode needs to be feature complete. Like select a bunch of patterns and move it left or right with the Move knob.
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