Looping time shifted key switches

Hi,
 
for recording I am looping a clip that contains key switches (Ample Guitar chords for chord detection mode).
They have to come a little early for the chord to be dialed in before the strum occurs.
I can do that by setting a small negative Time on the MIDI track containing the chords and it works fine, unless I try to loop a section. When the section is being looped, the first key switch is being omitted. That makes sense since its trigger time is now outside the loop.
 
To get around that issue I tried to make the clip a looped groove clip and dragging it past my selected loop points, hoping that Sonar would just play the time shifted first event from the first loop repeat at the end before it loops around.
But it doesn't. I kind of get why it might not do that but I cannot find a solution now that triggers the initial key switch correctly when Sonar loops my selection.
 
Any ideas are appreciated!