The more I use the step sequencer, the more I feel like it's a "throwaway" feature included just to get tick mark on a marketing page. "Step sequencer? Yes."
Once my patterns are built, I am finding it very hard to use them within the track view.
1) I have a 2-measure pattern which repeats over 8 measures. When I try to copy just the last iteration to a new track or new part of the song, only the first 2-measure cycle gets copied. I then have to stretch it out again. This is annoying, compared to the "what you see is what you copy" behavior of normal clips.
2) If I move the NOW time to the middle of a pattern during playback, I often hear 2 copies of the pattern playing at once, each starting at different times. I have no idea Sonar it does this. It's annoying, and forces me to stop playback, which interrupts my usual workflow.
3) I can't figure out how to split a pattern or string of patterns like I would a normal clip. So I can't remove a measure from the middle of my 8-measure string of patterns. This is frustrating, because I like to drop out drums now and then.
4) I find that the only way to get a pattern to "behave" predictably in track view is to switch the pattern clip's default view to piano roll. Yet again, this interrupts the creative flow, and discourages me from sticking with patterns. Is the idea to finish creating a pattern first, and then convert it to a normal clip so that you can use it properly?
I don't intend to spend much time troubleshooting (and providing Cakewalk with steps to reproduce) the above problems, because I have a gut feeling that the step sequencer is a dead end, at least for me. I like to play music, not program it, and so far the step sequencer doesn't seem like it does anything more than let you program instead of play.
Am I missing something, or is the step sequencer just a barely functional tick mark?