Hello Macker,
thanks for pointing out this new feature in Logic! This sounds very interesting and I agree that this could indeed be very beneficial for orchestral composition if it is implemented the right way. I was moving towards Dorico but this feature could definitely make me come back to Logic (didn't upgrade to 10.5 so far). For me the biggest advantage of this would not just be the realtime triggering of patterns but the non-linearity you mention, which would be great for arranging and experimenting. As you point out, historically basically all orchestral music is built from small themes that are varied, repeated, played by different instruments, ... to create a larger arrangement out of them - in contrast to the "tape machine" paradigm Logic had so far.
As far as I understand this should imply that there is a separate repository/resource window for sequences that do not have to be assigned the Arrange window so far? This is something I have always been missing in Logic. To get such a pattern based working style one had to have dummy tracks in the arrange that stored the sequences that one would then arrange ...
To make this really useful for orchestral music would ideally require the following:
- the individual musical building blocks should have the capability to include tempo information instead of a rigid time frame used in the context of electronic music - and if one uses sequences with different timing information one should be able to decide which one is used
- it should be easily possible to transpose these patterns (in particular in octaves to move them between instruments with different ranges)
- the possibility to combine sequences on different tracks (e.g. the sequences of an entire string section) into a combined object that one can move around or trigger (while still having the freedom to edit the individual components)
Since you already checked it out, can it do (some of) this?