Advantages of using Pattern sequencer?

[letsruntrack]

help me learn/discover something i may be over looking. pattern seq sounds great for mixing and substituting pads, but i fail to see the light of why it is amazing. maybe its the way that i use my roland 404sx, but i definitely want to understand so i can step my game up!

[postbreakmelody]

The quantize can be a good function when programming your sequences. Esp on the drums you can get some off kilter swing with triplets and the whole nine. The only thing is polyphony but you can work around it by sampling your pattern kinda like how you do layers and consolidate them to one track. Whole lotta options you can do it just depends on what youre trying to accomplish

[Eksotik]

You can change the tempo of the beats, can be useful for certain things.
On the other hand sequencing beats (plural!) is somewhat crippled because the master tempo applies to all beats so you have to remember or write down the tempo of each and manually change the tempo when changing beats. What were they thinking I wonder...
Maybe the global-tempo-only is a good feature for house/techno, but that´s not the majority of SP users by far, strange design choice, would be cool if this could be switched on/off, when switched off all beats would remember their own tempo again.

[Krisso The Great]

ive tried the pattern sequencer .. had it down to a T . Does take time .. havent botherred with it for 3 years .

However

obviously good for ..

swapping samples in your pattern . for example if you layered a snare using resample then swap it to pad of current sound .

hi hat programming always proved problematic

[Calvinhobbes]

it's a more traditional way to make beats in an SP. same advantages you get over any non-resampled system. consistency, even if you use the same exact drum loop, getting the same exact loop over and over again on multiple pads can be messy. sometimes a transition into a chorus can be janky. maybe the bass drum starts early on one take then another. pattern sequencer is a consistent exact tempo so you don't get that problem. although you can make resampled beats with a non whole integer tempo, unlike the pattern sequencer (can't make an 88.5 bpm beat in sequencer, only 88 or 89 bpm)

i'm not an expert on Roland's intentions for resampling, but I'm convinced they never initially thought of making whole beats just by resampling with SP's. i think that's why there's more differences resampling between the 303 and 404 than differences between their sequencers.