Session Percussionist forced DAW sync

Dr.Gunjah

Hi,

I've tried Session Percussionist for the first time yesterday and while I see a lot of potential it has a major flaw in my opinion.

With transport stopped, when you feed midi notes a pattern will start playing from the beginning on note-on. This is pretty much like any other drum sequencer works.

With transport started, it doesn't matter when a midi note is triggered. The playback position in Session Percussionist is hard locked to the DAW playback position.

There are several reasons why this is limiting especially for a percussion instrument:

• If you want to use a pattern as a fill and not as an ongoing pattern, there is no way to control its (macro) timing
• Simple pattern variations by just drawing "uneven" midi notes are simply not possible. Due to the hard locked behavior the pattern will just play like a long note
• There is also no way to control the micro timing simply by nudging the midi note left or right. You have to use the builtin control which is global for all patterns or edit the pattern itself
• If your project doesn't start on a .1 beat in the grid in your DAW (for example if you have an intro) the instrument will be completely off

There are likely more issues I didn't even think of yet.

I've used a plethora of sequencers (including many products with sequencers by Native Instruments) and I can't remember a single one that doesn't at least offer an option to start a pattern on note-on.

I don't get it. Why would you limit this instrument like that? This is not a "poweruser" feature, it is essential for this type of sequencer. The sounds are amazing and also the sequencer looks great, but it's not feasible due to this arbitrary limitation.

There were other discussions about this issue, like this (https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/26868/session-percussionist-how-do-i-control-sync) which were closed for some reason.