sometimes i think it would be cool to have a little tracker interface / piano roll per track, because 128 steps on a TR interface seems cumbersome to keep overview of things (try to program a 16 chord progression on an elektron, its a pain) i think this would be really neat for DN/A4
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Thatās it in a nutshell and what this subject always comes down to.
The Elektron sequencer is great for beats/rhythmic parts but shows itās limitation when it comes to melodic music.
Then thereās a small grey area in the middle where people use pitched/melodic sounds and are happy for them to either be short (64 steps or less) and/or randomised.
But, if you write melodic music that regularly uses chord progressions and melodies, 4 bars/64 steps is a barrier.
The A4 is possibly my favourite synth of all time, I have three of themā¦ but I regularly hit the 64 step barrier with it. At that point, Iām happy to treat it ājustā as a synth and sequence it from somewhere else that does what I want (usually Ableton or the Akai MPC).
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Iām with you there yeah. Got an A4 last month and one cool thing Iāve done to get around these limitations while still using its sequencer: set up a chain or song for however you want, enter rec mode and record your long midi chord/melody sequences from a daw into it. Then you end up with long properly structured music all within the elektron sequencer.
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I see this mentioned often, but donāt get it. I often make melodic sequences repeating over many patterns. We have tons of patterns and we have pattern chaining and arrangers, so what is stopping anyone from making long sequences? I suspect I donāt understand the problem because I grew up making music with trackers and use my Elektron boxes the same way Iāve always done. Small patterns (perhaps just 16 steps if there is a lot of detailed programming going on) arranged into longer sequences.
I canāt even imagine how annoying it would be to program a 128 step pattern. It will take forever for it to loop! Is this a live performance need, perhaps?
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iām a melodic nut, probably because of music education/malformation 
(have to push myself hard to not fall into the harmony/melody trap). i can write quite elaborate melodical/harmonic stuff effortlesly with Renoise (been into renoise for like, 20years now?) but with elektrons it just feels cumbersome, hard work and reaaaallly slow.
edit: on the other hand Elektron hardware pushed myself in the other direction, not caring too much about all the melodic stuff. its a bit of a double edged sword for me
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even when it comes to rhythms, i love pitched or semi-pitched chromatic percussions )
i feel like 64 is the around the upper limit im comfortable with managing.
for textures and rhythms its plenty enough, especially with probability.
for melodies and chord progressions, i dont need fine granularity, so knocking down resolution to have a longer sequence works fine, while keeping the convinience of having 4 pages to edit max.
i dont know if its the optimal way for me to create music, but it works good/fast on the digi.
when i do need that fine granularity on a longer sequence, blackboxās piano roll comes to rescue.
i prefer not to use it as main, because all that flexibility mostly gets in the way.
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also to be able to use more then 64 steps comfortably i think it should be almost mandatory to be able to start the sequencer on different pages. imagine having to edit and relisten page 8 with 128 stepsā¦ i find this already cumbersome editing page 4 on 64 steps using halftime/quartertime scaling, always having to wait for the loop reaching page 4.
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How often do you need to have 64 chords in 4 bars?
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Iāve adopted the attitude that controlling the sequencer is how I play the the performance. If I were playing keys in a band (which I used to do), Iād have to hit all the notes. With my Elektrons I donāt have to hit all the notes, instead I have to play the sequence + articulations/perfs/fills etc. To me, this is a reasonable trade-off. I hope one day to gig again, so this all feels like practice + preparation to me. Setting up a temporary chain is really easy, and un-setting it is easier still (on the Analogs, which have a dedicated button for it). Plenty of time per Pattern to twist/press a Perf control, engage fill etc. Iām trying to train myself to think a little ahead - engage the chain or latch-fill at the start of the Pattern, so I can play the Perfs later, or over the change to the next pattern.
In case you donāt know, you can Live Record over a Chain.
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Imagine a guitarist sat down stared you dead in the eye and played the exact same four bars to you without stopping. Youād kick him out of the band, but in hardware sequencers we accept this for some reason.
Chaining, p locks and probability help but itās still not fluid to compose a tune from your head. I grew up creating sequences in DAWs so I was frustrated the first time I sequenced on the Elektron sequencer. And yeah Iām trying to approach everything as a live performance these days so thatās a factor too.
Answers:
No navigation between pages, have to listen to the whole 4 bar loop to edit anything. (This is the biggest one imo)
Inability to visually see note pitches, you only see when notes play.
Inability to visually see notes in relation to the other tracks, unlike a DAW where you see exactly how each track relates to eachother.
Having to enter in and out of chain mode and if you mess up it plays the wrong pattern. Or if you use song mode all improv goes out the window as youāre locked into the song structure.
(Iāve just begun learning the A4mk2 so take these with a grain of salt, and Iām adopting the elektron workflow and actually finding it really fun and creative. There are just some things I think Iāll still rely on Ableton for)
On this topic but skewed, tried using Elektron gear to do a cover of a fairly melody heavy tune. Grabbed chord changes from an online tool which just happens to be 64 steps a row: 32 rows. So that is 32 patterns ā¦I set about programming like 17 of them then passed out. Now have to go listen and see where I messed it up and where I left off and all that and still need to pop in and out of song mode lol itās been a pain but a good learning experience
Depends a lot on the music Iām making - Elektron stuff shines with electronic music which tends to take advantage of repetition - I wouldnāt want to compose a pop song on one of these boxes personally - you lose resolution if slowing down the tracks too so itās not always easy to take that approach.
I will admit that stuff I make in the DAW has a lot more melodic variety - and I drift off the grid a lot more. But I see it a bit as having different tools for different jobs.
Elektron sequencers really come to life for rhythms and motifs imo. If using the OT it can be a little different as sample material plays by different rules.
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100% this.
I play more often than I program, so doing that naturally leads me away from using a step seqā¦ but I do like using a step seq to create music/parts that I wouldnāt create otherwise.
I like the constraints sometimes.
I also wouldnāt want the A4 seq (or any Elektron) to be more than 4 pages long.
Also, the Overbridge recorder is great and runs way over 4 bars. 
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Are 64 step enough?
I still donāt get it, why loop ONE pattern? I make music on Elektron boxes and it is more alternative pop/indie stuff with guitars and vocals than 4-bar looping electronic music, To me saying 64 steps is limiting sounds as weird as a pen-and-paper componist complaining that the length of a sheet of paper is limiting. Just continue on the next piece of paper!
That is MY argument, now Iām even more confused! 
I honestly donāt mean to be difficult, nor do I feel the need to ādefendā Elektron or anything like that. I simply donāt understand.
So, a pattern can be from 1 to 64 steps long. For what it is worth, what I to is I tend to use short patterns (say, 16 steps or even 12 in some cases. I keep patterns short when there is a lot of programming going into them (so that I donāt have to wait for a long sequence to loop) Anyways, a section of a song is made up of a series of these patterns. Since the 16 patterns in one bank are usually more than enough for one section, I tend to organize patterns by bank. So one bank is perhaps a verse, the next bank a chorus or bridge, etc.
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i tend to do this also with my A4, shorter patterns using direct jump etcā¦ still, sometimes i really miss more steps combined with the great p-lockable Elektron sequencer. But yeah more steps would be kinda stupid on a TR style interface without guidance and manoeuvrability, it would need visual feedback (little tracker/piano roll interface onscreen) + ability to start the sequencer anywhere in the pattern + some way to scroll the playhead around. I really love Elektron machines, it changed my view on music and i tend to compose and improvise in function of the limitations. but once you start one of those ideas that suddenly need to break out of the limitations it can be really frustrating, and the workarounds are just meh (just try to compose some complex 4- voice counterpoint acid idea on A4 and feel the pain) also DAWās simply are not always a solution because of laptops live being so 2007.
I still think there is a void in the market for this, marriage of a hands-on plockable sequencer with less limitations but it probably would be overly ambitious and a lot more screen centric.
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Iām in agreement that these sorts of limitations just limit you in a bad way.
Grid based sequencing is the best! Deluge and Hapax!
Any amount of steps, steps between those steps, no stupid limits.
It frees you to make music the way you want.
So you must depend on chains and song mode to create non repetitive sequences? Otherwise youāre taking your hands off the guitar and lining up pattern by hand? Iād like to know how to manage them, do you just create one big long chain and keep looping it, or do you lock yourself into a song structure and just play through it once?
Iām learning the A4 and so far I find Chain mode and Song mode quite limiting, but I remain open to learning how people use them.
Those of you feeling limited by 64 steps, do all of you know that you are not at all limited to 4 bars or is there a misconception?
Using track/pattern scale you can have up to 32 bars! And using microtiming to nudge notes left/right means you donāt even lose precision!