I have a Montage Pattern that was working fine both with and without Cubase. The Pattern Chain was not turned on.

Today I set up a Pattern Chain for this Pattern. It works fine when I am not using Cubase. But when I use Cubase with this Performance/Pattern, something weird happens. As each Scene starts, the first bar of that Scene repeats once before the rest of the Scene plays.

I checked, and Pre-Roll in Cubase is turned off. Precount on the Montage is also turned off. I am stumped.

Does anyone have a clue what’s going on here?

You are sending conflicting commands to the MONTAGE.
When you playback Cubase, be sure to press the HOME button, return to the Performance Home screen to disconnect the MONTAGE Sequencer.

The Scene Change is a message that causes the a new Scene to begin playing at the top of the next measure. These commands are memorized by the Chain, they also can be routed to Cubase and recorded and/or echoed back.

When you say “when I use Cubase with this Performance/Pattern” — what are you doing? Why are you doing it?
A Scene will start when it receives a Scene Change message whether that message is from the MONTAGE Sequencer or from Cubase.
You need only one sequencer, if you use two devices to playback data, I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.

I’ll mention this in case your doing something like trying to transfer the MONTAGE Sequence to Cubase... use MONTAGE CONNECT, to drag n drop the .mid data from the MONTAGE to Cubase. Avoid echoing back Scene Change commands.

When you playback Cubase (in theory the MONTAGE is just a Tone Generator), be sure to press the [HOME] button to return to the Performance Home screen to disconnect the MONTAGE Sequencer

What I am doing, which worked fine before I set up the Pattern Chain, was to have the Pattern Sequencer play a “backup band“ for me while I recorded a lead into a Cubase MIDI track.

I was having to hit Scene buttons while I was doing this to get the parts of the song to happen at the right times. I figured I would try using the Pattern Chain to see if that would eliminate the need to hit the Scene buttons. I understand from what you said in the other thread that this won’t work because you can’t “loop” the Pattern Chain.

I am mainly curious why the first bar of a Pattern Scene would repeat in this situation. From what you said, I gather that the Pattern Chain sends a SysEx message when it wants to change the Scene. I can see where that SysEx message could be echoed through Cubase back to the Montage in a way (i.e with timing) that causes that first bar to repeat. Do you think that’s what might be going on?

The Scene change SysEx message was the problem. I made the repeated first bars go away by checking SysEx in the Thru section of the Cubase MIDI Filter preferences.

I am actually going to leave the Pattern Chain turned off and do things via a Song, as suggested. But it’s good to understand what’s going on in this complex environment. Thanks, Bad Mister, for giving me the information I needed.