Analogue-sequencer

> The last time I really did anything was about 18 years 
> ago and then I just had a guitar and amp. So my knowledge of 
> midi and other new(ish) niceties is just about nil, so please 
> bear this in mind if I ask what may be a very silly or 
> obvious question.

I guess you may not be the typical Cirklon customer !
But still, good to see you haven't gone down the dark path of PC music
making ;-)

> If I understand the Tutorial 3 video correctly, an 
> "instrument" is a property of a track and the track in turn 
> has 0-n patterns.

The instruments are separate objects from the tracks.
You define the set of instruments you have attached to your Cirklon, in
terms of the MIDI port and channel they are connected to, and some other
stuff.
Then when you create a song, you can assign any instrument to a track. You
can assign the same instrument to multiple tracks, if you want to layer
patterns on the same one.

> If this is correct, I'm pretty sure that I 
> will really miss having the name of the assigned instrument 
> in the top row of the pattern edit screen, maybe between the 
> pattern name and pattern direction. Would it be possible to 
> add that ? Does this make sense ?

At the moment, patterns are created with a name of "pattern nn" or "cirklon
nn", where nn is an auto-incrementing number.
You can edit the name to whatever you like afterward.
One feature on the todo list is a optional default pattern name prefix for
each instrument.
With this added, patterns can automatically include the instrument name in
each pattern name.
Which amounts to much the same thing as having the instrument name on the
pattern edit screen, without having to squeeze it in there.
 
> I've also got a couple of questions:
> - Am I correct in thinking that the copy button will copy 
> either a track or a pattern. Then the insert button would 
> make a new track or pattern (depending on what was copied) 
> before the current track or pattern.

The COPY and INSERT keys are only used in pattern edit for now.
Tracks/patterns don't need to be inserted as such - tracks exist even if
they are empty, and a new pattern is created automatically on a track when
you go into edit mode.
It has been suggested that being able to use the COPY key to copy the
settings for one track to another, either to re-arrange the tracks for
clarity, or to double up an existing pattern by assigning it to another
instrument, would be useful. I'll put that in at some point.

> - Is it possible (or does this even make any sense) to create 
> a pattern that would contain just midi commands to set up the 
> instruments (meaning the connected hardware, not the 
> "instrument" definitions in the Cirklon) ?
> For example can I make a pattern that when played would just 
> tell my Nord Rack to assign programs to each of it's slots ?

There are 'values' at the track level that allow you to send a combination
of preset MIDI CC values and program changes to instruments.
These are stored separately from the patterns, either at the song, or
individual scene level (scenes being smaller sections of a whole piece), and
sent when the song or scene containing them is first selected.
I'm not sure what messages the Nord needs to set it up, but I know other
Cirklon users have track values calling up the correct multis, volume
settings, etc. to go with each song.

Best regards,
Colin Fraser
Sequentix Music Systems Ltd
http://www.sequentix.com