using patterns

There are three main uses for patterns:

constructing and editing rhythms:

Enter a short sequence of sounds, make them into a pattern, then instantiate this pattern for the number of bars you want this rhythm to occur. You can later edit this rhythm or sequence easily by editing the pattern (see above) instead of having to edit all the instances one by one. See for instance the patterns "noiseLoop1" and "schubLoop" in the default library.

granular synthesis

Granular synthesis (see wikipedia and here) is a synthesis technique which consists in assembling very short sound samples of varying color and loudness, creating some "clouds" of tiny sounds that, heard as a whole, constitute interesting sonic masses. Sounds in HighC can be very short (the limit is about 10ms) when one works at a very high zoom level. By assembling many small sounds in a pattern, then composing multiple patterns instances together in a larger pattern, pretty much all the effects of granular synthesis can obtained very rapidly in HighC. See for instance the pattern "granular1" in the default library.

complex sounds

As mentioned in the frequency modulation section, once you are satisfied with a given modulated sound, it is often most convenient to turn this sound and its modulator into a pattern, to be able to instantiate it and manipulate it as a single sound. See for instance the patterns "fmmodulation2" and "modulatedExample" in the default library. Note that a more convenient mean to create and manipulate those complex sounds is to turn them into waveforms, using Effects > Make As Waveform.