Giving images inside an iteration patch a time limit

Hello Kineme,

I am reasonably new to quartz, and still quite a novice to the programmers language.

I am trying to build a MIDI visualizer. I had a lot of success building an over complicated version, which had a network of patches assigned directly to every single MIDI note. this i thought was using too much CPU. now i am trying to streamline things.

My question is, How does one give "iterations" a time limit, relative to the time that they are first triggered? instead of only being visible while the signal is being sent, I would like each sprite to last for a predetermined time.

I want to trigger sprites that rotate around a fixed axis. The color, and distance to the center depends on the MIDI note data. So being inside an iteration (or replicate in space) patch all the iterations change color and position, but i would like them to maintain this information and accumulate until their time is up.

I hope that makes sense, if not i can send screen caps or draw a diagram.

Best

Mangenta.