Gate and max scheduling

I'm a beginner at Max and running into some problems with scheduling and the 'gate' object.

I'll try to be concise: I'm trying to write a patch that will generate counterpoint (or just harmony) for a sequence of notes I've written into the 'coll' object. But certain steps (represented as indices in 'coll') only have certain options available to them, which I am hoping to control with the gate object. I'm running into problems immediately. I want to open up a gate outlet only for the first step (first index) of the sequence, and have it close before the second step. The problem is that I do open up that gate outlet on the first step, but no data flows through it. The data flows through on the second step, then closes. I take this to mean that when I am at step 1 in the sequence, the gate opens correctly, but not in time for data to flow through and behave the way I want it to on step 1. I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense. I'll include my patch, maybe that will help.