Advice for a beginner

Hello. I'm new to the Max community after finally buying Max in the recent sale. I went through the tutorials over Christmas with the demo version so I have an idea how to work with Max but I'd like to get any comments I can from more experienced users. So, today as a first stab at a patch I have been working on a simple drum machine with a step sequencer (sorry - I know it's not that exciting!) and I have a couple of questions:

- In the seqrow sub patcher I have a "route" object for each 16th note in a bar. These go to "gate" objects which can either trigger a sample or not depending on whether they are set. Is it possible to collapse this down into something more generic so that for n beats the correct number of objects are created to handle this?

- In the main patcher I have a counter which generates a message for every 16th note. Again, is there a way to say "metro xn" and "counter 0 1 x" for a given value of x? An answer to this question could tie in nicely with any answer to the first.

Besides that I'd welcome any feedback on what I could do to tidy this patcher up code wise. I still have quite a few ideas for improvements (such as using pattr storage for patterns) but I'd like to know whether it looks like my general approach to coding fits with the "Max" way.