No problem, Thanks for your response.
My midi controller keyboard can send other messages like program bank changes, controllers etc, not sure about aftertouch or midi clock never had cause to use it for that.
Have tried with both ASIO and WDM drivers, 48000 sample rate currently 144 samples buffer size which gives me 3.0ms latency, which is perfectly workable on my system with a lot of synths and effects all at once with no dropouts. have tried varying this though.
Interestingly when I play the midi notes from 60 upwards on my keyboard which are the defaults the drum pads are mapped to there is no problem, they play straight away as they should with no problem. it's just when I try to play the pattern switches with notes I've assigned, which are 36-51 I think. To reiterate, it's not a lag in the pattern changing, it either does or doesn't when I press the note. And when spark is reading the data from the midi track it seems to respond to all the notes fine, Changing patterns accordingly!