LECTRONICS >:F

Attention engineering people

I am (in my head anyway this is a theoretical design) using a serial-in, parallel-out shift register (SHIFT REGISTERS :D) as a sequencer to trigger drums. 16 bits. Four clocks of the shift register equals one beat in musical time, so it's being clocked fairly slow.

The problem, then, is: how do I initially write in my one bit which loops through the shift register to set off one output at a time? One way I can think of is to use a Schmitt trigger to pulse the in on the shift register just long enough for the first clock, but the thing about that is that I want the tempo to be adjustable from one potentiometer, and how would I make that first pulse shorten to match the clock rate? I could obviously run them off of the same (ganged) pot, but the thing is I'm not sure if they have the same Curve and aug

how would you do it