David, I tried you suggestion about recording an "empty" measure to hopefully prevent the "hiccup" but it didn't work entirely. The second bar, which was where the actual MIDI notes started in the recording, sounded fine, but when I listened with the metronome active on playback the hiccup was still present in the "empty" initial measure. Then when I deleted the "empty" first bar, the same problem was present in the music recorded.
I believe it may have more to do with my old Alesis synthesizer than my interface. I have a new Roland V-Combo VR-09 synthesizer and I am able to get a recording without the hiccup although it hasn't been consistent. I have to be careful about how I initialize my setup, i.e. the order in which I turn things on.
I had said the interface was by MIDIPlus but that's just the name of the Amazon store where I bought it. After investigating further I found out it's also sold by Midtech (
https://miditech.de/en/portfolio/midiface-ii-thru-1x1/). I like it since I use my laptop and Composer at two different locations and have the Alesis at one location and the Roland at another but I use the same interface so when I change locations I don't have to change the configuration in the MIDI setup window since the interface is recognized as the same device. I just stick with the General MIDI bank, which both synthesizers have.
Anyway, I'm hoping there is some way of solving the hiccup problem instead of doing a workaround.