Tap gently and the value will move up slowly, which is useful for gently fading audio in or out, whilst a firm tap will make it jump to a new value immediately.Īs an ex-guitarist, The function I was really excited about was the note input function. When you press the Mixer button, each line of squares shows levels of whatever control it’s, erm, controlling. This is a pretty clever system which surprised me with its effectiveness because I found it hard to imagine how a row of squares would let you simulate the action of moving a knob up and down – the technique generally used to control parameters on a computer screen by producers who want more control than a simple mouse offers. You can press one of its buttons and the device will let you control the volume sliders of each track, allowing you to blend them as you play clips, or various other functions such as ‘sends’ – which let you route audio to effects using a technique made famous by dub producers of the 1970s and still widely used today. On the left is the Launchpad X and the smaller model is the Launchpad Mini (Image: Novation)īut Launchpad doesn’t stop there.
The first thing to note is that for £179.99 you get the Launchpad X and a suite of software including a basic version of Live and a number of musical instruments, meaning you can just plug the device into a computer and get started. Now, 10 years on, the music tech giant Novation has released Launchpad X, which I’m reviewing today, as well as a smaller, cheaper Launchpad Mini.Īnd I’m pleased to say the tenth-anniversary Launchpad is a brilliant device I’d recommend to anyone looking to start out making music as well as people, like me, who’ve spent years making tunes on Ableton Live. The Launchpad also doubled as a musical interface, allowing players to bash out drum patterns or play instruments such as synthesizers on its grid of notes. A British company called Novation first launched the device in 2009 and it immediately became hugely popular because it turned Ableton Live into a musical instrument.Įach of the glowing squares corresponded to a clip of music in Live’s grid and let users choose which clips they wanted to play at any given time. These tuneful chunks can then be played alongside each other and blended to produce individual pieces of electronic music or much longer DJ sets. Live lets you load up clips of audio, drum kits or virtual instruments and then arrange musical phrases in a grid. To answer that you need to jump back to 2001 when a Germany company called Ableton launched a piece of software named Live which went on to change the world of music production forever.