Recording - December 2009 - 44

B Y M I K E M E T L AY Novation Launchpad A new way to touch audio in Ableton Live and beyond the frame to access different functions; it’s USB powered and requires no batteries or AC supply. It comes bundled with Ableton Live 8 Launchpad Edition, a light version of Live that’s set up to work with it and offers a good chunk of the full version’s function set to get you going. By the time it ships, software updates will allow the Launchpad to work with existing installs of Live, but for my PHOTO BY IVAN SCHWARTZ tests I used the Launchpad Edition. Readers who’ve read our review of the Akai APC40 (August 2009) will be familiar with how the Launchpad’s pads map to the Session View in Live; a red outline appears onscreen to show which 8 x 8 set of Clips is mapped to the Launchpad, and you can “zoom out” to see where the outline appears in very large Sessions (each pad displays an 8 x 8 group in broad terms rather than a single Clip). A set of arrow buttons lets you move the red box around the screen to highlight the area of your choice. Pads lit amber have Clips loaded; green lights indicate playing Clips, and red lights indicate Clips being recorded. Unlike the Akai, which has dedicated faders and assignable knobs for sends, pans, etc., the Launchpad has a Mixer Mode that lets you use the pads to control track volume, pan, Send A and B levels, Stop Clips, Solo, and Record Arm. An overview mode lets you see all of this information, if coarsely, at a glance. When you select a Mixer function, the pads light up to graphically indicate current settings. This is really coarse control (only 4 steps from center to full left or right pan, for example), but handy for quick edits or to mute or re-center a track in a hurry. In Mixer Mode, the side buttons give you extra functions like Stop All Clips, Un-Mute, Un-Solo, and Disarm. There are also two User modes, one intended for use with Drum Racks to play sounds from the Launchpad (the pads don’t sense velocity) and the other user-programmable. I used the Launchpad as a live mixing surface at a music festival in Arizona in late October (see the photo, where I’m ramping eight channels’ levels up and down in real time). My only operation problem was an intermittent conflict with my other controller; I assume this is a beta-release issue that will be cleaned up soon. The current software doesn’t let you control Return Track or Master levels from the Launchpad, so it’s not a complete mix-control solution, but hopefully a software update will address this. Also, the release version will let you run multiple Launchpads at once; I couldn’t test this with only the one unit. In the future, expect users to map this very simple and straightforward interface to a lot of other software. The obvious application is the upcoming Max For Live, but I also expect the Launchpad to quickly be put to use with code for the Monome controller (www.monome.org). It’s easy to visualize and fun to use, and will inspire a lot of musicians to create their own applications! The Launchpad is scheduled to ship on November 1. This is a cool and very affordable box with a lot of potential and I can’t wait to take a look at the official release version. I was given a chance to try Novation’s brand-new Launchpad controller during the month of October, and I’d like to share my initial thoughts with you all. This is a preview, not a full review—the software was still in prerelease beta—but you’ll get the gist pretty quickly. The Launchpad is primarily marketed as a tool for Ableton Live users, a new control surface that combines event triggering in Session View with a set of intuitive mixer control features. Because it ships with Novation’s Automap 3 software, it can also function as a generic control surface for almost any DAW, with even more possibilities in the future. It’s a square plastic controller, about 9 inches a side and very light, with an array of 64 multicolorbacklit pads and a set of 16 backlit buttons around Price: $199 street • More from: Novation, www.novationmusic.com. RECORDING DECEMBER 2009

http://www.monome.org http://www.novationmusic.com

Recording - December 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2009