Recording - February 2016 - 54

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Novation Launchpad Pro
A colorful new take on a much-beloved control/performance surface

I've always thought of the Novation Launchpad as the Ford
Model T of Ableton Live controllers. It wasn't the first (that
would be the Monome) or the fanciest (Akai's APC40), but it
hit a sweet spot that's never been equalled since: light, sturdy,
flexible, intuitive, and affordable, it became a fixture of
Ableton rigs around the world and is almost certainly the most
popular and oft-imitated Live hardware device in history. New
and improved models have taken the original's legacy to new
frontiers, and the new Launchpad Pro is Novation's latest giant
step forward.
The Launchpad Pro is designed to be a professional performance, arrangement, and mixing surface for Ableton Live. It
expands upon the original Launchpad's ability to select and
launch Clips, adding expanded mixer control, simple controls
for common Clip-based operations, and a grid-style keyboard
for expressive playing of virtual instruments.
It's aimed at the user who's comfortable working with Live
onscreen and wants a playable control surface to take over
functions that are less amenable to mouse clicks, but who
doesn't want or need the "do it all without looking at your
computer" workflow of Ableton's far pricier Push controllers.
A quick tour
The Launchpad Pro is a bit larger and thicker than the standard Launchpad, and is built into the same casing design as its
siblings-sturdy and solid, with a nonslip base that holds fast to
just about anything. It features an 8 x 8 grid of square pads,
surrounded by 32 round buttons with a variety of functions.
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RECORDING February 2016

The first thing you'll notice about the Launchpad Pro is that
all of its pads and buttons are now RGB backlit, providing a
full range of colors. This provides a ton of visual feedback to
the user. It's so handy that you'll wonder how you did without
it, which is probably why it's been added to the latest generation of the standard Launchpad (and why I dream of owning
an RGB Launchpad Mini someday).
The second thing you'll notice is how many more features are
available with single button touches and no need for a Shift key.
You can scroll around, select different operating modes, launch
Scenes, pull up eight different pages of Mixer controls, turn the
metronome on and off, and perform the most-used Clip editing
functions, all with a single touch. There's still a Shift key, but it's
only used for a very few functions-at least so far.
Once you start playing with the Launchpad Pro, you'll discover another huge change-the pads are now velocity- and
pressure-sensitive. They have a wonderful feel to them and are
very easy to play with nuance after only a little practice.
Furthermore, pressure (aftertouch) sensitivity can be set to
monophonic or polyphonic as desired.
This latter is a big deal, as Ableton Live has no capability to
sense or record polyphonic aftertouch data; Ableton's Push can
communicate polyphonic aftertouch to Live, but it doesn't do so
with conventional MIDI Key Pressure messages. So why add
this capability to a Live control surface if Live can't use it...
other than in the hopes that a future version of Live will support
polyphonic aftertouch, of course? The Launchpad has always
been MIDI-mappable in User Mode, and the Pro is too, so it
can be used with other DAWs that understand Key Pressure
messages, but there's more to it than that.
The rear panel of the Launchpad Pro has a place to plug in its
power supply (it can run on bus power, but that's not recommended), a power button, a standard USB B port... and two minijacks
marked MIDI In and Out. Yes, that's right-the Launchpad Pro is
now a standalone MIDI controller, capable of playing your hardware synths along with your DAW plug-ins, or even without a
computer at all. It comes with two miniplug-to-MIDI adapter cables
and can be wired into a MIDI rig like any other keyboard.
(Miniplug to MIDI? Yes, and that's a story for another time.)
Getting started/Session Mode
Live recognizes the Launchpad Pro immediately upon startup,
and it's automatically mapped to a region of Clip slots in Session
View that's marked with a colored outline, just like any other Live
controller. You're instantly ready to begin exploring!
The top 8 buttons are Up, Down, Left, Right, Session, Note,
Device, and User. These buttons are self-explanatory: they
allow for quick navigation where that's appropriate, and
select the four main Modes of the Launchpad Pro.
Session Mode is the most familiar; it displays Clips in an 8 x 8
grid, color-coded to match the onscreen Live Set's Clip colors,
and lets you select and launch them at will. Note Mode turns the

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2016