Large, 64 RGB Pads – Reflects Your Ableton Live Session in an Easy-to-Read Manner. Highly Playable. Four Custom Modes – use components to customise mappings and control anything MIDI easily from Launchpad X. Vertical and Horizontal Bipolar Faders are the same but show lights on either side of the centre. This is useful for assigning pan controls, as the centre value will be equivalent to central panning. Program Change allows you to have the pad send a program change message on a chosen channel. This is useful for selecting certain patches on VSTs or hardware.

Launchpad Mini MK3 and Launchpad X also feature the ability to add Custom Keystroke widgets, which send a key or combination of keys at the press of a pad. CC Button allows you to send a Control Change message. You can determine the CC number, the 'on' value, the 'off' value, the channel, and the behaviour (Momentary, Toggle, and Trigger which lets you increment through values). Control Change messages are useful for mapping to various functions, you can map them to things in Ableton such as device or transport controls. It’s all very easy-to-use and flexible, making the Launchpad X an excellent option for creating custom performance setups to control your favourite instruments or creative effects. It’s just a slight shame the unit has no MIDI Out, allowing these to be patched directly to hardware. Launchpad X is our essential MIDI pad controller for Live, enabling fast and effortless clip and scene launching, expressive instrument play, and direct transport and mixer control. Launchpad X’s 64 velocity- and pressure-sensitive RGB pads are our most responsive yet, while Drum and Note Modes provide automatic switching between percussive and melodic instrument triggering, and the dedicated Capture MIDI button means you’ll never lose a great idea again. Dynamic Note and Scale modes keep your basslines, melodies, chords and leads perfectly in key, and crucial performance controls – stop, solo, mute, record arm, levels, pans and sends – are a button press away. With USB-C connectivity and no drivers to install, Launchpad X puts everything you need right at your fingertips, so you can spend less time mousing around and more time making music.

Bundled together with the Launchpad X is a whole host of wide-ranging software and plug-ins. Pioneering companies such as Softube, Klevgrand and many more have provided you with a selection of their products – granting you the tools needed to increase the variety and quality of your sounds. Logic Pro X 10.5 Live Loops Used with an instrument, it displays the familiar style of ‘scale’ mode used across most modern pad-centric controllers - whereby notes of a scale are highlighted from left to right across the grid with root notes delineated by a change in colour. There are 16 preset scales to choose from, and both Scale and Chromatic modes for a choice of whether notes outside of that scale are available or not. Four Customisable Modes – You Can Use Components to Customise Mappings and Control MIDI from the Launchpad X. The Launchpad Mini Mk 3’s about as small as you can get and still be usable. True, the X is more fun for finger drummers, and more ‘playable’ in general thanks to the superior pads, but for basic clip and scene launching, and drum triggering, the Mini works fine, especially now clip colours are visible.

CLIPS / OVERVIEW / CONTROLLERS: trigger clips in the Performance zone, and displays an overview of 8×8 zones or controller layouts.

Key features

Softube Time & Tone Bundle – Consists of Powerful Reverb, Delay, Distortion & Mastering Tool Plug-Ins. The Scale Keyboard includes up to 8 notes from a scale. You can choose which scale, which root note, which MIDI channel and which octave this uses. The first is Ampify Launchpad, the company’s accessible, DJ-style music-making app that allows users to trigger, manipulate and perform with loops from their mobile device. When dragging a Widget onto a slot with a Widget already in place, the previous Widget will be removed:

If you're using Windows, and you'd like to use the Launchpad with Components and Ableton simultaneously, please install the driver found here (the same driver is used for both). Updates MIDI Note lets you assign a note to a single pad. You can customise the note, the octave, and the channel, as well as change the behaviour of the note to be: The 8x8 grid of RGB pads light up to match the colour of your clips in Ableton, so you can concentrate on triggering and combining your loops and ideas. The Drum Grid includes sets of 16 pads to play notes across two octaves in a square. You can customise the octave and channel. By default, this is set to Octave 3.

Launchpad

The Chromatic Keyboard includes all 12 notes in an octave. You can customise which octave and which channel this sends out on. Along the top row, you can name the Custom Mode, save the Custom Mode, send it to your Launchpad, and customise how it appears in the Librarian on the left-hand side: Although Ableton Live remains the Launchpad’s primary focus, the X also comes ready-made for use with two other Novation-built tools.