Courtesy of DJ Tech Tools:
“The buttons are a lot more playable than I thought they’d be”
The video makes it look less like a rubber pad and more like some sort of kevlar-headed piano key. The triple finger gesture he does with the drum pads is pretty convincing – I haven’t tried one of these for myself yet, but those pads look like a decidedly higher-end product than the older APC and LaunchPad offerings.
After rewatching the Ableton Preview Event video, in which Dennis DeSantis gives a great demo of the Push’s scale mapping capabilities, I decided to see if I could mimic this on my Launchpad using Max for Live.
With the help of some of the Novation tutorials and a little inspiration from the MaxforLive.com repository I figured out how to place a diatonic major or minor scale on my User 1 mode. The grid goes stepwise on the X axis and in diatonic 4ths on the Y axis. The lighted pads represent the tonic note. The layout is exactly like the one shown in all the push videos, although the lights aren’t accurate when the key is changed. Like I said, it’s a hack. And a dream.
I’ll post more details on how I did this later if anyone is interested. In short, it isn’t pretty, and it isn’t a workflow I’d probably use in practice. But it did let me make this cool jam:
What kills me is how fast it is to play scales. Just by learning a simple finger pattern I can play multiple octaves of scales or modes. I can also do sequences (of the music theory variety) and chord blocks very easily. I can’t wait to try this kind of thing on a device that’s actually designed for it!
Required reading for anyone wanting lots of details and macro pictures of Push.
In summary:
But the Launchpad and APC40 now feel more like experiments in comparison to Push. The new, sleek black controller is the most complete hardware Ableton has ever released, the first to properly carry the Ableton name. In look, feel, and function, it really seems the first time Ableton has expressed their vision of hardware the way Live originally did for software.
If you’ve ever tried to use a Launchpad or APC as a (frustrating at best) keyboard controller, you need to watch this video.
It seems there is quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to programming and assigning the button interface. Can’t wait to try one of these out.