Before christmas I just decided to play around with my LPD8 and Ableton Live Intro (free upgrade all the way from Live Lite 6 bundled with my Keystation Pro 88 keyboard). The result of a few hours learning the basics of Ableton was that I had fun, oh and a short music track. So I decided to treat myself for christmas with Ableton Live 8 (I had 130 USD worth of discounts to apply) plus I also bought an Ableton course at a 50% off discount, which also includes some 750GB worth of samples that I figured could come in handy. I have started the online course now and I am starting to see how convenient it would be to have a dedicated controller. Then again, the LPD8 is a nice starting point. I have been following the APC40 back when it came out and I seriously considered asking my parents to bring one from the states. IIRC it was heavily discounted down to 399 USD at the time. Since then Novation has released the Launchpad and Akai has struck back now at NAMM 2010 with the APC20. I would probably be quite thrilled about the APC20 if instead of the faders they would have included endless knob encoders. But the obviously non motorized faders on the APC20 do not excite me all that much.
The Launchpad on the other hand has gotten a lot of hacker coverage over on CDM and even some official hacking love from Novation, which just always intrigues me. Its also cheaper than the APC20 and more compact. I briefly tried out the Launchpad back when I bought the LPD8 and to me it struck a perfect balance between overall size and button size/feel. However at the time I wanted something that I could pretty much leave in my backpack at all times so the LPD8 won. I was also not planning on going Ableton back then. Anyways, I can see that the APC40/20 might feel better if desk real estate or portability is no concern, but it is for me. Now I was almost sold on the Launchpad at this point. However something in me was saying: you have the LPD8, you have a Keystation Pro 88, just map them out and be done.
But then I stumbled over the Katapult on the DJTT forums and I am in love now. Very smooth integration into Traktor! I love the fact that this will give me visual feedback on the various settings. Obviously it doesn't have the granuality of a knob or fader if you are just using a row of buttons. But more often than not the granularity is not needed and can actually be annoying when trying to make precise relative adjustments. Anyways this piece of software turns the Launchpad into a sweet addition or replacement for my VCI-100. This could also reduce the need for double assignments which always scare me, especially since Ean does not really add soft takeover to his mappings and its tedious to keep adding it in myself. Guess I have no other choice than to pick one up Monday after work :)
Check out the Katapult video:
Katapult Demonstration from Mark Qvist on Vimeo.