Learning Ableton: Week 2 — Launchkey Keyboard

Week 2: LaunchKey Keyboard

This week, I chose to to focus on learning all about the Launchkey 37 keyboard / MIDI controller that I purchased last fall. At $200, it’s an affordable keyboard, and offers tight integration with Ableton.

And, I hardly knew how to use it before this week.

I puttered around YouTube videos for awhile, until I decided to RTFM — read the fucking manual. This was tedious, but I waded through it and figured pretty much all that the keyboard can do, which is a lot.

The reason I got the keyboard was that it lets me map a range of data to a 37 note range — enough for my data significations — so I can preview what the data might sound like from the MIDI controller itself, developing the soundscape with a faster and more creative workflow, rather than fussing around with the mouse+keyboard. It is much more intuitive to press buttons this way.

The pots automatically get mapped to the the audio effects, which is helpful for dialing in a soundscape.

You can also use the pads like a drum kit, and can even do clip triggers automatically, so I can think about sequencing a whole performance from a set of sensors.

This will be incredibly useful for my future work.

Here is the GitHub Repo is link to my weekly explorations