The more practised composer may find that they can get the perfect take without even having to stop and hit record, such is the power of the Capture MIDI button. This is the golden ticket with regards to facilitating a creative state of flow, allowing you to capture any flashes of inspiration while playing along, with the peace of mind that your accidental excellence, and excellent accidents, won’t be forever lost to the ether. The Undo, Quantize and Click buttons also function as expected – the Capture MIDI button is perhaps the most exciting of the lot, allowing you to capture retrospectively anything played recently on a record armed track.
#Novation launchkey 49 mk2 vs mk3 software
Novation also offers a variety free software for beginners to start creating right away.Ī strip of buttons to the right of the unit is home to play, stop, record and loop controls, each corresponding to those found in the Ableton GUI itself. The Launchkey works with Ableton straight out of the box – but can be easily set up with whatever DAW you run with – offering an array of controls to navigate the DAW on the fly.
#Novation launchkey 49 mk2 vs mk3 plus
The Launchkey doesn’t cut any corners with its array of controls, featuring an additional 16 velocity-sensitive pads, pitch and modulation control wheels, eight rotary encoders, plus nine faders exclusive to the 49 and 61 key models.
The small LCD screen is well visible and conveniently located, allowing you to keep track of certain parameters and functions from within the unit, but as with most MIDI controllers, but especially this one, so much of the action takes place while interfacing with our laptop or mac.ĭesigned for use with many DAWs, the Launchkey is available in 25, 37, 49, and 61 key sizes to suit all kinds of studio or live layouts. Novation has come up with a solution to this with their Launchkey MIDI keyboard/controller, offering elegant inline DAW controls and MIDI functionality for the seamless joining of creativity and command. Although Ableton Live and other modern DAWs are engineered for creativity, even the disconnect between DAW navigation and recording/composing is enough to throw us out of our flow state. Although we like to think our brains can focus on multiple things, the fastest way to ruin any state of flow we might have is through context switching, regardless of how minor it may be. Switching attention between multiple stimuli, AKA multitasking, is the biggest killer of productivity in our day to day lives. And as anyone who has achieved this transcendent feeling will tell you, this is where the magic happens. Unlike Mihaly’s surname, this ‘flow’ state is a pretty simple concept you might already know it as ‘being in the zone’. In 1975, Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term ‘flow’ to refer to the feeling of total immersion when performing an activity. Perfect for young buzzing minds who don’t like to play by the rules that sheet music expects you to follow. Words by Liam McShane Focusrite Australia | Enquire for pricing