Giving you everything you’ll need to start performing within Ableton Live, plus its compact size means this can easily be put in your back and go with you anywhere. The user section lets you customise your pad controller; this allows you to create a template based on the requirements of your live performances. The Launch Control is supported natively by Ableton Live 9, so I selected it as a dedicated control surface, and checked Live's built-in help page about the device itself. It will work the moment you plug it into your laptop and you won’t need any drivers or power cables, because it’s class compliant and bus-powered via USB.

Tools to add chance: note chance and velocity chance features let you define probability of notes and velocity values, generating surprising variations to your patterns, or humanized variation in their dynamics. Keep the creative momentum going with the new Custom Mode keystroke widget and assign DAW shortcuts to your launchpad for a faster workflow and more intuitive creation. Use Novation Components – our online hub for all things Novation – to customise MIDI mappings, and control almost anything; three custom modes mean you can design how this compact grid controller works for you – you're only limited by your imagination. If you're used to using a Launchpad to control Live, you'll be aware that its support for mixer control is crude at best: a column of eight pads delivers a resolution of 6dB, at best, between successive volume levels (and 9dB between send levels). Launchpad, with its 8x8 grid of colourful and expressive pads, extends the Live Loop experience and makes the Logic workflow more hands-on.

Launchpad Mini is our most compact, portable and lightweight grid controller, so you never have to leave it at home. Separate buttons around the outside of the grid are designed to trigger scenes, switch modes and navigate your session in Ableton Live.

I could imagine an enhanced control script within Live showing the Launch Control as a single-row-height marquee to indicate track selection — or perhaps some mechanism for locking the Launch Control and Launchpad to the same set of tracks.

As you might expect, switching banks — or instruments — tends to leave the knobs in the wrong position, but that's a general problem with hardware potentiometers rather than encoders.

All the pads are backlit with multicoloured LEDs that show you which clips are loaded, playing and recording. Launchpad Mini (MK2) is Novation's most compact and affordable Launchpad grid instrument for Ableton Live. Even when the Launchpad and Launch Control are both active, they aren't required to straddle the same set of tracks.Akai APC MINI MK2 Ableton Controller The APC Mini Mk2 clip launching controller for Ableton Live is the ultimate compact solution for music creation in any environment.