’s Launch a family of grid-based soft ware controllers. It is specifi cally tailored to Ableton Live, a leader in the realm of electronic music production/performance soft ware. While not a program mentioned oft en in the pages of Pro Mobile, it is, nonetheless, a tool many club/remix DJs around the world use to create and perform electronic dance music. Aft er spending some quality time with this hardware/soft ware duo, I can see how it can also fi t into the world of the mobile DJ as well. is 78 First, a look at the device itself.

In the box one fi nds a USB cable, a printed quick start guide and instructions/ codes for downloading and installing Ableton Live Lite soft ware, MIDI Controller Editor Soft ware, and 1 GB of Loopmasters Sample Content. The Launch Control XL is a simply and beautifully designed small console, measuring 239mm (L) x 239mm (W) x 22mm (H) with a height clearance of 39mm for its 24 knobs. The casing is made of high-quality plastic, giving the unit a very solid feel, and its knobs and buttons are clearly designed to hit the road as well.

Out of the box, the Launch Control XL is set up to easily control Live’s basic functions. Once the Live Lite 9 soft - ware is installed, getting up and running is truly a plugand-play operation, since it is USB bus-powered as well. Looking at the top panel, the upper half contains three rows of eight knobs that control the soft ware’s mixer sends and panning. Using the Device button at lower right on the panel, the third row of knobs can be switched to manipulate parameters for various eff ects, such as Filter envelopes, Wet/Dry levels on Reverbs and Choruses, Delay times, and much, much more.

Below the knobs are eight channel faders, and at the bottom are two rows of buttons; the upper row for choosing track focus, and the lower (via selector buttons on the right) ready to control muting, soloing and arming recording for each track. Bright green, yellow and red LED lighting makes the current status of each button easy to see at glance. Ableton Live, of course, allows for more than eight tracks, and left /right Track Select buttons (also on the right side) access them.

The usual approach to DJing with Ableton Live is ably described by Chad Parkhill at : “Ableton’s innovative session interface allows performers to trigger samples, loops, basslines, drum patterns and other sounds in real time, and manipulate them by altering their parameters or by applying eff ects to them. With a few kludges - treating whole songs as sample clips and running an EQ plugin on each track at a minimum - this session view can be manipulated into functioning as a virtual DJ workstation.” ( com/2010/10/06/why-dj-with-ableton-live/) That thing about “treating whole songs as sample clips” what caught my attention, in relation to Novation’s NOVATION LAUNCH CONTROL XL Ableton-centric controller.

Mobile DJs who specialise youth events and other gigs that call for a club-like vibe will no doubt gravitate toward the ‘electronic-musiccreation-on-the-fly’ possibilities that Ableton is known for. However, other mobiles might use it as more of ‘basic’ mixer, albeit a very powerful one. With whole songs loaded as clips, one can have an entire set ‘cued up’ and spread across the mixer’s channels, ready to be mixed and manipulated - in contrast to the usual deck-to-deck approach.

Along with the tracks to be ‘performed’, a mobile DJ could also have Ableton prepared to mix any other live instruments and vocals that might be part of the celebration at hand. For a wedding ceremony or a karaoke gig, you could apply the power of Ableton’s basic effects, like Reverb or Delay to, say, a singer and acoustic guitar - and go way beyond what a DJ mixer can do to ‘sweeten’ the sound of the performer. Plus, you’ll have to be in record mode anyway, to send this sound to your outputs, so you might as well hit the red button and preserve the special moment for your client.

Another possibility (although I’ll admit I didn’t have time to check it out in detail) is that Live allows you to import Quicktime movie files (.mov) and play them like audio clips. Though not designed for ‘video mix- NOVATION LAUNCH CONTROL XL in ing’, the capability to simply play video clips could also aid mobile DJs who provide video montages and other brief visuals for their audiences. a Since the unit also comes with a software editor that allows the user to create his or her own control surface templates, for a DJ with a penchant for programming and the time to spend, it will provide many possibilities for use with a variety of setups.

Yet simply utilising the Launch Control XL in concert with the provided Ableton Live Lite 9 application makes it a new, creative tool in the right DJs’ hands. Certainly this concept won’t be upstaging standard DJ mixing methods any time soon. But for the alternative way of DJing described above, the Launch Control XL is the perfect partner to Ableton’s Live. Relying on a mouse/trackpad and keyboard to control the software wouldn’t cut it for the typical DJ performance and would probably annoy most of us enough to ditch the idea after the first try.

However, with the Launch Control XL providing the tactile and visual augmentation that enables the performer to get his or her hands off the computer and eyes unglued from the screen, a mobile DJ could unlock a whole new world of performance possibilities. 01 \ Avicci – The Nights 02 \ Taylor Swift – Style 03 \ Kelly Clarkson – Heartbeat Song 04 \ The Shires – Friday Night 05 \ Take That – Let In The Son Rnb/hip hop 06 \ Charli XCX ft . Rita Ora – Doing It 07 \ Flo Rida ft .

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