Martin Delaney

With its increased size and greater hardware integration, could Novation’s latest Launchpad Pro unit light up your life?

Dressing your beats in memorable melodies and rich harmonies may seem like a daunting task but Ableton Live has a host of tools to help you through the process. Here we guide you through them.

Pigments was already an interesting and dynamic instrument, but this latest update promises to elevate Arturia’s acclaimed soft-synth into a whole new dimension.

It’s hard to believe that Novation’s now ubiquitous Launchpad concept is a decade old, and to mark the occasion we have a very special new ‘X’ version, as well as an update to the increasingly.

A keyboard part can be anything from a one-finger piano riff to a complex, evolving pad, but utilising keyboards can be a bit daunting for the uninitiated, so let’s find some ways to make them more approachable.

Everybody needs at least one rack module - it’s good to experience different working methods and to use gear that doesn’t need a computer - just add a MIDI keyboard!

You like bass, right? C’mon, everybody does! Bass is important, sure, but there are so many tools, so many technical and creative choices to be made about how to use it.

Roland bolsters the Aira range with the MC-707 – complete with beats, sounds and effects – but is this a groovebox fit for the 21st century?

Last time we created a beat using MIDI programming and a drum rack, but with Live, audio samples are just as flexible. Now we can twist a drum loop to do just about whatever we want.

There are days when Ableton Live 10 looks like a far more complex beast than it was back in 2001, but the good core stuff is still there. Let’s prove the point by making a straightforward beat!