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Novation Launchkey MK4

Novation Launchkey MK4

Novation’s updated Launchkey range introduces improved creative features and better DAW integration.

The Launchkey MK4 range from Novation certainly made an impression on my doorstep when an enormous box arrived, containing six MIDI controllers in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The forms fit into the most popular and fought‑over area of decent MIDI keyboards. And like their contemporaries they are plastic, chunky, smart and offer a similar level of connectivity and controllability for a reasonable price.

The Launchkey Range

Navigating the range is relatively easy. At the top you have the comprehensive Launchkey 61 and 49. These are the only ones with faders, associated buttons and a semi‑weighted, piano‑lipped keyboard. The faders have been rearranged from the MK3, appearing now on the left of the controller, with the pads and encoders to the right of a new, central OLED display. The pitch and mod wheels have been sucked into the same space rather than being, more traditionally, to the left of the keyboard. Other than the physical control differences, the 61 and 49 also have a facility for splitting and zoning the keyboard, which the smaller ones do not.

The Launchkey 37 and 25 lose the faders and keep the full‑sized keys but with a synth‑action feel. Whereas the Launchkey Mini 37 and 25 reduce down to a more compact form, with comfortable mini‑keys and the simplicity of pitch and modulation touchstrips.

Otherwise, the guts and the intelligence inside the controllers are the same throughout the range, as is the single MIDI output on the back and the smart, plastic but solid feel. The only missing feature is any form of aftertouch on the keyboards; however, you will find polyphonic aftertouch on the velocity‑sensitive and brightly lit pads.

The full range. To give you an idea of the relative sizes, the Launchkey Mini 25 measures 338.5 x 176.8 x 49mm, while the Launchkey 61’s dimensions are 895 x 263.5 x93mm.The full range. To give you an idea of the relative sizes, the Launchkey Mini 25 measures 338.5 x 176.8 x 49mm, while the Launchkey 61’s dimensions are 895 x 263.5 x93mm.

Arp

With the MK3 Launchkeys, Novation introduced Mutate and Deviate functions, which did interesting things to the melody and timing of the arpeggiator. These have been expanded with some creative options and are so much easier to use than they were before. The Arp button now stays lit, and while the encoders are not labelled, all the controls are displayed on the nice but tiny OLED display, showing you what the encoders do.

Mutate adds up to 128 melodic variations to the notes you originally held. Whereas the newly renamed Rhythm gives you eight deviating steps of note triggering. The pattern is shown on the OLED screen and can be edited on the top row of pads, while the second row can add ratchets, accents or ties. This is a lot of unexpectedly good stuff and pushes the arpeggiator towards something approaching a sequencer.

Hidden at the end of the arp types is another tasty titbit of a feature called Strum. Nothing happens until you move the modulation wheel, at which point it cycles up and down through the held or latched notes. It’s very nicely done. In fact, if you have the smaller Launchkey with the modulation touchstrips rather than a wheel, then you have a slight advantage in that you can access different parts of the arpeggiation depending on where you place your finger.

Scale & Chord

The scale count has been increased from eight to 30, giving you more scales than you’ve ever heard of. There are three modes: the first one snaps every wrong note to the nearest right one, the second filters out the wrong notes and doesn’t let them play, and the third mode puts the whole scale, regardless of what the notes are, across only the white keys.

‘User Chord’ lets you assign any chord or collection of notes you play to a pad for instant replaying. ‘Fixed Chord’ is similar, but this time, you are assigning a chord to the keyboard that can be played and transposed on every key. That’s all good and useful. ‘Chord Map’ is something quite different.

Chord Map gives you a set of eight chords to complement your chosen scale. These are available on the left half of the 16 pads. There are 40 banks of eight chords that can be reached with ‘Adventure’ and ‘Explore’ encoders, which can take you on a fascinating journey into relative chords and progressions. There’s also a Spread function that pushes the chords nice and wide, and a Roll function that behaves as I thought Strum would, which leads us nicely into the playing modes.

On the right of the complementary chords, you have six illuminated pads that change how the chords are performed. The first pad gives you an arpeggiation up, but you have to tap the chord pad for each note. There’s also one for arp down. Then, you get cycles of inversions with each tap, a swap between left and right hands, and a bass note played on the first tap, followed by the chord on the second. You can hold the mode pads to add the performance feature momentarily or latch it permanently.

The Chord Map is an enormous amount of fun that can keep you fascinated for hours and is ultimately a very useful compositional tool. The only slight disappointment is that you can’t route the chords to the arpeggiator, which feels like a missed opportunity.

DAW Control

The MK4s come with enhanced DAW control features, opening up deeper integrated control. Other MIDI controllers now offer a similar level of control and clip launching built into the hardware, so it seems right that Novation should actively expand into DAWs other than long‑term collaborators Ableton. With the MK4, we get scripts for Reason, Logic Pro and Cubase, as well as some enhanced control options in FL Studio, along with a range of controls applicable to any DAW.

As you’d expect, the integration with the included Ableton Live 12 Lite is flawless. The pads become a colour‑accurate 2x8 grid of clips that can be launched, enabled, navigated and activated with ease. The encoders can take on a number of roles. Using the Shift button and a pad you can switch between Plug‑in, Mixer, Sends and Transport control. The faders naturally fall to level control. I appreciated how the OLED display shows a slightly cryptic abbreviated reminder of what each knob is assigned to, because otherwise, the lack of labelling would be a bigger issue.

Plug‑in mode maps the encoders directly to the selected device with the assured confidence of a long‑time collaborator. Or, for third party plug‑ins you are free to map using MIDI Learn or the Configure function on the plug‑in’s Device panel.

Transport mode is best used in the Arrangement view, which throws up one misstep in this otherwise fluid hardware control experience. And that’s the absence of any way to switch views from the Launchkey.

The pads have an extra feature in Live called Sequencer Mode. This turns the pads into a bar of 16 steps that are perfect for drum programming and not bad for melodies either. Hold the note or drum sound you want to play and tap the pad to store it in the step. It feels a little ham‑fisted at first but once you get the hang of it, you find yourself crafting rhythms and tunes that you might not have thought of playing live.

The Launchkey 49 and 61 have additional buttons that add to the Ableton experience. You have Capture MIDI, Undo/Redo (which is always handy) and Quantise and Metronome. There’s also a row of buttons under the faders that arm tracks for recording, and the faders also have their own custom modes. I really like how the Launchkey is unfazed by mode switching or going to different functions, and how it lets me use the encoders and pads in whatever way I wish without ever feeling like you are dropping out of Ableton control.

I found the Reason integration to be a little quirky. On an audio track, control defaults to the mixer, giving the encoders control over the compressor, gate, the first two knobs of the EQ and then panning and level. That’s fine, but the mixer has a lot more knobs, and there were no additional encoder banks to address them or any way of remapping them that I could find. There are eight send knobs which would be perfect for the eight encoders in send mode, but sadly whichever mode you choose, it sticks stubbornly to the same mixer controls. Faders, if available, didn’t seem to do anything, which is very odd.

If you add a Reason instrument to a track, then the encoders grab control over a bunch of parameters and, if it has a button matrix to enable modulation and effects, the pads light up helpfully to reflect their state. The faders now come into play and offer control over additional parameters. This is all great, but there doesn’t appear to be any way to shift control back to the mixer to control the levels.

Getting control over a third‑party VST instrument also has some challenges. You can ‘Remote Override’ to map control, but this only works on the first bank of knobs, and it replaces the automatic control you were getting over Reason devices. I found that if I created another generic controller and gave it the Launchkey MIDI input (ignoring the complaint about a clash), I could then use any custom modes and encoder banks outside of the first eight without any bother. If you think that sounds a bit fussy and confusing, you’d be right.

I had an entirely different experience with FL Studio. If you have faders then they control the mixer, the encoders jump all over any loaded FL Studio instruments, and the pads light up with the colours of the tracks, letting you select the track you want to work on. If you switch to Mixer mode, the encoders become banks of channel control, mixer control and EQ. You can leap around in blocks of eight and get your fingers into more or less everything.

FL Studio also has an active community who like to get their hands dirty. They’ve created an unofficial script that covers nearly 300 third‑party plug‑ins, giving you instant, easy control without having to use custom modes or manual MIDI mapping.

Stepping outside the scripts, I wanted to see how well it works with something that’s not preconfigured. For that, we’re going to have to use our old friend HUI. The Launchkey comes with two sets of MIDI drivers: one for regular MIDI and one for DAW control. This brilliantly enables us to create both an emulated HUI controller and an external MIDI controller for playing and controlling synths. The controls worked perfectly.

The smoothness of all this is very impressive. I can use every aspect of the Launchkey, both DAW control and MIDI control, without any bother, and I wonder, not for the first time, whether all the effort put into scripting is as necessary or as helpful as we’re led to believe.

Novation have done a lot of good work in making the internal functions of the Launchkey more useful and entertaining.

Conclusion

Novation have done a lot of good work in making the internal functions of the Launchkey more useful and entertaining. The arpeggiator has been taken to a very creative level, the chord features stand well above what we’ve come to expect, and the Chord Map, in particular, can take you off into very welcome flights of fancy. It gives you an inspirational alternative to digging around for MIDI effects and tools within your DAW.

The range of sizes gives an option to almost every situation without sacrificing too many features. The overall quality of the hardware is good, the OLED display is nice if a little small, and the general navigation is well‑lit and competently done. If I was looking for a complaint, it would be that there’s no off switch, and so the brightly lit pads don’t turn off with your computer.

In terms of DAW control, it’s great to see Novation venture out from Ableton Live and that’s been largely successful. They could improve their documentation on how to get things to work smoothly beyond in‑built devices and into the third‑party plug‑ins that probably make up most of what we use.

Overall, the Launchkey MK4 is a solid upgrade over the previous version, and the consistency across the range is top notch. It has some great tools, good integration, and the Mini 37 could easily stick around as my day‑to‑day controller.

Pricing

Launchkey Mini 25 £109.99$119.99

Launchkey Mini 37 £139.99$149.99

Launchkey 25 £169.99$179.99

Launchkey 37 £199.99$209.99

Launchkey 49 £229.99$249.99

Launchkey 61 £279.99$299.99

Prices include VAT.

Pros

  • Solid, good‑looking controllers.
  • There’s a size for almost every scenario.
  • Creative arp and chord features.
  • Tight Ableton Live integration.
  • Decent integration with other DAWs.

Cons

  • Screen is very small.
  • Needs better documentation on how to use it outside of the basics.
  • The 49/61 are a bit on the chunky side.
  • No 'Off' button or sleep mode.

Summary

Novation update the Launchkey with creative arp and chord modes plus wider DAW integration. With six sizes in the range, there’s a controller for almost everyone.

Information

See Pricing box.

www.novationmusic.com

See Pricing box.

www.novationmusic.com

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