Although the Launchpad can certainly hold it’s own as a controller in session mode for live, many music makers out there were hoping for a more accessible and cheaper version of the Monome. I think it’s still too early to judge how well the Launchpad accomplishes this goal, however there are already many Monome emulators available. If you have Max or Max4Live, you’ll be able to run an emulator such as Nonome, Nomepad, or Monolive. There are various monome patches out there and each emulator can handle some patches better than others. The ability of the Launchpad to emulate the Monome is somewhat dependent on the capabilities of the emulator.

From my experience, the most challenging patch to emulate has been MLR-V. Of course, I’ve got pretty high demands. I’m not looking for just any old MLR patch, but one that will draw its clips from Ableton Live. For over a month, members of the Monome forums have been hard at work. Check out the MLR-style chopping if Live Clips for the patch that does so. I’m sure the input of additional Max programmers would be greatly appreciated in the effort to perfect the patch.

In the meantime, and even if you don’t have Max4Live there’s a work around, albeit a slightly clumsy one, to get MLR style mixing in Live. Edison, a recent guest on DJTechTools shows how he used follows actions to get a similar kind of control. Take a look at 3:50 of the YouTube video for his explanation. If you decide to take the follow action route, make sure you’ve got your quantization set to the right mode.