Product Review

Description:
Launchkey Mini (MK2) is Novation's most compact and portable MIDI keyboard controller. It may be small, but it gives you everything you need to create new tunes in Ableton Live without cluttering up your desk.

Launchkey Mini has been designed to make it easy and fun to produce electronic music. All the controls work as soon as you plug it in and are arranged to make the most sense in Ableton Live. 16 velocity-sensitive pads let you launch clips and play beats. They light up to show you when clips are loaded, playing, and recorded and are laid out to match your Ableton Live session view; one row to launch clips, and one row to stop them. You can also easily tweak your instruments using eight high-quality knobs, and sketch out ideas on a 25-note mini keyboard with a fast synth-style action that makes it really enjoyable to play.

Launchkey Mini is compact and tough enough to throw in your bag, so you can take it anywhere. 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. You can also connect it to your iPad via a Camera Connection Kit to control all sorts of iOS music apps, like Novation's free Launchkey App.

Launchkey Mini also integrates immediately with FL Studio, Pro Tools, Reason, Cubase, and Logic without any mapping whatsoever. It comes with everything you need to start making music, including Ableton Live Lite, Novation Bass Station and V-Station virtual instruments, and 4GB of samples from Loopmasters. Expanded to a whopping 4GB, the Loopmasters sample library includes professional quality, royalty-free loops and one-shots, plus three fully multisampled simpler-based instruments for Ableton Live 9: Piano, Rhodes, and Hammond Organ.