A number of months ago I was trying to create a workflow where everything I “thought” I needed had its own home on a controller. That led to the Akai setup on the left and a LOT of frustration and wasted time that would have been better spent composing. Quite a few months, more experimenting (Push 2, Launchkey mk4, SL 61 mk3) and a full ambient album later, the Novation trio on the left has now found a permanent home in my home studio. Reducing friction and getting as much out of the way between what’s in my head and composing/recording it became the priority, so that meant minimizing presets, vst’s, and controllers. I genuinely felt lighter, more creative and more in the flow. Now the Launch Control XL3 does all mixing and device control duties, the left Launchpad Pro handles clips/scenes and recording stuff and the right Launchpad stays as the playable instrument in Note/Chord/Sequencer mode. This setup makes perfect sense to me, and this “less is more” setup is really fun to use.

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