You can totally use beatmaker 3 to sequence external gear, I use the camera connection kit with a USB to 5 pin wire. Problem is you have to load a sample into a bank and turn the gain all the way down so it doesn’t play sound to send midi out and set midi channel. also chord mode doesn’t send midi out but you can get around that cause the pads still light up, you just have to press all the ones it shows. It’s still nice to have a physical controller though for the velocity and aftertouch. It will be nice if bm3 gets its workarounds fixed
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At their NAMM booth this year, Novation was pushing LaunchPad Pro pretty hard: The center of display was a wall of 64 LP Pros controlled by another out on a podium for people to play. The Peak set up had only a LaunchPad Pro in Notes / Scales mode to play it - no standard keyboard at all!
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With the scales that were added in the 1.1 firmware update, the LP Pro really is already very handy in a stand-alone setup without a custom firmware.
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I bet that looked crazy! I got mine in the post this morning, ripped it open and plugged it in before I opened the curtains shortly after waking up and it almost blinded me. Way brighter than I expected. Proceeded to have a little jam with it, great stuff so far 
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Hi,
Just a word to say I am currently working on a custom firmware. It’s a 32 step (the outer pads) sequencer using the grid just to input notes. It only works as a MIDI clock slave as the internal clock is not reliable enough. The flash storage is used to store the pattern so it’s kept when you restart the launchpad pro.
I can send the sysex to anybody interested. For now it’s really a WIP (fixed velocity, on channel one, fixed scale Dm).
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I think Chiron may have meant in regards to the custom firmware… but I saw that NAMM via the videos too. I really hope they keep going further with it. Having done the custom firmware I have some ideas for the next gen LPP++
that design sounds cool! does the current step animate around the box?
I didn’t notice a problem with the internal clock when I was trying more ‘sequencer like’ things, but I didn’t test it against other clocks, etc. What problem with reliability did you have?
Yes the current step animates around the box. I’ll try to make a video tomorrow.
The internal clock runs at 1kHz (1000 ticks/second) so it’s not precise enough. The sample code runs at 125bpm, sending a MIDI clock every 20 ticks. It’s nice and round but at 120bpm for example, we would have to send a MIDI clock (at 24 pulses per quarter note) every 20.8333333 ticks. We will have some jitter. That’s the theory. Maybe it’s not noticeable 
. For now, anyway I’ll concentrate on listening to external MIDI clock.
I’m a noob when it comes to coding but I’ve been working on creating my own firmware for the launchpad Pro on and off. I wish they would release all of the current standalone code so it would be easier to just add things and modify things rather than having to create everything from scratch.
It’s a good learning experience though I guess. So far I’ve created a note layout for minor scales and the ability to octave up/down as well as semi-tones and change the colors of the pads lol. I guess that’s not horrible for a code noob but I’m sure my code is all wrong with tons of things I’m not supposed to do in coding.
I have way too many if statements and I’m trying to learn how to make a look up table rather than repeating a bunch of code. I should have went to school for software instead of electronics 
I do have a rediculous amount of comments everywhere, I hear that’s good in coding 
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I found out today that there are 47 Forks of the firmware on the github page!
Unfortunately, most of them don’t amount to anything, but the ones that have added to the title of their fork usually have something. these ones have some ok sample code you could use - but I wont vouch for any in particular.
I will contribute something to it eventually when the code is respectable - but it may not include all the stuff…more like a useful platform to help others make their ideas. You’d still need some C chops.
Wow, that sounds fantastic! I had live-shows, with my laptop, where I programmed little light shows for the breaks - I simply love the bright lights!
That there is not too much going on with custom firmware is one thing.
Regarding the advertisement or visibility of the LPP I am possibly biased: In a lot of forums (Facebook, Ableton Forum) and in a lot of advertisement from Novation I see the popularity of the Circuit. But I don’t know how many LPP are sold and how many happy users are out there. I read a lot about Push but not much about the LPP.
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Here’s a vid, he claims he’s drove a car over a launchpad at the end which is interesting
After having some issues with my Push 2 (second time owning one) I returned it and got a Launchpad Pro instead to replace it. So far I’m absolutely loving it.
Having the 64 velocity sensitive pads and being able to use them in Ableton, Maschine, AND my Digitakt puts it leagues ahead of the Push to me. It’s very versatile. It’s not as deep as the Push but it’s plenty powerful. Plus the scale modes are always available so you can have scales in any software and with any hardware.
My only gripes are that the Faders in Fader Mode are locked to CCs 21-29 and can’t be changed, at least in standalone mode. That makes them useless for using with the Digitakt.
The Launchpadpro95 script also gives tons more flexibility with live, doing 90% of what I used my Push for (except browsing and sound designing, obviously.)
The velocity is great; better than the Push 1 on and par with Push 2, the polyphonic after touch also works very well.
I really want to see some more standalone scripts for this guy though. I don’t think people really know how deep these go and how accessible it is for literally anything music production related.
4/5 Would definitely recommend to anyone.
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LPP made me pick up ableton again after sticking with logic for so long. it’s great how I can switch between maschine and ableton switching standalone mode on and off.
It’s such a fun expansion for maschine to have 64 pads available too. I can prehear all the presets from maschine (making 10000000 NI presets no longer unbrowseable) then further tweaking and sound design happens there, just play patterns in on the launchpad and export everything to use in ableton sets and switch LPP to ableton mode. Also it’s speedy to work in ableton alone, and the magic is its small enough to put in my bag and I can use the same workflow with my iPad switching maschine for the beatmaker 3 app and use the launchpad app for cliplaunching.
Anyway, you could consider a midi processor if you want to use it with digitakt and don’t want to jump into rewriting LPP code. it definitely won’t be the last use you find for one, they’re not much of a sexy purchase but they’re worth the investment. If you don’t mind using a laptop anyway you could use your that to do the job, just filter and reroute the CCs with some free midi software
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I like that video. It seems like they are trying to “reboot” the effort into the Launchpad Pro with Arcade and other things. I’ll look into that some more.
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Great wall of Launchpads…
A pity that they don’t control the single pads. It would be already a nice video screen wall.
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I made a new video of the latest features of the Launchpad Digitakt Firmware:
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Good stuff
My work in progress 8-channel 32-step sequencer with state saving
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Finally, I released my firmware for the Launchpad Pro, a 16 track 32 step sequencer.
And here is where you can download it and understand how it works : www.faqtor.fr/launchpadpro.html
Basically, each track can have a different length and speed and can send notes on USB or MIDI DIN on any channel.
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