Hi everyone,
I’ve been struggling for a long time with keeping track of scales and keys across my Ableton Live projects when using a Launchpad X in Note/Scale mode.
My typical workflow is:
- improvise on the Launchpad X,
- record ideas quickly,
- move on to the next project.
The problem is that when I come back to an old project, I often have no idea which scale I was using at the time. I don’t really want to stop and analyse the key again or manually rebuild the scale setup just to keep playing.
Since Launchpad X has its own internal scale and note mode, but Ableton Live doesn’t automatically “remember” that choice inside the project, my projects were getting pretty messy in terms of scales and musical structure.
So I built a small remote script that synchronizes the Launchpad X scale mode with Ableton Live’s scale settings and stores that information inside the project:
- When I play in Note/Scale mode on the Launchpad X, the chosen scale is sent to Live.
- The scale selection becomes part of the project, so I can reopen it later and immediately continue improvising in the same scale, without guessing.
- For me this keeps improvisation spontaneous, but the musical structure is preserved inside the project.
Right now the script is focused specifically on:
- Novation Launchpad X
- Ableton Live 12
Here’s a short video demo of how it works in practice:
https://youtube.com/shorts/boeOtfrMX9I
I’m sharing this in case it helps anyone with a similar workflow problem.
I’d really appreciate any feedback, bug reports or suggestions for improvement.
Also, I’m curious:
- Are there any existing solutions that already tackle Launchpad scale ↔ Live scale synchronisation in a similar way (remote scripts, M4L devices, etc.) that I might have missed?
- Is there anything you would expect such a script to handle that I haven’t thought of yet?
Thanks for reading!