Launchpad Mini Mk3 — clip launcher

One unit or two?

You can drive everything with one Launchpad or two. With a pair, the LEFT unit is permanently the clip matrix and the RIGHT unit is the command deck / editor, so you never lose sight of the matrix. With a single unit, that one device does both jobs — you flip its view between CLIP (the L role: the 8×8 matrix) and CONTROL (the R role: the deck, note editor + length page). Everything the pair's RIGHT unit can do, single-mode's CONTROL view does — same handlers, same colours.

Quick start — pair (two units)

1. Add a launchpad control and a clip player to the canvas.
2. Click Pair Launchpads on the card (grants Web-MIDI/sysex on first click). Both units flood with colour — one green, one blue.
3. Press any pad on the unit you want as LEFT (the matrix). The other becomes RIGHT. Pairing auto-binds the first clip player.
4. Make your first clip: hold EDIT (bottom-left pad on R) and tap any pad on L → that pad gets an empty clip and R flips to the note editor.
5. Tap pads on R to add notes, then press EXIT (top-right scene button). Back on L, that pad is now a loaded clip (dim blue) — tap it to launch (green); tap it again to stop its lane.

Two identical units are told apart automatically by port order — if L/R come out swapped, just Re-pair and press the other unit. The Bind to clip-player button is only needed to re-target a different clip player, bind one you added after pairing, or unbind.

Quick start — single unit (one device, two views)

1. Add a launchpad control and a clip player, then click Connect single Launchpad (binds the one device; no L/R press-a-pad handshake).
2. The device starts in CLIP view — it's the 8×8 clip matrix, behaving exactly like the LEFT unit of a pair (tap to launch/stop, right column = scene).
3. Flip to CONTROL view two ways: tap the on-card Clip / Control toggle, OR press the hardware CC 98 button (the rightmost button on the top row). CONTROL view is the command deck + note editor + length page — the full RIGHT-unit functionality. The CC-98 button stays lit to show the active view.
4. Make a clip on one device: in CONTROL view hold EDIT, flip to CLIP view (CC 98) and tap a pad → that pad gets a clip and the device enters the note editor; flip back to CONTROL to add notes, then EXIT (top scene). Back in CLIP view, tap to launch.
5. Edit an existing clip fast — double-tap it: in CLIP view, a single tap launches a clip (immediate, never delayed); double-tap the same pad (two quick taps, ~¼ second apart) to open its note editor — the device flips to CONTROL automatically. A double-tap never changes whether the clip plays: double-tap a stopped clip and it stays stopped while you edit; double-tap a clip you'd already queued and it still starts. (Double-tap an empty pad to make a fresh clip and edit it.) This mirrors the on-card grid: single-click launches, double-click edits — so you never need the two-device hold-EDIT gesture on one Launchpad.

Flipping views never resets your editor — the step window, pitch scroll, FOLLOW state and which clip you're editing all survive a clip↔control flip. The matrix's playing/queued state is always live (it's the shared clip-player), so you never lose your performance by switching views.

Single unit — the clip-view ARM ROW (two-handed deck ops, no view flip)

On a single device you can't physically hold a deck modifier on one unit while tapping a clip on another — so in CLIP view the otherwise-idle top row becomes a 7-cell action-arm strip. Tap an arm cell to ARM an action, then tap a clip pad to apply it — the matrix never disappears. While an action is armed the matrix shows an aiming wash (legal targets brighten, empty pads show a faint dot) so you can see where the action will land. An arm auto-disarms after ~4 seconds, and re-tapping the armed cell cancels it. CC 98 (rightmost) stays the view-flip.

• CC 91 — NEW: arm, then tap an empty pad → it gets a fresh clip and the device flips to the note editor. (Tapping a loaded pad is a no-op — it won't clobber.)
• CC 92 — COPY: arm, then tap a loaded clip → it's copied to the clipboard. Double-tap COPY (while a clip is held) clears the buffer.
• CC 93 / CC 94 — PASTE / PASTE-REV: arm (only lights when the clipboard holds a clip), then tap any pad → the buffer is written there (PASTE-REV mirrors the steps).
• CC 95 — NOW: a sticky toggle (not arm-then-tap) — while lit, ordinary clip + scene taps launch immediately instead of at the next quantize boundary. Tap again to turn it off.
• CC 96 — LENGTH: arm, then tap a loaded clip → opens its length page (the device flips to control to show the ruler).
• CC 97 — DOUBLE: arm, then tap a loaded clip → duplicates + doubles its length.

The arm row is single-mode only. In a two-device pair the deck lives on the RIGHT unit (hold a modifier there + tap a clip on the LEFT), and the top row keeps its pair roles (REC / SONG / transport) — nothing here changes pair behaviour.

Double-tap = edit (single mode). Quite apart from the arm row, in CLIP view a single tap launches a clip immediately and a double-tap (two quick taps of the same pad, ~¼ second apart) opens its note editor — the device flips to CONTROL automatically, exactly like double-clicking a cell on the card. Double-tapping an empty pad makes a fresh clip and edits it (the same as arming NEW). The first tap is never delayed — it launches right away — but a double-tap then reverts the lane to exactly the play/queue state it was in before that first tap, so editing a clip never changes whether it plays: double-tap a stopped clip and it stays stopped; double-tap a clip that's playing and it keeps playing; double-tap a clip you'd already queued to start and it still starts (only the editing intent is added, never a launch). (Single-mode only: a pair edits via hold-EDIT on the RIGHT unit.)

Here's the whole single-unit CLIP view — one device, the arm strip across the top and the live clip matrix beneath it:

Flip to CONTROL view (CC 98 / the on-card toggle) and the same device becomes the command deck + note editor + length page — that view is identical to the pair's Unit R deck shown below (same handlers, same colours).

Unit L — the clip matrix (always live)

• Pad (slot, lane) is clip lane*8 + slot; lane 1 = the TOP physical row so the launchpad matches what you see on the card (the device's note 11..88 is bottom-origin; the matrix flips lane→row to align with the screen).
• The matrix stays live even while you edit — editing happens on Unit R.

Scene launch — the L right column

Each of the 8 amber buttons down the right edge of Unit L is a scene — it fires one whole column of clips at once. Pressing scene button N launches the clip in slot N of every lane that has one, and stops any lane that has no clip in slot N. It's the one-press way to switch your whole rig to a new section (verse → chorus): instead of tapping eight clips, you tap one scene. (Same quantize rules as a normal launch — they drop in on the boundary, or instantly if you hold NOW on R.)

• Scene button row y = clip slot y across all 8 lanes (a vertical column on the card).
• Lanes with a clip in that slot launch it; lanes without one stop — so a scene is a clean, full snapshot of "what plays now."

What the colours mean (matrix)

• Dim blue, steady = a loaded clip (has notes, not playing).
• Solid green = playing. Flashing green = queued to launch on the next boundary (with the transport stopped it just waits — start the transport to drop it in).
• Flashing red = queued to stop. Dim red (empty pads) = the player is record-armed.
• Copy is a snapshot. Copying a clip stores a frozen copy in the clipboard — the live clip is not linked, so it does not glow on L. The clipboard shows only on the BUF pad (Unit R), which pulses turquoise while a clip is held; tap BUF to clear it. (Edit a clip after copying? Re-copy it to capture the change.)

Unit R — the command deck (session)

• EDIT (orange) (hold) + tap a clip on L → open its note editor on R.
• COPY / PASTE / PASTE-REV (green) (hold) + tap a clip on L → copy / paste / paste-reversed. Copy takes a snapshot, so the BUF indicator on R pulses while a clip is held — tap BUF to clear the clipboard. (Re-copy to capture later edits; pasting always stamps the snapshot.)
• DOUBLE (purple) duplicates the pattern + doubles the length (cap 128). LENGTH (yellow) opens the length page. NOW (purple) (hold) makes launches ignore quantize.
• REC (top-left, CC 91) arms the arranger — red + pulse while armed; every clip launch is recorded into the song. SONG (CC 92) flips SESSION ⇄ ARRANGEMENT (white, bright in ARRANGEMENT) to play back the recorded song. Both write the same state the card's REC + SES/ARR buttons do.
• note-REC (dim red) and note-OVERDUB (dim purple) sit on row 1 (just above EDIT / COPY, the two pads shown on the second row of the deck above). Hold one and double-tap a clip on the LEFT to enter the KEYS note/keyboard + record view (next section) — note-REC = overdub OFF, note-OVERDUB = overdub ON. Distinct from the arranger REC on the top row.

Record a song (arranger)

The arranger records your live clip-launch performance — which clips you fire in which lanes, and exactly when — then plays it back as a song. You perform in SESSION (firing clips on the matrix) with REC armed; you play the result back in ARRANGEMENT. It records launches, not audio, so the clips themselves stay fully editable afterward. (Identical to the card's ● REC + SES/ARR buttons — drive whichever you like; both write the same synced state.)

1. Be in SESSION (the default — SONG/CC 92 is dim white, not bright). Make sure the transport is running (▶ PLAY / CC 96, or the card's transport) so song-time advances.
2. Press REC (top-left, CC 91). It glows red and pulses. In the default REPLACE mode, arming clears any previous recording and restarts the song at bar 1; switch the record-mode toggle (the RPL/OVR pill next to REC on the card) to OVERDUB to keep the existing take and merge new launches into it by song-beat. (Surfacing OVERDUB on the Launchpad's controls is a follow-up; today set it from the card.)
3. Perform: launch / switch / stop clips on the L matrix as you normally would. Each launch is captured at the moment it actually applies — so your quantized launches land on the boundary and your NOW (hold NOW + tap) launches land instantly, exactly as you played them.
4. Press REC again to disarm (the pulse stops). Your performance is now stored as the song.
5. Press SONG (CC 92) to switch to ARRANGEMENT (it lights bright white). Playback runs your recorded launches from the top, looping. Press SONG again to return to SESSION (live) play.

• Recording only happens in SESSION. In ARRANGEMENT the timeline drives the lanes itself, so REC there is a no-op — record in session, play back in arrangement.
• Edit the recorded song on the clip player card (its SES/ARR view shows the arrangement timeline: drag/recolour/delete blocks, set the loop length). The launchpad records + plays; the card is where you fine-tune the timeline.
• To re-record, just arm REC again — it wipes the old take and starts fresh from bar 1.

Unit R — the note editor

• ▲ ▼ scroll pitch ±1 row; ◀ ▶ scroll the step window ±1. Hold SHIFT (▣, CC 95) → jump a full screen (±8).
• VEL (hold + tap a note to cycle its velocity), SCALE (cycle the clip scale), FOLLOW (auto-scroll with the playhead — green = on).
• Right column: EXIT (top), DBL, LEN.

Unit R — the length page

KEYS — play + record notes (both units, pair)

KEYS turns the pair into a playable isomorphic keyboard (LinnStrument-style) routed live to a clip's track, and a loop recorder — with a clip playhead across the top. Both units flip to KEYS together (the matrix is hidden until you EXIT), and the keyboard is continuous across the L|R seam so a chord shape crossing the two units is the same shape. (KEYS is a two-unit feature today; a single-unit port is a follow-up.)

Getting in — a two-step safety gesture

1. Hold the note-REC or note-OVERDUB button on the RIGHT deck (row 1, the two pads just above EDIT/COPY — dim red /dim purple). While held, taps on the LEFT matrix don't launch.
2. Double-tap a clip on the LEFT (two quick taps of the same pad) → both units flip to KEYS for that clip. Entering via note-REC presets overdub OFF (true replace); via note-OVERDUB presets overdub ON (additive). An empty pad makes a fresh clip. The clip starts playing and the keyboard is live — but recording is armed-but-idle until you press QUEUE-REC.

Record a loop

• QUEUE-REC (bottom-row, unit L): tap to arm — it flashes yellow. Recording begins when the clip's playhead wraps to step 1 (the transport auto-starts if it was stopped); the pad turns red. A queued clip can't yank the take — the lane is pinned to the clip you're recording.
• Record (overdub OFF) = TRUE REPLACE: as the playhead crosses each step it is cleared, then filled by whatever you play that pass — so an un-played region wipes. Play a monophonic lane and the first note per step wins; a poly lane captures a chord.
• OVERDUB (on) = additive: each pass layers onto the last and it loops endlessly; toggle OVERDUB off to finish (it stops at the end of the current loop). The in-view OVERDUB pad (light → bright purple) mirrors + changes the mode you entered with.
• Velocity is captured from how hard you hit the pad (a Launchpad X is expressive automatically; a velocity-flat Mini records a default level).
• LEN opens the length page (it returns to KEYS on EXIT), so you can set the clip length without leaving.

Getting out

• EXIT while recording = stop recording but stay in KEYS (the clip keeps playing); a second EXIT = back to the session matrix.
• EXIT while armed-but-not-recording = cancel the arm (idle KEYS).
• EXIT while idle = back to the session matrix (both units return to L = matrix, R = deck).

What the KEYS colours mean

LED colour language

Every swatch is the exact RGB the firmware receives (type-3 lighting SysEx, 0–127 per channel). State always wins over a clip's own tint; pulse/flash animate on the binding's ~2 Hz blink.

Session — matrix + deck

Deck functions

Note editor + length

Pad + CC reference (confirmed hardware)