Applies to Launchpad Pro Mk3

The Launchpad Pro MK3 features a standalone Chord mode that allows you to quickly build and play interesting chords.

The notes presented here will depend on the scale selected (press Shift and Note to select a scale). The orange pads will have triads from the scale in ascending order. This means you can play through progressions easily (such as ii-V-I or I-V-vi-IV in a Major scale). 

The two white columns are slots for you to save your own chords in, hold down a pad and then play some notes to save a chord into one of the slots. These can be cleared by holding the clear button and pressing the pad.

The red pad in the bottom right enables the "chord lock" which will mean these chord slots can no longer have notes added to them. The pink pad to the left of this can be held to sustain notes as they are played.

The five columns from the left form the note area—these are notes organised in intervals of the scale. Starting from the bottom left is the root of the scale and going up this column goes through the steps of the scale, for example, if set to C major, this will be  C, D, E, F, G, A, B and back to C an octave higher.

Each row contains five notes of a chord from the selected scale, which in the case of seven note scales like the major scale is usually a seventh chord. The leftmost pad is the root (in this example, a C), moving one pad to the right is a fifth (so in the example of C major, a perfect fifth to G), moving right once again is a compound third or a tenth (for our example this would be E in the octave above), once more to the right is a seventh (B in our example), and the final step to the right is a compound fifth or a twelfth (G in the octave above). 

This layout means you can play three pads in any row and generally achieve a chord appropriate to the selected scale. The colours help indicate what sound the chord will have. In most seven-note scales, blue pads are major chords, purple pads are minor chords and green pads are diminished or augmented chords. The top and bottom rows will be a lighter tone of their respective colour to indicate they are the root. 

If using Ableton at the same time, you will still have access to playback, record, fixed length and the bottom row of controls on the Launchpad Pro.

Chord mode is best used for exploring new ideas and finding chords you wouldn't have used otherwise.