The Session Mode

In Session Mode, the Launchpad’s buttons give you physical access to the clips in your Session View.
The Launchpad's matrix has 64 three-color pads arranged in a eight-by-eight grid.
The color-coding system lets you know exactly what is happening in each clip, and directional controls let you move around inside your Session View.


When the Launchpad is connected, a rectangle appears on the Session View in Live to indicate which clips are currently controlled by the pad matrix. This rectangle is red if Launchpad is enabled in the first of Live’s six control surface choosers. Each chooser has a different colored rectangle, allowing you to assign multiple Launchpads at the same time.

The directional arrows and the Session button increase the scope of the eight-by-eight grid:

Pressing Up or Down moves you up or down one scene at a time. Holding the Session button while hitting Up or Down to move eight scenes up or down.
The Left and Right arrow keys move you left or right one track at a time. Holding the Session button while hitting Left or Right to move eight tracks at a time.

By pressing a clip, the Launchpad triggers the clip in the corresponding clip slot in Live. Hitting an empty clip slot in a track that is not armed will stop the clip playing in this track. If the track is armed to record, pressing the button records a new clip.

The buttons in the matrix light up in different colors so you know what’s going on:

Yellow: this slot contains a clip.
Green: this clip is playing.
Red: this clip is recording.

You can also fire horizontal lines of clips (Scenes) with the buttons on the right hand side of Launchpad.

The session overview:

The Launchpad’s Session Overview lets you navigate through large Live Sets quickly without looking at your computer screen.

Hold down the Session button and the matrix zooms out to reveal an overview of your Session View.

In the Session Overview, each pad represents an eight-by-eight block of clips, giving you a matrix of 64 scenes by 64 tracks.

Hit a pad to focus on that section of the Session View. For example, hitting the Session button and then pressing the pad in the third row in the first column will put the focus on scenes 17-25 and tracks 1-8. Furthermore, while “session” is held, each scene launch button represents a block of 64 scenes (if they are available in your Set.)

In the Session Overview, the color coding is a little different:

Yellow: indicates the currently selected block of clips, which will be surrounded by the ring in the software.

Green: there are clips playing in that block of clips (though that may not be the block of clips selected).

Red: there are no clips playing in that range.

No color: there are no tracks or scenes in that range.

Here's a video about the session mode: