We said: “Use Live a lot but limited in space? Use Live out and about? If the answer is ‘yes’ to either of these then ‘need’ could well be a word you could use because Launchkey Mini certainly delivers a great control experience for either scenario. The Arp and Fixed Chord modes are great fun, too, providing plenty of options to turn boring parts into intriguing textures. It also includes a set of knobs, touch-sensitive mod wheels and some transport controls for tweaking your instruments and effects. The Launchkey Mini takes up minimal real estate on your desk, being only 13 inches wide, and is built with 16 RGB, velocity-sensitive pads to take control of your session, drum racks, mixer and more. This compact, affordable, nifty controller from Novation can instantly make your track-tinkering more enjoyable. “It’s a vital component to our live production, both on stage and front-of-house.” “OSC/Pilot has been in development since October 2013, and I’ve been field testing and using it in shows since that time,” Joel Zimmerman AKA deadmau5 says.

It’s currently only available for Windows tablets, but the mau5 himself has informed us that iOS compatibility is next up on the to-do list.

You can insert a plethora of multi-faceted MIDI widgets, with 32 workspaces accessible at once for each project. Newly available to the public as an affordable app, OSC/Pilot is extraordinarily customisable, with a drag-and-drop approach to setting up your own control layout. Although most audiences will see his extravagant light setup – The Cube – as the main achievement in his shows, us music producers may be just as impressed with his custom-built performance tool, OSC/Pilot. In the last decade, deadmau5 has been continuously pushing for new ways to make his live show a memorable experience. Each key has an icon and a text label on a coloured background, and the colours are grouped according to the type of function they represent, which is a good idea”. We said: “These keyboards don’t do anything special in terms of interacting with the software – you still need to use cmd, ctrl, alt, or whatever, to execute the commands – it’s all about the labelling. Those who are already exceptionally well-versed in Live may not require such a device, but it’s great for getting familiar with keyboard shortcuts that will save you time in menu-diving and mouse clicking. There’s also a wired, backlit, version, for the night-time studio vampires among us. This keyboard will give your studio that ‘serious pro’ vibe – it boasts a modern and sleek aesthetic. This offers computer-keyboard shortcuts on steroids, with a Mac/PC keyboard featuring colour-coded keys (printed, not stickers), with text and icons, to keep your workflow fast and organised.

Best midi drum pad