We’ve seen  a multitude of live dubstep performance methods, from simply pressing play for a dubstep track on a CDJ, to blending between CDJs and the MPC, to chopping up the full track and playing it on buttons.

Taking inspiration from all of these, I’ve made a little demonstration of a method of live performance that I use for dubstep and other styles that includes chopping up each individual element (bass, drums, etc) of the track into one-shots (or verses, for the vocals) and performing or improvising a full track. This means that every song played is both easily repeatable from set to set and easy to remix and rearrange on a whim.

The Launchpad is very well suited for the task. The buttons/pads are big enough for comfortable finger drumming (as opposed to a monome) and small enough for 64 of them to fit on a single controller (as opposed to the 16 pads on MPC-style layouts), so there’s no need for switching between multiple banks during a single track.