By Phaded Vision

It comes as no surprise that Max for Live has opened a world of possibilities for controllerists. Shortly after it was released, I recall seeing the Isotonik device, built by Darren Cowley for use with the Akai APC40, floating around the internet.

“[Isotonik solves] a number of the frustrations we had when DJing live with Ableton.” Cowley said, “The feature list runs to a couple of sides of paper, but includes on the fly looping, follow actions at clip end, 8 banks of user configurable encoders.” According to Cowley, Isotonik, now in version eight, is the number one downloaded device on maxforlive.com.

Don’t have an APC40? That’s not a problem. Cowley has launched his new website, Isotonik Studios, where two more devices are available for your tweaking pleasure, including:

• Oktopad – “Oktopad takes control of User Two mode of the Novation Launchpad using Max for Live leaving the other 3 modes to their default functions. Using the side round buttons you can navigate between 8 different scenes of effects and control.”

• Modular – “Really designed for the people who never stop tinkering with their live templates, elements of each of the other two devices are presented as separate Max for Live devices allowing the user to map them to any MIDI controller.”

With Isotonik Studios, feedback is key. If there’s something you’d like to add to a device but don’t know how to do it, your voice can be heard on their Facebook wall.

“We’ll continue to update and refresh all of the devices based on users feedback, great ideas come out of every release and there’s always someone asking ‘It would be great if…’.” Cowley said.

If you haven’t already, head on over to IsotonikStudios.com!