The tour
A quick walk around the unit: what's where, and the three kinds of mode that decide what the buttons do.
- Meet your APC: every section of the panel
- Three layers of modes: pads, knobs and the Note layout
Meet your APC
1 Track knobs: pan, sends or your own mapping, with LED rings.
2 The 40 pads: clips, drums, notes, meters, depending on the mode.
3 Scene buttons: launch scenes, or pick a velocity, or a target.
4 Clip Stop: stop a track's clip, or the step length.
5 Track buttons: select, activator, A|B, solo and arm.
6 Faders and the master fader, with Cue Level above it.
7 Pan / Sends / User: the knob mode, and what the pads do.
8 Transport: play, record, session, metronome, tap tempo, nudge, and the Tempo knob.
9 Device knobs: the selected device's parameters.
10 Device buttons: devices, banks, on / off, lock, views.
11 Arrows: scroll the session, drum pads, octaves, pages.
12 Shift and Bank: the modifiers.
13 Crossfader.
Hold Shift with almost any button for its second job. Every combination is in the cheat sheet.
Three layers of modes
The APC has three independent kinds of mode. Once you know them, every button makes sense.
Pan or Sends = Session. User = Note mode. Shift+Bank = VU meters. Hold Bank = the overview.
The Pan, Sends and User lights show the knob mode, and only that. Press Sends again for the next send.
Note mode follows the track
Like Push, Note mode picks the layout from the selected track. Select another track and the pads change with it; the mode itself never changes on its own.
Hold Shift and press User for another layout on this track: drum ↔ melodic on a Drum Rack track, melodic ↔ melodic sequencer on any other MIDI track. The choice is remembered for the track.
A press longer than a third of a second is momentary: hold User to play for a moment, let go and you're back in Session.