How to Divide the Quadwave Touchpad into 4 Zones, Each with a Different Sound

The Quadwave’s touchpad (or XY pad) is a powerful performance tool - and one of the most exciting things about it is how customizable it is. You can split it into multiple zones, with each zone triggering a different sound. While there's technically no limit to how many zones you can create, a practical number is four. That gives you variety without making it overwhelming to play live.

In this post, we’ll walk through a simple way to divide the touchpad into 4 vertical zones using Ableton Live and an Instrument Rack. Each zone will trigger a different instance of the Vital synth, or any instrument you want.

Let’s get started.

🎛 Step 1: Create an Instrument Rack

In Ableton Live:

1. Go to the browser on the left side.

2. Find "Instrument Rack" under Instruments, and drag it onto a new MIDI track.

🎹 Step 2: Add Your Sounds

Next, we’ll load up 4 different instances of Vital - or any synth/plugin of your choice.

1. Expand the Instrument Rack:

• Drag 4 Vital instruments into the Instrument Rack. They’ll stack vertically as separate chains.
• Each of these will be one of your sounds, corresponding to one section of the touchpad.

You can customize each one by clicking on the chain and selecting your patch or preset from the wrench menu on the right.

🎚 Step 3: Set Up MIDI Mapping

Now, we’ll configure the touchpad so that it activates only one instrument at a time based on where your finger is on the pad.

• Click the MIDI button in the top-right corner of Ableton Live (or press Cmd+M / Ctrl+M).

• Click the speaker icon (the activator) next to the first Vital instance.

• Now touch the left side of the Quadwave touchpad. You should see a new mapping appear on the left - usually labeled as something like “CC16” (this is the X-axis of the touchpad).

• • If it shows “CC17” instead, tap the other side of the pad until it registers as 16.

• Repeat this process for the speaker icons of all 4 Vital instances - mapping them all to the touchpad.

🧠 Step 4: Define the Zones

Now we’ll divide the touchpad into 4 sections by setting the MIDI control ranges for each speaker icon.

Touchpad values range from 0 to 127 left to right. So for 4 zones:

• Zone 1: 0–31

• Zone 2: 32–63

• Zone 3: 64–95

• Zone 4: 96–127

In the MIDI mappings panel, set each instrument's Min/Max range accordingly so that only one instrument is active in its zone.

✅ That’s It!

Now when you slide your finger across the touchpad:

• You’ll hear Sound 1 on the far left.

• Sound 2 kicks in as you move a bit right.

• Sound 3 lives in the center-right.

• Sound 4 takes over at the far right.

It’s a powerful setup - perfect for live sets, experimental sound design, or just adding new dimensions to your playing.