Reserpine wrote:Also, I have heard about something called a Launchpad, but it just seems to be a square array of buttons, so I am not sure how you'd know which stop was which? Any experience of those? Are they any use?
Novation Launchpads (as with touch-screens) are very popular amongst Hauptwerk users, and Hauptwerk has dedicated support for controlling their buttons' LEDs, so that you can pick the colour in which each button lights up. For example, you might use red for couplers, green for stops, yellow for pistons, or whatever you prefer. You could optionally also assign the buttons in the same layout as the controls appear on the organ's stop jambs, so that their positions are easy to remember (for larger organs that might need more than one Launchpad). Some people also use home-made detachable transparent overlays for labelling the buttons.
Searching the forum for 'Launchpad' should find quite a few posts, pictures and descriptions of how people like to use them. E.g. Andrew Grahame's console here uses four Launchpads with overlays:
http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11506&p=104701#p104701
Here's a photo I took with a layout assigned for St. Anne's (without overlays):
http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8410&start=30#p62970
Another possibility is to use touch-screens for stops (occasional hand registering and programming combinations) and a Launchpad (which may be slightly more convenient/quicker to interact with in real-time while playing than a touch-screen) for pistons while playing.