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ROLI Seaboard Block Studio Edition: Super Powered Midi Controller Keyboard, Includes desktop software suite with 400+ sounds, effects, and production tools, Compatible with leading DAWs and plugins

£9.9£99Clearance
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About this deal

Equator Player has become part of ROLI Studio Player, with new features like Smart Chords and a multi-layered Arpeggiator, as well as combining the Strobe2 and Cypher2 Players into one, unified plugin. Think of ROLI Studio Player as the next generation of the older Players! Switch between your saved Equator2 or ROLI Studio presets by holding the side button and pressing the octave left and right buttons. Its 24 keywaves are smaller – about 80% the size of the RISE's – so the playing experience is a little different (see keywave surface comparison above).

Yes. ROLI reformed as Luminary ROLI in 2021. This restructuring brought new investment and a renewed commitment to create and support the very best MPE instruments and software. We are in a better position than ever to deliver the very best expressive instruments available.

What’s in the Blocks?

The ROLI Studio software suite is a comprehensive platform for creative potential, offering inspirational features such as Smart Chords, Multi-Layered Arpeggio, and Macros, all specifically tailored to enhance musical output and production. ROLI Studio Player provides a curated selection of 400 distinctive sounds and presets sourced from ROLI’s powerful sound engines. ROLI have taken their forward-thinking multitouch technology and applied it to an imaginative modular control system.

However, for monophonic lines it’s great, although we still hope that Roli will offer wider keywave options in the future for those with wider fingers and to suit players more used to standard size keyboards/layouts.RISE 2: As a more feature-rich and professional-grade instrument, it is positioned at a higher price point. With these dimensions, sounds can be warped, pitched, and moulded in pretty much any way you like; and these sounds come from either the Equator soft synth, which runs as a regular plug-in, the ROLI Noise app (one that runs on iOS via Bluetooth, if you wish) or any compatible soft synth. By ‘compatible’, we mean that it has to respond to these extra dimensions via MIDI, so has to be MPE (Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression) compatible. I found Studio Drums to be quite addictive for organic soundscaping, but that setup really requires at least one and ideally two Lightpads, and the LUMI isn’t that good a fit here. Conclusions Despite its compact size, this instrument enables infinite musical discovery, allowing users to play any sound imaginable and express themselves with unprecedented freedom. With 10 hours of wireless battery, they can play and perform on the Seaboard wherever and whenever inspiration strikes. Chord generation and multiple arpeggiation shown in the Studio Player instrument, exactly as shown on the LUMI itself.

Press: Press into the keywaves to deepen sounds or simulate the effect of breath on a wind instrument Playing chords and melodies on the Lightpad is much like playing on the Push, or any other grid-style keyboard, with an important difference: sliding a finger left or right to another pad will pitch-bend the current note by default, and in ‘hide notes’ mode, consecutive pads can be between one and four semitones apart. Sliding a finger up or down modulates the current note but doesn’t change its pitch. (I found this disconcerting since I’m used to doing vertical glissandos across pads on the Push.) of free space required for ROLI Connect, ROLI Dashboard and ROLI Studio. 13GB required for Equator2 installation. 3GB required for Ableton Live Lite installation.

RISE, for the uninitiated, is a keyboard like no other. It features Keywaves, which replace standard keyboard keys. You get 12 per octave as on a regular keyboard and you can even play them like a regular keyboard – but you’d be missing out on a few extra dimensions, because what makes RISE stand out is the way you play it. With ‘Five Dimensions Of Touch’ you can Strike, Glide, Slide, Press and Lift keys, adding several new layers to your playing and performing. Durable design that has been refined to withstand the rigours of touring and extended studio sessions. Advanced customization of keywave response through a firmware upgrade, offering more nuanced MPE control. Downstream from the chord generator is the arpeggiator. In fact, Studio Player sports three arpeggiators running in parallel, each individually configurable from the same selection of parameters. You can select how many hits you want out of a cycle of 16 — they are distributed evenly over time in the style of a Euclidian sequencer — and the hits are indicated in a circular graphic. The pattern of hits can be shifted in time, in case you want to offset arpeggiators against one another. And the rate (note division) and octave range can be varied for each. There’s a note‑timing control (straight/triplet/dotted) and a range of pitch patterns (up, down, random and so on).

No, only LUMI Keys is compatible with the LUMI Music App. — I’m a professional musician / influencer and I’d love to make content for you. How can I submit a partnership / collaboration proposal? Moving from left to right in the Studio Player interface, next to the preset selector and macro controls, is the ‘Smart Chords’ panel. The chording function works in two stages: first, all played notes are constrained to be within a specific scale on a root note (both selectable — there are 19 scales to choose from). Then, for each note in the scale, you select the chord to build (triad, sus4, sixth and so on). The chords relate to the scale rather than being chromatic, so in C major, the ‘Triad’ chord on B is diminished. There’s an option to add an additional root bass note, and also to generate chord inversions, though there’s no obvious indication of which inversion gets selected, and with inversions enabled you often have to play staccato otherwise it’s rather too easy to get the same note triggered twice, causing voices to cut off. Let’s move on to the Studio Drums application. This presents itself as a simpler‑looking cousin of the Studio Player. There’s a selection of preset kits, each containing 16 sounds on a traditional four‑by‑four grid. A generous selection of individual parts is provided, any of which can be swapped onto any of the grid pads. Strike is like hitting a regular note with different velocities; Press gives you aftertouch; Glide left and right allows glissando changes between notes; Slide up and down lets you assign parameters to how you move your fingers up and down; and finally, Lift Off can change another parameter as you release the note. Yes – the Octave Switch buttons double as preset switches. Simply hold the Mode button and press the lower or upper Octave Switch button.

Seaboard Block key features

RISE 2: Tailored for professional musicians and producers who seek advanced control and expressiveness in their instrument. It’s ideal for those needing a full range of features for detailed musical creation. Connection and battery-wise, the mobile music studio can last for up to 10 hours of battery life and comes with 15-meter Bluetooth range so the users can wirelessly connect to devices even if they are slightly far from them. Aspiring electronic musicians can also play around with the ROLI Studio, a software accompanying the MiDi controller, where they can choose from 400 distintinctive sounds and presets for their production. The software also offers Drums which creates its own drum beats with around 15 drum kits, each with 16 distinct and controllable parts. Although Noise is fun, it’s not very deep or intuitive so you’ll definitely want to connect to Equator Player on Mac (a stripped-down version of Roli’s excellent MPE-optimised desktop Equator sound engine) or control your favourite plugins/software apps instead. System: OS X 12/13 or higher / Windows 10 (x64) or higher Processing chip: Intel Core, AMD Ryzen, Apple M1 RAM: Minimum 8GB RAM, 16GB RAM is recommended Depending on your DAW, you may be able to capture the MIDI notes generated from the chording and arpeggiation. Some experimentation revealed that capturing chords and arpeggiator output worked fine, but the MPE expression data caused issues: MPE glide for chords got turned into plain pitch‑bend by Ableton Live and ignored completely by Bitwig Studio.

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