Last year, Roli launched an affordable, modular music creation system called Blocks. At launch, the company sold a square Lightpad block (intended for tapping out melodies and drum beats) and two smaller blocks that let you adjust a variety of settin...
The modularity movement has hit the music industry too, as can be seen with the Roli Blocks. Designed by Roli, the same people who made the Seaboard Rise that won the Good Design Award last year, the Blocks are a series of MIDI controllers that work on similar principles as the Seaboard, giving musicians a level of fluidity that you don’t see in key-based instruments. The touch sensitive backlit LED surface intelligently tracks taps, slides (on both X and Y axes) and even senses pressure, allowing for a musical experience that is truly unchained, and for literally everyone!
Individual blocks, known as Light Blocks, come with the ability to pair with an app titled NOISE, that allows users to work the instruments by loading sound banks, loops, synths, percussive instruments, or work as a X-Y filter controller. They can even be paired together, just by snapping two units side by side, creating your own setup depending on your need, skill, and budget. Musicians with a low budget can start off with just one Light Block and progress as they see fit.
The design of the Blocks is just stellar and robust. The LEDs underneath act as visualizations as well as entertainment. Even the magnetic connectors are surprisingly secure and efficient, making your music production truly seamless. The touch surface of the Light Block feels great to the touch, and bases itself on the Roli Seaboard’s touch surface (which went through more than a 100 material iterations to get the exact perfect material properties that made the fingers feel at home while they played against it for hours at an end).
The Blocks have magnetic connectors on all four sides, connecting with a click and intelligently pairing with each other. Roli has even introduced two additional styles of blocks, known as Looper and Live blocks, for studio work as well as for performances. Snap these on and you have a setup that’s good enough to knock out a stellar music performance!
The Roli Blocks have received a lot of praise from contemporary musical greats RZA and Steve Aoki, with them even introducing sample packs of their own to Roli’s library. Do check out the free NOISE app on the App Store and give it a try. Your inner musician may just surprise you!
Damien Chazelle's La La Land might not have won that Oscar, but it did scoop up the one for Best Original Music Score. The man behind that score is Justin Hurwitz. Anyone who has seen the film will know that the soundtrack is largely divided between...
I've played instruments for most of my life, but as I've gotten older I've had less time for jamming with bands. That's led me to consider dabbling in electronic instruments that would let me make my own compositions without needing to wrangle other...
Roli's set of modular music gadgets have been around since November, but today the company announced an update that will come in handy for those who use desktop music production apps. The new Dashboard for Roli Blocks allows you to employ the LED tou...
After a performance with electronic music duo Parisi here at CES, we sat down with RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan to chat about Roli Blocks. The modular touch-sensitive pieces of tech snap together to create a user-friendly way to start making music in minu...
British music-gear company Roli is mostly known for its attempts at reimagining the piano. The full-size Seaboard and smaller Seaboard Rise may bear similarities to traditional keyboards, but their rubberized, touch-sensitive buttons let you modulate...
When ROLI introduced the Seaboard -- a quirky interpretation of the musical keyboard -- it was hard not be curious. But, at $2,000, that's likely where you remained. Even the smaller, more affordable Seaboard Rise was a little out of reach for many c...
We were pretty impressed with what Roli showed off at SXSW back in March, and now the company's rubberized keyboard is up for pre-order. The instrument is built in a standard piano configuration, with a soft surface that allows you to directly bend pitch and add vibrato and other effects to the notes as you're playing them -- sort of like bending guitar strings. The Seaboard Grand comes in three price configurations that hit a pretty wide spread, starting at $2,000 for the 37-key Grand Studio, all the way up to $8,888.88 for the massive 88 key Grand Limited First Edition. Only 88 of the latter will actually be sold -- a vaguely superstitious pricing scheme, it seems. That one will be shipping in December of this year. The others will start arriving in fall of next year.
Synths are nothing new, of course -- so what makes Roli's digital piano so novel? The instrument has a patent-pending rubberized surface that lets you bend and twist the keys as you play, freeing you from fiddling around with knobs, so you can directly, physically affect the way it sounds. Think of it as the difference between bending a string on a guitar, rather than stepping on the wah-wah pedal. It's the sort of thing you really have to see in action to appreciate -- thankfully, we've got the instrument's creator Roland Lamb giving us a demo after the break.
Last year, Roli launched an affordable, modular music creation system called Blocks. At launch, the company sold a square Lightpad block (intended for tapping out melodies and drum beats) and two smaller blocks that let you adjust a variety of settin...
Damien Chazelle's La La Land might not have won that Oscar, but it did scoop up the one for Best Original Music Score. The man behind that score is Justin Hurwitz. Anyone who has seen the film will know that the soundtrack is largely divided between...
I've played instruments for most of my life, but as I've gotten older I've had less time for jamming with bands. That's led me to consider dabbling in electronic instruments that would let me make my own compositions without needing to wrangle other...
Roli's set of modular music gadgets have been around since November, but today the company announced an update that will come in handy for those who use desktop music production apps. The new Dashboard for Roli Blocks allows you to employ the LED tou...
After a performance with electronic music duo Parisi here at CES, we sat down with RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan to chat about Roli Blocks. The modular touch-sensitive pieces of tech snap together to create a user-friendly way to start making music in minu...
British music-gear company Roli is mostly known for its attempts at reimagining the piano. The full-size Seaboard and smaller Seaboard Rise may bear similarities to traditional keyboards, but their rubberized, touch-sensitive buttons let you modulate...
When ROLI introduced the Seaboard -- a quirky interpretation of the musical keyboard -- it was hard not be curious. But, at $2,000, that's likely where you remained. Even the smaller, more affordable Seaboard Rise was a little out of reach for many c...
