🎶 2022-03-30 16:00:00 – Paris/France.
Music gear startup Roli says it's not ditching the squishy Seaboard range of keyboards that launched its brand. Despite reports last year that the company was pivoting to focus on education and subscription products, Roli today announced the Seaboard Rise 2 – an upgrade to the more compact model in its Seaboard line.
"It's a lot of little improvements that collectively make it a much better product," said Roli CEO Roland Lamb. The edge. “In a way, it's the product I've always wanted to launch. It's very, very comprehensive.
"This is the product I've always wanted to launch"
Rise 2 upgrades include new internal engineering, an updated port structure, and a more durable platinum blue chassis. The big change, however, is the addition of frets to the playing surface of the keyboard – subtle ridges down the center of each key.
Providing users with a keyboard with a smooth, continuous playing surface has always been la appeal of the Seaboard range. It is this functionality (along with supporting software) that allows musicians to shuffle and bend notes on a Seaboard just as they would on a guitar. But Lamb says it also made the instrument difficult for some players, meaning they had to rely too much on vision to hit the right note, rather than navigating their way from key to key. The new frets, he says, offer a physical map that solves this problem.
“It's a relatively small change, but it's a hugely impactful change, in terms of how you play, accuracy and starting,” says Lamb.
The bigger story for Roli, however, isn't Rise 2 but the company's long-term trajectory. Since its inception in 2009, Roli has launched a number of products, starting with its Seaboard range of keyboards before expanding with modular rhythm building blocks and Guitar Hero -Lumi piano keyboard. But the company struggled to grow in line with venture capitalists' expectations, and last year went into administration (similar to bankruptcy in the US), relaunching as "Luminary" to focus on education and Lumi. Why? Because Lumi is an inexpensive keyboard with a subscription model that makes it easy to grow revenue.
Now, however, Lamb says the company - technically called "Lumiary Roli" - isn't done with its original vision: to provide a new musical instrument. He just says that such work requires patience. “Developing successful new instruments takes time,” says Lamb. “An instrument is a cultural object in which you have to bring together a whole bunch of pieces: the music that people make, the artists who use and teach it, and the hardware, software and protocols. »
Lamb says Roli “misjudged the time it would take for the ecosystem to come together around the shoreline,” but Rise 2 should make adoption easier. Not only do the frets on the keyboard make it easier to play, he says, but there's a more widespread adoption of the MPE Midi format, which is needed to properly record and edit one's music.
Coastline Rise 2. Image: Roli
Lamb speaks compellingly about the challenges of launching an instrument like the Seaboard. "It's extraordinarily rare that there is a new form of musical gesture interaction that is proposed and successful," he says. But it also seems like the Rise 2 announcement has as much to do with pragmatism as anything else. Lamb says most of the work on the keyboard was complete by the time Roli entered administration, and when I ask if the company is currently working on future Seaboard products, he doesn't answer directly.
“The long-term question is, what will a fully digital music world look like? »
Instead, he says he sees Roli's interest in instruments as complementary to his educational products, which attempt to teach piano without using traditional sheet music notation. “Music has two facets. There is a learning and development side, and a performance and play side,” he says. “The long-term question is, what will a fully digital music world look like? »
Lamb's suggestion is that Roli can offer something for both sides of this equation: not just a new instrument that is digital first, but educational products that will uplift a generation of new musicians unrelated to learning methods. traditional. He says: “We are going to continue with the Seaboard, we are committed to it. But we're just gonna let it go easy and easy, be patient about it. Then, in terms of growth investments, in the present, the focus will be on Lumi.
The Seaboard Rise 2 is available for pre-order on Roli.com for $1 (£399, €1). Roli says it has "limited availability" for the keyboard in 099 and doesn't offer shipping dates.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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