Future musical instruments available now

I don’t know how often new musical instruments are being invented. My guess is, not very often. So when I had a chance to review the Roli Seaboard Rise keyboard for Amazon, I was not sure what to expect. I’m always up for a musical adventure, however, so I decided to expand my musical palette and resume and try it out.

A very well packaged, good looking instrument.

You will notice that the instrument is vaguely laid out like a keyboard, with sharps and flats between nominally longer keys, however, each key is actually not a key, but a raised hillock (I don’t know what else to call it – it’s the convex version of a trough) of silicone. You can try to play it like a keyboard, but you will be sorely disappointed and you will notice also that keyboard technique hardly transfers at all to the configuration of the instrument. That’s because the entire black surface is the instrument. You can actually sound each key by hitting, pressing, pushing, sliding, or otherwise coming in contact with it with some kind of finger motion. You can also play above and below the keys, and in between them as well. It’s actually quite unnerving at first. Attempting to play it like a keyboard, you end up with distinct, non-repetitive sounds across a wide spectrum of tonality. Any false move or lazy finger action will affect the sound. It’s actually hard to believe how difficult it is – at first.

The box can even work as a road case. Kind of.

The instrument comes with a program and sound module and while it is meant to be a MIDI controller (kind of), I think it actually works better as a standalone instrument. The best thing about the graphic interface is the sound curve at the bottom of the screen for each sound. It shows where you are playing the sound and approximately, what the range and frequency of the sound is. Since each sound is playable across 10-and-a-half octaves, this turns out to be pretty important, as some sounds turn into complete mush and wobble as they go lower, while other sounds actually become inaudible as they go up. (No sense in hitting the C above C above C above C above C above middle C if nobody can hear it, right?) The program also allows individual tweaking of the sounds by altering attack, fade, and things like that. Each mode has a four panel recall feature, so you can always leave on untouched to keep the original in place while you are working on altering the sound.

Looks kind of like a keyboard, but really, it's not.

The depth of this instrument is really incredible. Of course you can add other sounds to your sound library and tweak them the same as you would the ones it comes with. There’s even a dashboard for working on sounds more easily and quickly prior to putting them back into the library. I’ve had this for about a week and I know I’ve only scratched the surface, as I’m just having too much fun with what I can get my hands on and brain around to want to invest the time to try some different things. I have, however, printed out the manuals and I plan to start mucking around with more features pretty soon. Honestly, I feel this instrument can make a great piece of jazz performance gear, and I like how it will be practically one of a kind if I am the first to get it out there and start soling or comping with it.

Programmable sound. Awesome. 

This thing is simply incredible. I don’t know what else I can say about it. As I learn to use it and start to actually play and record, maybe some more interesting things will come to light. Until then, I will say that, like me, Roli may also be late to jazz, but they have invested an instrument that is here now. I intend to make it work for me.