ROLI Seaboard

The Seaboard is a musical keyboard-style MIDI controller manufactured by the British music technology company ROLI. It has a continuous sensor-embedded flexible rubber surface for playing the keys instead of traditional lever-style "moving keys". Some models, like the RISE Seaboard Grand, have an onboard sound engine. It has what the manufacturer calls "5D technology" which consists of five types of responsiveness to player actions: "strike", "glide" and "press", front to rear movement "slide" sensitivity, and release–velocity "lift" (RISE keyboard only). These responsiveness tools can be used to play the Seaboard with microtonal pitch bend sounds (like a fretless bass guitar), by moving the finger from note to note, or trigger a vibrato effect into a string patch just by wiggling the finger, which would not be possible on a traditional MIDI controller using only the keys. The Seaboard also features polyphonic aftertouch, and a built-in USB- charged battery. There are three Seaboard models: the small minikey BLOCK (24 keys), the RISE (25- or 49-key versions), and the GRAND, an 88-key keyboard with an onboard sound engine.

ROLI calls the five responsiveness triggers "5D technology". The five ways that the ROLI senses the player's interactions are:

The unit supports wireless MIDI over bluetooth. ROLI reports that latency of the unit at 30ms using bluetooth and 24ms via USB cable. Sounds for the sound engine can be edited and created by using a ROLI software called Equator, which can be quite resource intensive. ROLI claims that it is the world's first purpose-built, multidimensional soft synth. Equator's synth sounds are designed to make changes in sound based on the Seabord's five types of resonsiveness. Effects units in Equator include ring modulation, EQ, chorus, delay, reverb, bit crusher, and distortion.

Seaboard is designed to work with non-Seaboard music software programs such as Ableton Live, GarageBand, and Native Instruments' Kontakt, among others.

BLOCK is the smallest, lightest-weight ROLI keyboard, with 24 mini keys. It is designed to be interconnectable with other RISE devices, using magnetic connectors. Multiple BLOCK keyboards can be connected together, or the BLOCK can be connected to the Lightpad BLOCK, a RISE pad controller intended for use playing beats, triggering digital audio workstation loops, and controlling the BLOCK keyboards or effect units. The BLOCK keyboard is 282 mm (11 inches) wide, 24.7 mm (1 inch) high, and 141 mm (5.5 inches) deep. It weighs 650g (1.43pounds) and has a ten-hour battery life and a four-hour charge time. It has a single USB-C port for MIDI out and providing power and it provides full MIDI compatibility over USB and Bluetooth LE.

RISE 25 and RISE 49 have 25 and 49 keys, respectively. They have black aluminium cases and soft rubbery key surfaces with no moving parts. Traditional MIDI controllers have keys and a selection of knobs or wheels to control other parameters such as pitch bends or volume. RISE keyboards do not have knobs or wheels as additional controls; instead, they have touch surfaces, such as an XY touchpad (with four direction arrows and a centre button) and touch faders (with no moving parts), and buttons for octave shift, a preset/synth patch browser, on/off, and a MIDI mode selector. The touch faders are used to control the press, glide, and slide parameters. With the touch faders set to their minimum level, the RISE keyboards become more like regular MIDI keyboards in their responsiveness, with the force (or gentleness) of the striking or pressing of the keys being the main factor. With the pitch glide set to minimum, a palm gliss on the white notes produces a piano-type sound, with the result being a rapid scale of distinct notes. With the glide fader set to higher positions, a palm gliss produces a true glissando, and moving between two notes while maintaining pressure creates a trombone-like microtonal pitch bend sound.

With the touch faders increased towards their maximum, the RISE responds to other types of interaction beyond the initial striking of a note (or notes), so that aftertouch, movement from side to side, and movement up and down a key sending messages to the sound engine to modify the sound. As the faders have a range of positions, a variety of intermediate response effects are possible, such as having a small amount of pitch bend.

The RISE 49 is 834 mm (32.8 inches) wide, 23 mm (0.9 inches) high, and 210 mm (8.27 inches) deep. It weighs 4.2 kg (9.26 pounds). The battery has an eight-hour life and a three-hour charge time. It has a 1/4" input for a sustain pedal, a USB-B port (for MIDI out and power) and a USB-A port (for charging peripherals). It provides full MIDI compatibility over USB and Bluetooth LE. All the white markings light up with white when the RISE is powered and the control buttons have a backlight, which is constant for some buttons and pads, but uses VU meter-style segments for the faders, to show the level. Users must install a software suite, including a utility program called ROLI Dashboard for RISE and the company's synth engine, Equator. Equator's sounds are designed to respond to the RISE's five response dimensions.