Thoughts on Roli's stuff

[SynthWizard]

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Thoughts on Roli's stuff

<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>I picked up a songmaker kit on the used market recently and have fiddled around enough to have some thoughts. I bought it because I wanted something portable and flexible for a solo trip. It wasn't cheap but wasn't horrifically priced either. Here are my thoughts - too long, didn't read - I'm guardedly happy with it:</p> <ul> <li>Updating the firmware is painful, and it's not obvious that it needs to be updated. The only way I found to do it was through the iOS app ... eventually</li> <li>The keyboard - two octaves C to B is annoyingly small, but could be worse.</li> <li>The lightpad block is a pretty neat drum pad / midi control surface.</li> <li>For my way of doing things - which is mostly about live recording and not too much about sequencing it provides a pretty good workflow.</li> <li>The three layer arpeggiator in the Roli Play VST is pretty powerful with some euclidian sequencer like features. </li> <li>I've found I can get some pretty rough but OK sounding stuff happening quickly - the gear doesn't get in the way at all once the firmware was updated.</li> <li>The small size of the keyboard does limit its usefulness (yeah I've mentioned this twice). It might be mitigated by getting a second seaboard, but it's already surprisingly heavy for such a compact device.</li> <li>I don't like how it's too closely attached to the computer - although it does work as a standard and MPE midi controller too.</li> <li>Preset management / adding your own sounds is not good in the roli software, and I have to assume the software is basically unmaintained at this point.</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://soundcloud.com/dr_kd/a-minor-dose-of-food-poisoning">Here's an example of a rough cut</a> using a 2 minute bari sax noodle I found on my hard drive while killing some time. I think that concert F minor is definitely my key.</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/smutaduck"> /u/smutaduck </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/wd7k4s/thoughts_on_rolis_stuff/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/wd7k4s/thoughts_on_rolis_stuff/">[comments]</a></span>