Recording - February 2016 - 67

reusable form-fitting styrofoam keyboard
case for the Seaboard RISE, complete with
a cavity for cable storage. Picking up the
keyboard itself is startling: it's very heavy,
with a metal casing that feels both rugged
and elegant. The left-hand controls are all
covered in the same material as the keywaves; there's no cheap plastic anywhere.
Dashboard
As you might expect, the Seaboard RISE
comes with a specialized application for
setting up the hardware; it's called ROLI
Dashboard for RISE. There's a slightly different Dashboard app for each Seaboard.
In this app, as shown in Figure 1, you can
control the sensitivity curve for all five of
the touch dimensions, set up MIDI assignments for all of the controls, and update
the unit's firmware with a click.
The Visualizer, across the top of the
display, is a realtime depiction of what
sort of touch the Seaboard RISE is seeing. In the screenshot, there are two
notes being played. On the left, the
large blue disc and smaller white circle
show a note that was hit hard and is
being played with moderate pressure,
with the fingertip near the top of the key;
on the right, the very small blue disc and
large white circle show a note that was
initially played very softly but now has a
lot of pressure, played near the bottom
of the key. It's a very useful teaching tool
as you adjust the sensitivities of the various parameters.
The five graphic curves are fairly selfexplanatory. Each represents how the keywaves respond to one of the five dimensions. For example, Strike and Lift can be
set to a linear response for a lot of velocity
nuance, to a flat line (no velocity response
at all), or a curve in between. Glide's Sshaped curves determine how much "wiggle room" you have for vibrato before
jumping to the adjacent pitch, and Slide
has similar behavior for "playing low on
the note vs. playing higher up."
These four parameters can be adjusted
over a very musical range of curves that
are very sensible and easy to understand.
That makes it tough but necessary for me
to call out ROLI on the one area where

Dashboard's adjustment of the RISE's
playability is completely wrong. The Press
curve goes from a linear response (too
sensitive for certain patches) to an exponential zero-to-max curve (on full blast
with the tiniest touch) and suddenly
switches to Off. There is no way to turn
Press sensitivity down, or set a threshold
value so a patch can be played without
activating Press until the player digs in.
While Equator (see below) can compensate for this a little bit, playing your
DAW's regular plug-ins on the RISE is
downright frustrating, as pressure is either
very sensitive, way too sensitive, or
nonexistent. I hope this will be addressed
in a future firmware/software update.
Equator
The other software app that comes bundled with the Seaboard RISE is a virtual
instrument called Equator (Figure 2). This
is a lovely-sounding synth that's optimized
for Seaboard play, with two sample playback oscillators, three single-cycle wave
oscillators, a noise source, FM, ring modulation, dual filters with multiple modes
and routings, and an effects chain with
up to six different effects.
Equator offers all of the usual modulation routings you'd expect in a wellmade virtual instrument, with two LFOs
and five loopable Envelopes, plus a
whole host of modulations that can be
tied to the five touch dimensions. In fact,
you can set up four different curves for
each of the five dimensions, and each
acts as a modulation source independent of the others. This allows you, for
example, to turn one parameter up and
another one down with a single movement. There are up to eight Macro modulations that can be assigned to the lefthand controls or to external MIDI.
Equator would be worth a review on
its own, given its richly expressive playability. It comes with 127 presets that
showcase everything from subtle bowing
and bends on an acoustic bass to outrageous swoops and textural changes within grandiose pads. It really does showcase how much control the Seaboard
RISE can provide a skilled player.

Final thoughts
ROLI has obviously put a lot of care into
the Seaboard's playing surface. It's very
appealing to the touch, with just the right
balance of slipperiness and friction so you
can nail a note with accuracy and then
apply vibrato, modulation, or pitch bends
with delicate nuance. The pressure sensitivity
is very fine-grained, and the surface gives
the impression of being built to last.
It takes several days of playing to get out
of the "piano keys" mindset and into how
the Seaboard RISE does things... while you
can use conventional keyboard fingerings,
the way you handle each note becomes a
very tactile and immediate thing. You get
used to creating vibrato by wiggling a fingertip from side to side, using Press or Slide
to add or change elements of the sound,
and taking advantages of playing techniques that are simply not possible on any
other keyboard. My personal favorite: play
a note, Slide up or down to create a modulation, but keep going right off the keywave
onto the upper or lower ribbon surface and
Glide directly into a huge pitch bend, with
Press added to taste as you go. Doing that
with a conventional keyboard would require
two hands and some forethought, but here
it's a simple movement of one finger.
Equator is a lovely synth, but (aside
from the Press issue I mentioned above)
the Seaboard RISE makes a great controller for other DAW plug-ins. In its
default setup, the five dimensions translate to MIDI Velocity, Pitch Bend, CC 74,
Aftertouch (poly or mono), and Release
Velocity, so pretty much any virtual instrument can be controlled expressively with
the Seaboard RISE after you've tweaked
its patches to suit the new surface.
ROLI is definitely onto something here. The
Seaboard RISE isn't cheap, but it's a thoughtprovoking new way to play synthesizers
that's both approachable and highly
nuanced. If I've overused words like "expressive" and "nuanced", I apologize, but there's
really nothing else like the Seaboard RISE out
there, and it's deserving of a hard look.
Price: $799.99
More from: ROLI, www.roli.com

http://www.roli.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2016