Gestalt: ROLI Lightpad M - Sand, software and sound

Alright. I bought a cut-rate ROLI Lightpad M. 🙂 I spent the day charging, registering, downloading, installing, and updating. Over 3 gigabytes later…

I will eventually blog about the ROLI Lightpad M itself. For the moment, I’m going to ramble about the ROLI gestalt.

And you may ask yourself, "Where is that large automobile?"
 And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"
 And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"
 And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
-- Talking Heads, "Once In A Lifetime"

Starting out with Lightpad M feels like my first day with Akai MPK Mini. Lots of downloading and plenty of gifts to unwrap. Unboxing Lightpad is more “Apple chic” than “rack ’em and stack ’em.”

You first need to download ROLI Connect — ROLI’s content manager. Yes, yet another content manager. Plug in and ROLI Connect recognizes the Lightpad and guides you through registration. For some reason, ROLI Connect refused to show the Lightpad on its “Devices” tab. A minor quibble as the Lightpad magically appears after a reboot, etc.

You get a pretty decent bundle of stuff (Mac/Windows) just like Akai:

ROLI Studio Player
ROLI Studio Drums
ROLI Dashboard
Ableton Live Lite (redemption)
Cycling MAX ’74 (3 month redemption)
Melodics (3 month redemption)
Tracktion Waveform (redemption)

I downloaded and installed Studio Player, Studio Drums and Dashboard, leaving the rest for another time.

Sound-wise, you get quite a few packs:

5D EDM
Chillwave Drifting
Cinematic
Colours of India
Elementak EDM
Elements *
Equater 2 Fundamentals *
Experiments
Giant Dubstep
Modern Electronic
Session Keys *
Structure
Synthetic Resistance
Video Games
Vintage Electronic
World Colours

I wish ROLI Connect displayed the download sizes before starting the actual downloads. Equator 2 Fundamentals alone weighs 2.5GB. Begin sliding into the deep…

Hmmm, no free SWAM on Mac/PC. Somewhat understandable, as the full Mac/PC titles are tres cher. Still, I was hoping to try a few more SWAM instruments.

Fire up Studio Player and it recognizes the Lightpad M. All good.

And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"

That’s when you know you are in the deep. So, I tapped, swiped and pushed at random. Then spent the evening watching videos. 🙂 Although tedious at times, videos show me how other people use Lightpad and the ROLI software.

When you buy ROLI, you buy into the ROLI ecosystem. That may be a good thing; it may be a bad thing. This situation isn’t too different than buying into Akai’s MPC universe, Arturia’s Analog Lab, or Native Instrument’s Komplete, just to mention a few similar ecosystems.

An MPE ecosystem is not necessarily evil. Controller and synthesis need to be carefully matched as I discovered using Keith McMillen QuNexus with SWAM Flute. ROLI Studio Player incorporates Equator, FXpansion Strobe and FXpansion Cypher (all version 2). Studio Player has the patch browser and real-time performance tools (smart chords and multi-layer arpeggiator) which can be assigned to the Lightpad M.

Some punters have diss’ed the presets as all sounding alike or some such. Well, upgrade to full and make your own sounds. It’s a synthesizer. Buying a Lightpad may be a way to get full Equator for less. Do the maths and then go to work.

What you might not know (I didn’t) is that you can suck Studio Player or Studio Drums into Cubase as a VST, not just Live or Tracktion. You get a VST with superpowers like smart chords, arpeggiation, etc. Neat. A tool that embeds in a bog standard DAW? Now you have my attention!

The ROLI ecosystem is all well and good, but I want to use Lightpad as a controller to add the touch missing from Arturia Keylab Essential. [I will surely try this and blog about it.] Lightpad has an XYZ touch pad mode which is configured through the ROLI Dashboard. The Lightpad is small enough to fit into the upper left corner of the Keylab Essential 49 (above the pitch and mod wheel). I expect to do a lot of tweaking to SWAM Flute (Cello, etc.) to adjust parameter sensitivities, ranges and so forth.

I think ROLI/Luminary have focused wisely during their re-birth from bankruptcy. Keeping Lightpad was a good business decision as well as letting Studio Player make friends through the existing VST mechanism. Ditching the control BLOCKS (Live, Loop and Touch) was sensible, too. The control blocks were rather expensive key pads that sent control messages to Studio (or Noise). Not super necessary given the capabilities in Noise and Studio Player.

In the long run, I wonder how Lightpad M and Lumi Keys will relate. Lightpad M seems to be technically reliable, but I see negative comments about Lumi Keys on Reddit that give me pause (e.g., not charging, Bluetooth connection issues, etc.) Luminary still have a way to go in their recovery.

Luminary want to make money through Lumi subscriptions (lessons and songs). This is a dubious business decision. People are wise to the subscription scam. A subscription makes sense only if it delivers genuine value to the end user and keeps delivering value over the long run. I would rather see Luminary (any company, really) focus on reliable products sold and bought once — not promises.

Next up, I’ll try Lightpad M with Noise on Apple iPad — a good way to fill in the commercial gaps while watching football.