A cheapster for MPE - Sand, software and sound

Like the undulating Seaboard surface, ROLI (the company) has had its ups and downs.

ROLI made waves with its innovative alternative controllers like the Seaboard and Lightpad. Hardware is a tough, unforgiving business and, no doubt, the COVID recession hit ROLI like SARS-CoV-2 itself. ROLI reorganized in September 2021 becoming “Luminary.” ROLI sifted through the ashes of its IP and are now focused on three hardware products: Lightpad Block Studio Edition, LUMI, and the Seaboard RISE 2.

No matter what one may think about the ROLI hardware, they have produced some excellent software tools and ROLI-focused sound libraries: Equator, Cypher and Strobe. The Equator (now Equator 2) synth is widely respected. ROLI’s software has been the teaser driving its MPE hardware sales.

So it goes with the free ROLI Noise app. Noise quite effectively simulates a ROLI BLOCKS set-up consisting of a Lightpad, LIVE BLOCK and 2 octave Seaboard BLOCK. ROLI has five short “getting started” videos:

I also recommend the Roli Noise tutorial from the Sound Test Room. This last video demonstrates a more up-to-date version of Noise.

Two finger gesture on the virtual Seaboard

Noise gives you MPE thrills on the cheap. You can tap and swipe to your heart’s content without owning a Lightpad or Seaboard BLOCK. I especially like the virtual Seaboard — all of the fun without the Bluetooth connection issues which seemed to plague the Seaboard BLOCKS. [ROLI need to get on top of this issue with LUMI, too.]

Noise was clearly intended as a loss leader (AKA “driver”) for hardware sales. As Lou once sang, “gives you sweet taste.” You need a Lightpad or Seaboard BLOCK to unlock its extra sound bundles. Noise works with only Roli hardware; It didn’t recognize or receive MIDI sent by my Akai MPK Mini. Noise does not have MIDI settings, so it’s Roli’s way or the highway.

The free sounds are not bad and include Audio Modeling’s SWAM Viola. Naturally, you don’t get SWAM parameters to play with. That would definitely tick-off folks who pay good money for SWAM. Still, I’m grateful for the freebie and I’m happy to see partners working together to expand the MPE market and ecosystem.

That’s the good news. Unfortunately, ROLI haven’t updated Noise in recent years. Given Apple’s relentless disrespect for stable APIs, one doesn’t know how much longer ROLI Noise will run on IOS. [Grrr.] I would love to see a renewed Noise app in support of Luminary’s current product line.