Roli Blocks

[Cinebient]

am I understanding it right that these are essentially touchscreen controllers primarily for touchscreen devices ? ... if so , am I missing something ? why is this a good idea ?

Yeah I think you're missing the fact that it is velocity sensitive, pressure sensitive, release velocity sensitive as well as the other dimensions that you could get on a touch screen (X and Y).

But you get all that already on the latest iPhones (but not on iPads yet).
I don´t know if there is midi out in the app.....but that would make this obsolete.
So the blocks would make even more sense for notebooks and desktops.
They work on it but there is "dashboard" for it or?

I haven't tried the latest iphones with any note triggering apps, but my understanding was that the pressure sensitivity was very limited to sort of light and hard, and I didn't think there was really much continuous pressure sensitivity. Am I wrong about that? Is there actually a usable range of velocities that can be captured? And a decent range of pressure levels?

Yes, you´re wrong. It´s a polyphonic continuous sensitivity and it works as good for me as on my Seaboard Rise (even better in some cases).
Velocity is the only downside here. It´s possible but it works with a latency of an extra 10ms because of some workarounds a developer have to made.
But i think 3D touch will evolve too in the future.
For aftertouch events it works even much better for me than on my Rise.
Of course the tactile feedback is missing and i want this for iPad Pro´s.
But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?
But what i like with the on board multi-touch options is that you direct interact with your tools rather than having to use a kind of extension in form of a midi controller etc.
Even if it´s still young in general i think it is the closest to a hardware synth (f.e.) experience where you direct interact with your knobs and always know what knob or slider do this or that.
I don´t like iOS really for it´s limitations and it lacks a lot things i have on my notebook but i begin to think that it will be awesome in the future...ARM will left the Intel i the dark too in a few years.
Synths like Dune 2 and Repro-1 and so are sounding so fantastic but there is no way (beside setting them up with multi channel controller and/or other midi stuff) to play them so expressive out of the box.
It´s a reason i think about to migrate all my synth stuff to an iPad again and record that into my DAW of choice.
Also samplers (real sampler which let you sample) like BeatMaker2 (3 is coming soon) are so much better on a touch screen to interact direct on the GUI instead of an extern midi controller.......uuuuuuhhhh....i´m drifting away already again
Back to the topic...blocks are great but i think still they make more sense for desktops and notebooks instead of an already great multi-touch experience.

[Echoes in the Attic]

am I understanding it right that these are essentially touchscreen controllers primarily for touchscreen devices ? ... if so , am I missing something ? why is this a good idea ?

Yeah I think you're missing the fact that it is velocity sensitive, pressure sensitive, release velocity sensitive as well as the other dimensions that you could get on a touch screen (X and Y).

But you get all that already on the latest iPhones (but not on iPads yet).
I don´t know if there is midi out in the app.....but that would make this obsolete.
So the blocks would make even more sense for notebooks and desktops.
They work on it but there is "dashboard" for it or?

I haven't tried the latest iphones with any note triggering apps, but my understanding was that the pressure sensitivity was very limited to sort of light and hard, and I didn't think there was really much continuous pressure sensitivity. Am I wrong about that? Is there actually a usable range of velocities that can be captured? And a decent range of pressure levels?

Yes, you´re wrong. It´s a polyphonic continuous sensitivity and it works as good for me as on my Seaboard Rise (even better in some cases).
Velocity is the only downside here. It´s possible but it works with a latency of an extra 10ms because of some workarounds a developer have to made.
But i think 3D touch will evolve too in the future.
For aftertouch events it works even much better for me than on my Rise.
Of course the tactile feedback is missing and i want this for iPad Pro´s.
But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?
But what i like with the on board multi-touch options is that you direct interact with your tools rather than having to use a kind of extension in form of a midi controller etc.
Even if it´s still young in general i think it is the closest to a hardware synth (f.e.) experience where you direct interact with your knobs and always know what knob or slider do this or that.
I don´t like iOS really for it´s limitations and it lacks a lot things i have on my notebook but i begin to think that it will be awesome in the future...ARM will left the Intel i the dark too in a few years.
Synths like Dune 2 and Repro-1 and so are sounding so fantastic but there is no way (beside setting them up with multi channel controller and/or other midi stuff) to play them so expressive out of the box.
It´s a reason i think about to migrate all my synth stuff to an iPad again and record that into my DAW of choice.
Also samplers (real sampler which let you sample) like BeatMaker2 (3 is coming soon) are so much better on a touch screen to interact direct on the GUI instead of an extern midi controller.......uuuuuuhhhh....i´m drifting away already again
Back to the topic...blocks are great but i think still they make more sense for desktops and notebooks instead of an already great multi-touch experience.

Interesting. I guess i haven't kept up with phone apps because I just don't care about virtual instruments that can not be saved in my daw. But do any of these velocity and pressure sensitive iphone apps send midi out to a pc? If so then i would be interested in a new ipad if it did have the same capability.

[tdmusic]

[deleted]

[Cinebient]

am I understanding it right that these are essentially touchscreen controllers primarily for touchscreen devices ? ... if so , am I missing something ? why is this a good idea ?

Yeah I think you're missing the fact that it is velocity sensitive, pressure sensitive, release velocity sensitive as well as the other dimensions that you could get on a touch screen (X and Y).

But you get all that already on the latest iPhones (but not on iPads yet).
I don´t know if there is midi out in the app.....but that would make this obsolete.
So the blocks would make even more sense for notebooks and desktops.
They work on it but there is "dashboard" for it or?

I haven't tried the latest iphones with any note triggering apps, but my understanding was that the pressure sensitivity was very limited to sort of light and hard, and I didn't think there was really much continuous pressure sensitivity. Am I wrong about that? Is there actually a usable range of velocities that can be captured? And a decent range of pressure levels?

Yes, you´re wrong. It´s a polyphonic continuous sensitivity and it works as good for me as on my Seaboard Rise (even better in some cases).
Velocity is the only downside here. It´s possible but it works with a latency of an extra 10ms because of some workarounds a developer have to made.
But i think 3D touch will evolve too in the future.
For aftertouch events it works even much better for me than on my Rise.
Of course the tactile feedback is missing and i want this for iPad Pro´s.
But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?
But what i like with the on board multi-touch options is that you direct interact with your tools rather than having to use a kind of extension in form of a midi controller etc.
Even if it´s still young in general i think it is the closest to a hardware synth (f.e.) experience where you direct interact with your knobs and always know what knob or slider do this or that.
I don´t like iOS really for it´s limitations and it lacks a lot things i have on my notebook but i begin to think that it will be awesome in the future...ARM will left the Intel i the dark too in a few years.
Synths like Dune 2 and Repro-1 and so are sounding so fantastic but there is no way (beside setting them up with multi channel controller and/or other midi stuff) to play them so expressive out of the box.
It´s a reason i think about to migrate all my synth stuff to an iPad again and record that into my DAW of choice.
Also samplers (real sampler which let you sample) like BeatMaker2 (3 is coming soon) are so much better on a touch screen to interact direct on the GUI instead of an extern midi controller.......uuuuuuhhhh....i´m drifting away already again
Back to the topic...blocks are great but i think still they make more sense for desktops and notebooks instead of an already great multi-touch experience.

Interesting. I guess i haven't kept up with phone apps because I just don't care about virtual instruments that can not be saved in my daw. But do any of these velocity and pressure sensitive iphone apps send midi out to a pc? If so then i would be interested in a new ipad if it did have the same capability.

iPads don´t have 3D touch yet....so mainly X and Y axis plus the other sensors like gyroscope etc.
Apps like TumbJam put midi out, comes with a few hundread scales and stuff if you want that and you even can change key and scales or using 4 different scales/keys at once etc.
There are also apps like midi designer or lemur where you can build your own controllers.
But i havn´t much experience of the newest things there since i mostly use the apps just for itself now and record just the audio into Logic then or use an iOS DAW.
How i said, i´m not a friend of extensions like this for devices which already support great input for mangling sound.

[Cinebient]

This live performance featuring RZA is a great demo of how playable the Blocks are:

But it´s mainly like loop playing and 3-4 notes inside a key etc.
Nothing you can´t do without it on iOS devices.
The Rise is still the better product. If that just had an iOS dashboard.
There is no really great crossplatform experience.
This whole thing is still MEH for me. But maybe i change my mind if i could test it myself in an apple store.

[SteveElbows]

But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?

It is quite amazing how poor a job Roli have done at explaining this so far. It should be the main differentiator between their hardware and using the screen of phone etc. I expect they are banking on people getting to feel for themselves in Apple stores once more stores have them on display.

I ordered one as soon as it was announced because I've made an assumption that the surface will be at least somewhat similar to the seaboard. Certainly the descriptions of the lightpad block on their website use phases such as 'special tactile silicone' and 'press into the surface'.

[aMUSEd]

I ordered one as soon as it was announced because I've made an assumption that the surface will be at least somewhat similar to the seaboard. Certainly the descriptions of the lightpad block on their website use phases such as 'special tactile silicone' and 'press into the surface'.

The Seaboard is quite soft though, I get the impression these are a bit firmer, maybe closer to the feel of the pads on a QuNexus.

[SteveElbows]

The Seaboard is quite soft though, I get the impression these are a bit firmer, maybe closer to the feel of the pads on a QuNexus.

Yes, I am not expecting it to be as soft as the seaboard, but I am hoping it is still a bit soft. It's hard to tell from the videos so far, looking at those it possibly doesnt have much give at all. I've never had the chance to use a QuNexus or similar so I dont know what that feels like.

I've noticed that searching for 'roli lightpad' on youtube is now starting to show a very small handful of videos from people who have actually managed to get one already, I will see if I can get any info from those people.

[Cinebient]

The Seaboard is quite soft though, I get the impression these are a bit firmer, maybe closer to the feel of the pads on a QuNexus.

Yes, I am not expecting it to be as soft as the seaboard, but I am hoping it is still a bit soft. It's hard to tell from the videos so far, looking at those it possibly doesnt have much give at all. I've never had the chance to use a QuNexus or similar so I dont know what that feels like.

I've noticed that searching for 'roli lightpad' on youtube is now starting to show a very small handful of videos from people who have actually managed to get one already, I will see if I can get any info from those people.

What is interesting they have an SDK to build apps for this and not only for music also for drawing and other stuff....that might bring some new interesting apps out in near future.
Even when i don't would use it yet (maybe i will change my mind) i think it will take iOS further.
Sadly i think most desktop developers stuck more to non MPE styles of input.
I'm getting scared for iOS

[Chick Sangria]

But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?

Is there a grid structure or just LED lights that indicate the notes? Wonder how it compares to LinnStrument's surface.
Also, there is a $1 option:
http://aftertouchapp.com/

[Cinebient]

But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?

Is there a grid structure or just LED lights that indicate the notes? Wonder how it compares to LinnStrument's surface.
Also, there is a $1 option:
http://aftertouchapp.com/

I have this app and already posted it in the mobile thread....but yes, this app is nice and offer deep settings for velocity curves of aftertouch etc...

[SteveElbows]

But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?

Is there a grid structure or just LED lights that indicate the notes? Wonder how it compares to LinnStrument's surface.
Also, there is a $1 option:
http://aftertouchapp.com/

The grid structure isnt physically defined in a way we can feel because the lightwave block supports various different modes including grids of different sizes (2x2, 4x4, 5x5) and whatever other developers will come up with in future using the SDK.

[Chick Sangria]

Thanks for the clarification! So much about expressivity - I can't imagine how this might be a serious instrument when your fingers have no physical orientation whatsoever. As soon the 3D touch features of iOS are developed enough, I'm afraid there will be no need for Blocks anymore.

[aMUSEd]

But how is the tactile feedback on those blocks. Have they a hard surface or similar to the Rise?

Is there a grid structure or just LED lights that indicate the notes? Wonder how it compares to LinnStrument's surface.
Also, there is a $1 option:
http://aftertouchapp.com/

I have this app and already posted it in the mobile thread....but yes, this app is nice and offer deep settings for velocity curves of aftertouch etc...

Why make these things for iPhone and not iPad though? iPhone is too tiny.

[SteveElbows]

Thanks for the clarification! So much about expressivity - I can't imagine how this might be a serious instrument when your fingers have no physical orientation whatsoever. As soon the 3D touch features of iOS are developed enough, I'm afraid there will be no need for Blocks anymore.

I need to feel one for myself before my opinion forms properly on this one. There may still be an advantage compared to touching glass. It's also an interesting controller option for use with systems that arent going to have multitouch with pressure sensitivity, eg normal computers rather than iOS devices.

But yes it certainly lacks one of the things that made the seaboards attractive - physical guides to what notes you are hitting. I guess one day we will get multitouch devices that can morph their surfaces to give us the best of both worlds but I dont know how old I will be by then