Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

Download on the App Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

New midi instrument coming from ROLI.

edited June 2019 in Other

ROLI is 10 this year — and what a decade it’s been! Since the very beginning, we’ve been working to revolutionize how people make music. Now thanks to the Seaboard and BLOCKS, it’s easier than ever before for musicians to express themselves.

But it’s still difficult for beginners to experience the joy of making music. It can take hours of practice. What if there was an instrument that let everyone play songs they know, straight away?

Well, we’ve been designing exactly that. On June 18th, as part of ROLI’s first ever Kickstarter campaign, we’ll share our latest keyboard with you:

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Comments

  • Price matters..most for me at this point in my GAS Prevention Strategy

  • Looks like music lessons with color-coded keyboard

  • Very interesting...

  • But it’s still difficult for beginners to experience the joy of making music. It can take hours of practice.

    Hours?

  • @mistercharlie said:

    But it’s still difficult for beginners to experience the joy of making music. It can take hours of practice.

    Hours?

    It took me several days

  • The difficulty with being an adult beginner is that the musical consciousness is so sophisticated compared to what is doable. Not so in a three yr old who takes joy in banging away... or even playing softly. It's the judgement that frustrated and kills the fun. Ten seconds to heaven if you're a baby,

  • @LinearLineman said:
    The difficulty with being an adult beginner is that the musical consciousness is so sophisticated compared to what is doable. Not so in a three yr old who takes joy in banging away... or even playing softly. It's the judgement that frustrated and kills the fun. Ten seconds to heaven if you're a baby,

    Interesting take. Hadn’t considered that Mike. Actually a very helpful perspective to approach creating while resisting impressions.

    Hope all is well with you. I trust your loving the new Cubasis update. I wonder your take on Pure Synth acoustic sounds. I haven’t tried it and am sorely in need of great sounding “real” instrument sounds.

  • I'm hoping it's a scale agnostic / diatonic keyboard that you can use flexibly like Velocity Keyboard KB1, Joue, Sensel etc.

  • Hey @WillieNegus good to hear from you. Hope all is good with you and your family. The acoustic sounds are excellent. Not a substitute for something like BeatHawk or ISymphonic, but a welcome addition. There is a fabulous open nylon guitar, better than my goto BeatHawk baroque pack classical. I like several of the brasses very much. Choirs interesting, different and good. Good orchestras and strings. Woodwinds so so, but those are tough on iOS. For ten bucks very worth it and the tweakability seems above par. I haven't checked the basses, but Bassalicious has some good ones and you probably have that. I don't bother with the pianos as I am bound to Ravenscroft and my Kawai Shigerus. Definitely worth it, and it is now functional, for me, with the zcubasis update. PM me when you have a chance. Missed you.

  • @Blue_Mangoo said:

    @mistercharlie said:

    But it’s still difficult for beginners to experience the joy of making music. It can take hours of practice.

    Hours?

    It took me several days

    ...played it til my fingers bled

  • @LinearLineman said:
    Ten seconds to heaven if you're a baby

    this is a beautiful sentence.

  • Haha! @Phil999, glad you liked it. The forum brings out the poet in us.😁

  • LUMI: The smarter way to learn and play music

    The illuminated keyboard and app that lets you play great songs and learn music as you go.

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playlumi/lumi-the-smarter-way-to-learn-and-play-music

  • edited June 2019

    I hate being cynical but.....

    this is all "learn in minutes" - we all know that's not how it works. And yes I'm sure the gamification and the following the patterns (there was a video game like that wasn't there) is going to teach some stuff by rote. But sadly the baby mentioned above - banging (hard or soft) has the better idea of how to learn...

    I know they've taken a ton of investment - $50mil - and you've all read the economics of music software discussions on here - Roli aren't somehow exempt from all that - sure they've got better marketing and wider reach but they are playing in the same pool.

    Don't get me wrong I've got a number of Roli products but this feels more like a "magic to make you learn faster" trick than anything to do with music - selling aspiration......

    (and please convince me I'm wrong)

    (and there is nothing wrong with people wanting to learn music and selling things to help them - but I'm not at all convinced that rote type learning gets you where you'd need to be to play and love music )

  • @White said:
    LUMI: The smarter way to learn and play music

    The illuminated keyboard and app that lets you play great songs and learn music as you go.

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playlumi/lumi-the-smarter-way-to-learn-and-play-music

    I think I had a Radio Shack keyboard that did this in 1988......kind of....... ;)

  • The package itself looks like a Rockband 3 ripoff, which has the same style of learning keys (just without the lights).

    I like the idea of the modular keyboard.

    My fear for people who learn like this though is that they will not be able to play without the lights, I know sight readers who can play any piece of music you put in front of them flawlessly, give them nothing and ask them to make something up and they are stumped.

  • @pagefall said:
    I hate being cynical but.....

    this is all "learn in minutes" - we all know that's not how it works. And yes I'm sure the gamification and the following the patterns (there was a video game like that wasn't there) is going to teach some stuff by rote. But sadly the baby mentioned above - banging (hard or soft) has the better idea of how to learn...

    I know they've taken a ton of investment - $50mil - and you've all read the economics of music software discussions on here - Roli aren't somehow exempt from all that - sure they've got better marketing and wider reach but they are playing in the same pool.

    Don't get me wrong I've got a number of Roli products but this feels more like a "magic to make you learn faster" trick than anything to do with music - selling aspiration......

    (and please convince me I'm wrong)

    (and there is nothing wrong with people wanting to learn music and selling things to help them - but I'm not at all convinced that rote type learning gets you where you'd need to be to play and love music )

    Isn't like guitarhero for pianists!

  • I'm a Seaboard Rise owner, and while I'd like to see some more investment in iOS development from them (curiously there is another post just today on the iOS dashboard I see) - I welcome this as a decent idea.

    They can sell more of these units because of the "learning to play" angle, but it sounds like it will be akin to the CME xKey as far as portability and usefulness for mobile recording, but you can tack a few more on a make a bigger keyboard if desired while still remaining quite portable. The LED keys - if executed correctly and easily controlled in software on iOS - are an added bonus but certainly wouldn't need to be used.

    Its good that they have made it pretty playable (92% key travel supposedly of a piano) - plus it has poly aftertouch. I grew very tired of my xKey quickly because of lack of playability on the shallow travel keys.

    To me they have ticked off quite a few good boxes on the idea of a simple, portable midi controller idea, added a bit of flash, and then increased their chances of success by opening it up to non-musician markets.

  • And I wonder how much you have to pay to unlock(IAP) the big artists like Sia!?

  • @AndyPlankton said:
    The package itself looks like a Rockband 3 ripoff, which has the same style of learning keys (just without the lights).

    I like the idea of the modular keyboard.

    My fear for people who learn like this though is that they will not be able to play without the lights

    Seeing how every onscreen keyboard and pianoroll is expected to have scales modes nowadays this trend started a while ago already.

  • @brambos said:

    @AndyPlankton said:
    The package itself looks like a Rockband 3 ripoff, which has the same style of learning keys (just without the lights).

    I like the idea of the modular keyboard.

    My fear for people who learn like this though is that they will not be able to play without the lights

    Seeing how every onscreen keyboard and pianoroll is expected to have scales modes nowadays this trend started a while ago already.

    Highlighting which notes are available in a particular key is fine for reference, or for learning a particular scale...this may be a part of what the thing does but is not highlighted in the video....

    It is the following patterns of lights to learn that I think is not so helpful, beyond getting independent movement practice for the fingers.

    I'd like to see someone learn a tune by following the lights, and then play it on a regular keyboard without the lights !

  • This is actually interesting. I might back it if only for the polyphonic aftertouch and it's close in price to Xkey Air by CME.

  • Backed it to get my kids into playing, but can see myself getting involved too!

  • I pledged. I love this kinda stuff.

  • Its only got 24 keys....

  • @BiancaNeve said:
    Its only got 24 keys....

    Yep not so handy. That C is pretty useful.

  • @[Deleted User] said:

    @BiancaNeve said:
    Its only got 24 keys....

    Yep not so handy. That C is pretty useful.

    That'll be to allow you to chain them together for more octaves without getting an extra C at each join :)

  • @AndyPlankton said:

    @[Deleted User] said:

    @BiancaNeve said:
    Its only got 24 keys....

    Yep not so handy. That C is pretty useful.

    That'll be to allow you to chain them together for more octaves without getting an extra C at each join :)

    I hear you, I would imagine most people only buying one in General though.

  • This has been a problem for me with the seablocks. They’re good to use for MPE but not as great when you want to do traditional playing. This is great that they fit the modular design of the sea block because now I could take, for example, a 48 key lumi, with 25 keys of MPE keys and have the best of both worlds. The marketing is aimed at casual users, but pros shouldn’t ignore the benefits of being able to have MPE and a traditional keyboard interchangeable and attachable.

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