Roli Premiers Studio Drums

Roli has announced Studio Drums, the first desktop MPE drums available on the market. Drums follows a couple of other “Studio” packages that the British company has debuted in order to streamline their offerings, simplify their workflow and broaden the appeal of their unique products. Most importantly, Roli has answered our prayers by introducing a drum specific Roli ecosystem that not only circumvents their wonky app, but opens up entirely new possibilities for their products.

Roli Studio Drums

ROLI Studio Drums features 15 kits and 240 individual drum parts that can be swapped out to build your desired kit. With a Roli Lightpad Block, you can achieve expressive control over each drum sound; add embellishments and modulate the sound of each pad using MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) gestures and macro controls.

Roli Studio Drums Features:

» MPE drum engine consisting of synthesis and sampler
» 15 kits
» Macro fader and XY control for each drum part (16 parts per kit)
» Audio Effects to add further modulation
» Hardware integration support of pads, macros and effects for Lightpad Block and Live Block
» Compatibility with all other Roli MPE devices and conventional MIDI controllers
» Configurable behavior for each connected Lightpad Block to either:
— Update controls to the instance of ROLI Studio Drums in focus
— Lock to a specific instance of ROLI Studio Drums
» Compatible as a standalone, AU and VST plug-in
» Windows 10 and macOS 10.13+ support (64-bit)

According to Roli, to achieve the maximum possible expression for each sound, users should set up Roli Studio Drums in a digital audio workstation (DAW) that is fully MPE compatible. However, ROLI Studio Drums also features a single channel mode for use with conventional MIDI controllers and digital audio workstations. When played with a Lightpad Block, the 16 pads respond to various MPE gestures, including Slide, Glide and Press. Roli designed the modulation amounts of each of the 240 individual drum parts for individual expression, meaning that some pads may respond differently to others. It’s worth noting that Press will modulate the sound only when either Slide or Glide have also been modulated, allowing for the original transient of the sound to play as intended, without being unintentionally modified. Each of these MPE gestures will modulate the sound of each pad in interesting, unusual and sometimes surprising ways. Subtle gestures and a quick flick-of-the-wrist can bring life to familiar drum sounds, or longer gestures can be used to create textures.
 

 
For those without an MPE device, the Roli Studio Drums pads can also be triggered by any conventional MIDI controller, with the bottom-left pad beginning on C1 and ascending chromatically up to D#2 (the top-right pad). Notes triggered outside of this range will not trigger pads in ROLI Studio Drums, so please ensure your MIDI device is configured correctly.

Roli Studio Drums comes bundled with 15 kits, each containing 16 unique drum parts:

» Crispy Funk
» Dark Minimal Techno
» Dimensional IDM
» Dusted Club
» EDM Extasy
» Electro Chill Pop
» Ether 808
» Grime Warp Ultra
» Hard Rock Reunion
» Heavy Downtempo
» Modern Pop
» Parisi Drum Kit
» Pristine 909
» Trap Sixteen
» Vinyl 90s Hip-Hop

 

 
Roli’s Studio Drums are available now.
 
ROLI
 
 

Author: FutureMusic

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