It is said that pressure creates diamonds. Considering what Roland Lamb has gone through the last couple of years wrangling his company from creditors and others who sought to dissolve the concern, there has been no shortage of stress. However, what has emerged from Roli from all the trials and tribulations is Airwave, a product that – once again – has blown our collective minds here at FutureMusic magazine.
Roli Airwave
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Summon a crescendo with a wave, add luscious layers with a flick of the wrist, or create endlessly evolving textures with a gliding gesture. Airwave uses Roli Vision to turn natural movements into unique musical moments.
Simply connect Airwave to Roli Piano M or Roli Seaboard to play the air above your instrument using intuitive gestures. Airwave comes with Roli Airwave Player (currently in Beta), a plug-in compatible with most DAWs and packed with instantly inspiring sounds and stunning 3D visuals that react to your movements. Each preset has been carefully crafted by our team of expert sound designers and calibrated to respond intuitively to each Dimension of Air.
Sonic Exploration Through Spatial Expression
Map each of Airwave’s dimensions to any parameter you like in your music software or hardware of choice. Airwave adds a unique visual element to live performances, without obscuring anyone’s view. Perform expansive gestures that generate an instant, audible reaction from your instruments (and from the audience).
So how does it actually work? Airwave uses infrared cameras and Roli Vision technology to reliably track all 27 joints in each of your hands at 90 frames per second. The data is converted into MIDI in real time, giving you precise control of your musical expression.
Roli claims Airwave is the first new product to take advantage of their latest technological breakthrough, Music Intelligence. Based on the five “keys” of sound, sight, touch, vision, and voice, Music Intelligence unites current and future Roli instruments into an expanding ecosystem for creation and expression.
MIDI Designer Is Now Free!
MIDI Designer Pro X is now free to download! MIDI Designer Pro X is a professional-grade MIDI controller platform for iPhone, iPad and Mac. User-contributed layouts let you control everything from Ableton to Yamaha out of the box. Go beyond hardware and express your musical vision. Check out out now!
Roli Airwave Specs:
- Expressive controller
- Roli Vision Hand-tracking Camera
- 3.5mm TRS Headphone Output
- 3.5mm TRS Pedal input (incl. 6.3mm dongle)
- 2 x USB-C ports (data and power)
- Magnetic USB port for use with compatible Roli Hardware
- Class compliant MIDI over USB
- Class compliant audio interface
- 65W USB-C PD power supply
- 221mm x 122mm x 369mm / 812g
- USB-C to USB-C cable x3
- 60W Power block (multi-region)
- Sustain pedal dongle
- USB-C Magnetic adapter
- Two-Year Full Warranty
- Roli Airwave is designed to be compatible with Roli instruments only.
The best part of this announcement is that the Airwave costs $299 / €299, which is a very reasonable price point for this type of technology, either for performance or learning to play the piano. It’s competitive advantage, aside from being fun and exciting, is it’s the only remote teaching paradigm that can understand a user’s technique. The price point also allows Roli to gain enough of a user base to finance future endeavors and provide gesture expression to dozens of other applications – some not even invented yet.
