ROLI

Learning to play piano is a hard slog, and many people – myself included – tend to start well, and then lose momentum before giving up entirely. Roli is hoping to keeping students engaged with a gesture-tracking AI teacher called the Airwave.

UK music hardware company Roli has launched an updated version of the Seaboard Block controller, which "promises to bring infinite expressive possibilities to musicians everywhere, whether at home, in the studio, on the go, or on the stage."

The goal of the Roli Seaboard 2 is no less than to inject some soul and instrumental virtuosity into digital music, by giving keyboard players expressive tools to rival and even eclipse what acoustic musicians have to work with.

The folks behind the impressive Seaboard Grand have launched a new version of the colorful Lumi Keys learning platform that was crowdfunded last year. The Studio Edition injects some of the Grand's spongy expression into a standard solid keyboard.

Instead of separate black and white keys, the whole spongy surface of the Seaboard Grand was offered up as the playing area. Now Roli has come about face with the Lumi learning platform, with solid keys that light up to teach the next Jordan Rudess how to play.​