Music Teacher - Tech column: the ROLI Airwave

Vibrato and bending notes on a piano? The British company ROLI's new Airwave is ‘jaw-dropping’, says Richard Llewellyn, CEO of Technology in Music Education (TiME)

The Piano M and Airwave - Courtesy ROLI

In October, I was at one of the most exciting launches connected to the piano in its past 324-year history. The product launched is an amazing new piece of music technology called the Airwave, and it does many things. One jaw-dropping feature is the ability to play a chord, or just a single note, and then magically manipulate the sound by using your hand in the air above the keyboard! More on this later, but first a bit more about the company behind this groundbreaking technology.

ROLI was founded in London 15 years ago by Roland Lamb. This British company is based in Hackney (one of the more creative hubs in east London), and it was here that in 2009 ROLI launched the award-winning Seaboard. This is a very different sort of piano keyboard, with pliable silicone rubber keys, allowing you to play with loads of amazing (MPE) creative effects, like vibrato and bending notes (on a piano keyboard!). It's been used by many musicians around the world, most notably Ryan Gosling in La La Land, Hans Zimmer, A.R. Rahman and Grimes. The current models are the Seaboard 2 (49 keys, £1,099) and the Seaboard M (24 keys, £299).

Piano M

In 2019 ROLI launched the LUMI, recently renamed the Piano M (£219). This is a 24-key (2-octave) keyboard, which can snap together with other Piano Ms to create a keyboard of 48, 72 or 96 keys. The keys light up in different colours, and you can choose between four different lighting modes. The result is an extremely portable instrument that can fit into any backpack. The keys are slightly smaller than on a normal piano, making large chords easier to play. Like the Seaboard, the Piano M is also MPE-enabled. MPE – ‘MIDI Polyphonic Expression’ – is a clever creative addition that enables you to play the keyboard with the same amount of expressiveness as any acoustic instrument. You can bend (like on a pitch-wheel or as a guitarist) and slide between notes, add volume swells, vibrato, dynamics, timbre and more. MPE gives each note (or finger) its own expression.

‘Learn’ and ‘Create’ functions

There are two main ways of utilising the Piano M keyboard. One is using it to ‘Learn’ how to play the piano; the second is in performance on the ‘Create’ side, making the most of its unique musical potential by attaching it to a ROLI Airwave.

A lot of the power of the Piano M keyboard comes to life when you use it with the ROLI Learn app. This app has a subscription of from £6.67 a month and guides you through a complete curriculum of interactive piano lessons, exercises and games. It has been developed by a team of educators with vast knowledge and expertise. I think the different gamification elements (think piano cascades, like Guitar Hero and more) will be very popular with younger students, helping them to build muscle memory and accidentally learn basic music knowledge along the way. All this with the help of (RGB) backlighting on every individual key – you can even customise each key to your very own colour or pressure. (Think how this could work for someone with synesthesia.) There is also a growing library of thousands of pieces you can play along with, by artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Adele, and the Beatles, as well as classical works by, for example, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, with more added every month. There are over 300 lessons and 450 exercises that are presented by one of five virtual piano teachers. They will help students to learn note names, rhythm, hand position, notation and more. And, of course, these features are available 24/7 (it has a headphone socket), so you can dip in and out whenever you want, and learn at your own speed. The important thing to add here is that this is not aimed as a teacher replacement: it will enhance the piano learning experience and help to encourage the student to progress. Who would have thought that piano practice could be fun?

Airwave

This brings me onto the ROLI Airwave (£299) and how it works alongside the Piano M and ROLI Learn. The Airwave itself looks like a flash iPad/tablet stand and is positioned in front of the Piano M (or Seaboard). I would suggest that the best set-up here is to have two Piano Ms clicked together for a better left- and right-hand experience. It is fine to use just one, however, which may be better for beginners, with an aim to progress to ‘bigger’ keyboards.

The Airwave has infrared cameras inside the top bar that track all 27 joints in each hand at the rate of 90 frames per second. This is done using ROLI Vision technology and converts the data into MIDI as well as showing you a 3D image of your hands on an attached iPad/tablet screen. Using the ROLI Piano M, Learn app and Airwave means that you get feedback on different areas of piano technique. These include harmonic, rhythmic, posture, positional and dynamics, all with interactive advice from the onboard teachers.

The ‘magic’ happens when you begin to shape and craft the sound of the keyboard with your hands (Spatial Expression), tracked by infrared cameras in the air above the keyboard. There are five main movements that adjust the sound: Raise, Tilt, Glide, Slide, and Flex. I'd recommend watching the ‘ROLI Airwave Showcase with Marco Parisi’ YouTube video (Parisi is a Grammy Award-winning artist) – see the link below. This was filmed live at the launch using a Seaboard and helps to give a better understanding of its performance capabilities and how creative you can be in a live setting.

To use the Airwave, you'll need an iPad/tablet or computer; it's compatible with the latest versions of MacOS and Windows. It also works with your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) as a MIDI controller, and most DAWs support its MPE capabilities. If you don't have a ROLI keyboard, you can still use the Airwave with any other (third-party) MIDI keyboard, like an Akai, Arturia, Korg, M-Audio, Roland or Yamaha.

Because the Airwave is so uniquely accessible, one exciting area for development will be how it is used within the disabled community. The Airwave could open up a whole new dimension to any performance.