WORLD OF MUSIC ; PORTABLE KEYBOARD - Latest Portable Music Keyboards, Synthesizers and Music News

Hear the word ‘piano’ and the chances are that you will visualise an acoustic or digital instrument with 88 keys that can be played without the need to connect it to anything else. However, ROLI has other ideas on its new ‘Piano’ controller keyboard.

At the 2025 NAMM Show, ROLI has introduced the ROLI Piano, a 49-key “smart keyboard”, that they say is designed for both learners and experienced musicians.

ROLI Piano features illuminating keys and a suite of expressive features. ROLI is also launching the ROLI Piano AI Assistant, a generative AI-powered tool designed to make music creation “easier and more fun”.

Together with the recently introduced Airwave  system, the ROLI Piano form the ROLI Piano System:

The ROLI Piano builds on the company’s previous products, especially the Piano M, which offers illuminated keys and a 2-octave keyboard. And it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Lumi keyboard that we first heard about way back in 2019. They say that a larger keyboard – with all the smarts of Piano M – has long been the number one request from customers.

ROLI Piano features a 49-key expressive keyboard, with full-sized, full-plunge depth keys. The keys feature ROLI’s patented BrightKey technology, and feature per-key pitch bend and polyphonic aftertouch capabilities, for a more expressive playing experience.

ROLI’s Piano AI Assistant is an educational solution that leverages generative AI. The company says that it makes learning to play “easier, more intuitive and more fun than ever before”. When these two products are combined with the Airwave, you get what ROLI is calling the ROLI Piano System.

“In a few years time, it will seem antiquated that a piano or keyboard can’t help guide you, can’t see your hands and respond to them in many ways, and can’t have a conversation to help you. Today, we’re unveiling the new ROLI Piano System that will help usher in this big shift,” said Roland Lamb, Founder and CEO of ROLI.

The Airwave is a physical stand that looms over your keyboard and includes infrared cameras that track 27 points in each hand at 90 frames per second. It generates real-time feedback that’s designed to help you improve your hand positioning, finger placement and technique.

When you’re using the companion ROLI Learn app – and as with the Piano M – the ROLI Piano’s keys will light up so that you can see which notes to play and when to play them. And if you want to indulge in some real-time sound design, raising your hands off the keyboard will enable you to use air gestures – glide, tilt, flex and slide – to control the parameters of your choosing.

Once connected to your computer or tablet over Bluetooth or USB-C, ROLI Piano can be used with your choice of DAW and/or software instrument, but with the ROLI Studio software also included, you already have plenty of presets that have been designed specifically to get the most out of the keyboard’s features.

ROLI Piano is available for pre-order on January 23rd, 2025, shipping in April, 2025, and with early bird price of $399 (down from $599). The Piano AI Assistant will be available for immediate use in the ROLI Learn App in the next few days. The ROLI Piano System is available for pre-order at the ROLI site.

If you want the Airwave as well, it’s available in a bundle that currently costs $648, rising to $948.

Tasty Chips Electronics has released a major update to its GR-1 Granular Synthesizer, adding new features, updates, and bug fixes.

Here’s what’s new in GR-1 version 3:

New Features:

• Save popup for quick internal storage and naming of all entities: sample, patch, performance, multi, using just a single screen. Only the sample data type will defer to the filechooser.
• The performance list allows you to easily load and save performances internally, without browsing with the file chooser.
• Named performances.
• Boot up with your last used performance.
• Ability to store patches and samples internally.
• File manager: rename, copy, delete files, and create new folders.
• 4 Multi Timbral (MT) presets per performance. When [Play] is off, use [Shift] + [Bank1234] to change MT preset.
• Factory reset – restores default performance, reset system settings, and deletes _all_ user data
• System menu – Shutdown button to safely shutdown and avoid any possible data corruption.
• Are you sure? popups for practically all destructive actions.
• “Busy/working” popups for loads and saves, and “xx% done” popups for copying large amounts of files.
• Text edit – Use horizontal fader to move through alphabet.
• Text edit – Shift + Encoder push to enter space.
• Text edit – Shift + Escape to delete character.
• Mute while loading and saving performances.
• File chooser – Select USB stick + [Shift] + push (Select) -> unmount
• File chooser – shows file sizes.

Changes:

• Performance menu ([Shift] + [Perf]) now leads to 3 sub menus : a list of performances, system settings, and the file manager.
• System settings are now saved separately and system-wide, instead of inside each performance.
• Harmonized look for all menus: all selectable widgets can have a white rectangle around them to select.
• High contrast color scheme, and bigger fonts in menus: much improved readability without sacrificing looks.
• Samba file sharing now has to be enabled manually in System menu. This is done to avoid corruption.
• File chooser speedups.
• Removed incremental saves, as inquiry amongst users revealed this feature is rarely used.
• Slightly faster loads of patches and performances.
• #1039 separately loaded patch can now be undone by pressing preset. only after save will it be permanent.

Visit the Tasty Chips site for details.

“The Alan Parsons Plugin Project” – PSP Audioware helps the legendary engineer to recreate the famous Wobbler effect that he used on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon.

NAMM 2025: PSP Wobbler is a modulation effect plugin created by the famous brains at PSP Audioware (creator of VintageWarmer, Impressor, Saturator and many more) in collaboration with legendary recording engineer, producer, and musician Alan Parsons.

Parsons himself, of course, scarcely needs an introduction. After engineering for The Beatles on their Abbey Road and Let It By albums, he carved his own particular niche in history as the engineer for Pink Floyd’s hugely influential and multi-million selling Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

As part of The Alan Parsons Project he subsequently had hits of his own, being nominated for 13 Grammy Awards. Parsons currently owns and continues to works from his own ParSonics Studio, his state-of-the-art recording facility at his home in Santa Barbara.

The new plugin collaboration aims to faithfully recreate the sound of what became known as Parsons’ secret weapon, the Frequency Translator device, a handmade experimental unit built for Parsons by Keith Adkins, the technical engineer at Abbey Road.

The effect was used extensively on Parsons’ contributions to Dark Side of the Moon, most specifically the track Time, where it produces a steady phase and time shifting effect that imbues movement without adversely affecting pitch – you can hear it on the track’s backing vocals in particular.

It’s a sound that’s difficult to describe, but once you’ve heard its legendary thickening and widening properties then you’ll want to add to your arsenal.

Now, via painstaking work by Parsons and the PSP team, that’s possible for the very first time.

“It’s a much more controllable and deeper effect than any phaser I’ve ever heard,” says Parsons

And building on the original Frequency Translator’s controls, PSP Wobbler adds controllable Drive and Age to add warm and vintage charm, Drift and Spread to add an additional, unpredictable ‘live’ quality to the sound, plus the ability to adjust the Rate infinitely or in perfect note values to accurately sync the ‘wobble’ to the tempo of your track.

Features:

• Frequency shift up to ±25 Hz, manually controlled or set as a clock division of your DAW tempo
• Frequency shift can be set to follow tempo changes or stay at a fixed amount through a song
• Wobble amount is controlled via wet/dry mix
• Drive and Age controls let you dial in saturation and character
• Ageing modes for adding Drive / Age to wet signal alone or to both wet and dry signals
• Separate controls for Feedback, thermal and voltage Drift, Phase, and stereo Spread
• Adjustable lower and upper limits for effect frequency range

Watch Parsons put it through its paces below.

A pair of EQ filters control the effect’s frequency range, enabling you to shape the sound to fit your mix and explore modulation effects that PSP promises will be as groundbreaking as the original hardware was.

And in a special offer, PSP Wobbler will be available at the introductory price of $49.99 until 13 February, becoming $99 from 14 February.

Find out more and download a demo on the PSP Audioware website.