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

At the 2025 NAMM Show, held Jan 21–25 in Anaheim, CA, Behringer is back, after a 10 year absence, and showcasing their plans to co-opt the legacies of Yamaha, Roland, Sequential and other synth makers.

Behringer is exhibiting as part of the Music Tribe booth, along with TC Electronic and other companies under the same corporate umbrella. The NAMM Show is designed to provide an annual event for music retailers to connect with manufacturers. Music Tribe is participating as part of a new strategy to expand their distribution in the US beyond a few ‘super partners’, like Amazon and Sweetwater.

For many years, Behringer rejected the idea that their products ‘knock off’ or otherwise copy competitors products, going so far as using lawsuits to stifle discussion of their business practices.

In recent years, though, Behringer has openly discussed their focus on ‘copycat’ products, describing this as a ‘Market Follower’ strategy:

Uli Behringer at NAMM 2025

Market Follower: A market follower seeks to gain market share but is less interested in differentiating its brand from the market leader.

Instead, the market follower effectively rides on the market leader’s coattails, while positioning its brand just far enough away from the market leader to be different. A great example is any young adult novel that’s marketed as “the next Harry Potter.”

At NAMM, Behringer highlighting this strategy, featuring recently introduced copies of classic gear from other companies, and previewing three new synths that copy some of the most iconic synths ever made.

In their booth, Behringer is featuring several recent introductions, including:

• The LmDrum drum machine, based on the LinnDrum;
• The Behringer Wave synthesizer, based on the PPG Wave; and
• A Behringer Eurorack system, based on the early Moog modular systems.

The highlight of Behringer’s NAMM display, though, is a preview of three upcoming synths:

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.