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

Ahead of Superbooth 2026 – scheduled on May 7-9, 2026 in Berlin – Auxy unveils Svensson, a minimalist keyboard built for instant music-making.

Auxy partnered with Cuckoo on the development of Svensson, a well-known YouTuber in the world of music technology. Cuckoo was the lead sound designer responsible for creating Svensson’s bank of around 100 presets, which are divided into four categories: Drums, Bass, Bread and Butter.

The first two are self-explanatory, and the other two cover everything else that falls outside of those categories: keys, leads, pads, plucks, organs and more, spanning both acoustic and electronic sources. Svensson’s sounds have a distinctly organic and expressive quality, with a touch more personality and character than the presets you’ll find in the average home keyboard; it’s clear that a lot of love went into designing these.

Ahead of the 2026 NAMM Show, Korg has unveiled Liano Live! the All-in-One portable piano.

We live in the era of multi-disciplined creators – many musicians are now equally adept at producing video content, for example – and, naturally, this is having an impact on the kind of products that are being designed and released. Korg’s new Liano Live! digital piano, for example, an evolution of its original Liano, which was released in 2022.

Built for pianists who want to livestream and/or record their performances, this promises to give you everything you need to make it happen. It ships with a mic and stand and has a built-in mixer, so you can set the volume and reverb levels of your vocals and the piano right from the instrument itself. It can be connected to your phone, tablet or computer with a single USB-C cable.

As if to reinforce the fact that this is a keyboard built for livestreaming, there’s an on-air button that triggers instant global muting. There are also 10 built-in rhythms and 76 one-touch sound effects, six of which can be assigned to dedicated buttons.

But what of the actual piano bit of the Liano Live!? Although the 88 keys don’t have a hammer action, they are full size and velocity-sensitive, and there’s 120-, 60-, or 40-note polyphony depending on which sound you have selected. There are eight of these (acoustic and electric pianos, organ, guitar, strings, bass/piano and drums/SFX), and they can be dialled-in from a clearly labelled knob.

Obviously, you’ll want to play the Liano Live! at home as well as to the online world, so a pair of front-facing speakers is onboard. It’s also properly portable, running on six AA batteries for up to six hours when you’re away from a main power source. It’s compact and light, too – a mere slip of a thing at 7cm thin and a weight of 5.9kg.

Connectivity includes USB MIDI and audio, headphone, damper pedal, line in and line out (you can adjust the USB/line input level with a dedicated slider). As well as the mic and stand, you also get an AC adapter, pedal switch, cables and a music stand in the box.

There’s also some software – Korg’s Module and Gadget 2 Le apps – and a 3-month subscription to Skoove, the online piano lesson platform.

The Liano Live! is available now priced at $599.99/£549. Find out more on the Korg website.

Roland has unveiled two new models in its KIYOLA line of “artisan” digital pianos, a collaboration with respected Japanese wood furniture manufacturers Karimoku inaugurated in 2015 with the KF-10.

Inspired by “wa”, the Japanese concept of harmony, the KF-20 and KF-25 are sleek and stylish pianos designed with an emphasis on aesthetics. Each Kiyola piano is said to be a one-of-a-kind instrument with unique grain patterns and aging, the Karimoku-crafted cabinets equipped with piano technology lifted from Roland’s high-end GP and LX series instruments.

Both models feature the Piano Reality Modeling engine found in the GP and LX series and offer “warm, uniquely voiced” tones that match the aesthetics of their cabinets. Six tones are accessible directly from the piano with an additional 48 available via Roland’s companion app, which gives players access to Roland’s Piano Designer for fine-tuned sound-shaping. You also get two effects, the Ambience reverb and Brilliance, an EQ that brightens the tone.

Both models feature a stereo two-way sound system with 24W per channel. The KF-20 and KF-25 also benefit from Roland’s PHA-50 keyboard, a premium action designed to recreate the weighted, nuanced response of a real acoustic piano. (In Roland’s product line-up, PHA-50 is second only to the Hybrid Grand keyboard found in the flagship GP-9.)

The KF-20 is an update on the KF-10 designed to showcase a “soft, elegant look with gentle curves”. It’s available in a new, quirky Celadon Green finish, along with three more neutral colours: Walnut, Sheer White and Pure Oak.

The KF-25 has a sharper and more defined look inspired by the style of ‘Japandi’, a fusion of Scandinivian aesthetics and Japanese wabi-sabi. The instrument is available exclusively in a Smoked Oak finish.

Both models come with a piano bench and three-pedal unit with sustain, soft and sostenuto pedals, and each piano features Bluetooth (with Bluetooth MIDI), dual headphone outputs, a USB-C port for MIDI and audio and a USB-A port for additional storage.

Roland KF-20 & KF-25 purchase prices starting at £3,803/€4,490/$5,719.99 and will be available for purchase at select Roland retailers worldwide this month.