ROLI – A Startup Pushing The Boundaries Of Making Music

Music is a very important part of people’s lives.  Different individuals have different tastes and different genres which they like.  However, everyone will agree music, as an art, uplifts emotions as well as the quality of life.  Music is constantly evolving by adapting to technologies prevalent in the current times, with a variety of new musical instruments like the hang drum, cajon and electric guitars, to name a few, coming out.

There is a startup reinventing and redefining the boundaries of what a piano can do—ROLI.  This startup combines the science of computers and music to come up with products which integrate technology and sound.

Beginnings

ROLI was founded in 2009 by pianist Roland Lamb while he was a graduate student at London’s famous Royal College of Art.  He was heavily influenced by saxophonists and guitarists as they modulate the sound any way they want by increasing or decreasing the pitch and tonality of a sound.  Roland Lamb decided the piano could not replicate the range of sounds a guitar could and started working on his first product called the ROLI Seaboard.

The Seaboard is a digital instrument.  Its design is based on the piano and is made up of an intuitive silicone structure.  It is meant to be played like a normal keyboard or piano, but with the addition of gestures meant to modulate the sound output.  Sliding a finger between the keys of the Seaboard changes the pitch, similar to a stringed instrument like an electric guitar.  Volume and vibrato notes can be modulated by using a controller which is integrated into the Seaboard. Utilities like these are what sets it apart from the traditional piano and similar instruments.  

Growth

Since the release of the first Seaboard in 2013, ROLI has launched Blocks and an app named Noise.  While the Seaboard is modelled based on the piano, launching it was a hassle as there was no other product out in the market which was similar to the Seaboard.  So, ROLI went ahead and created a community of their product users. This was the reason why it was modelled around the piano as it offered a familiarity for users to draw upon their past experiences of using the instrument.  ROLI relied on well known musicians to use their products to help with their growth. Artists and acclaimed music composers like Hans Zimmer, A.R. Rahman, Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder use ROLI products.

Musician Pharrell Williams invested in the startup and took up an executive position as the Chief Creative Officer at ROLI.

ROLI gained popularity over the years as more and more artists adopted its usage in creating music.  This unique startup, which has both music composers and software engineers working and collaborating side by side, aims to push the boundaries of creating music as far as it can.

Watch the Game of Thrones theme being performed on a Seaboard:

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