ROLI has announced a breakthrough in musical interaction for both music learners and creators.
ROLI Airwave turns any ROLI keyboard into an “intelligent piano,” with magical vision and voice capabilities. For music learners, this results in the world’s first intelligent practice assistant that can see your hands, hear your voice, and give you precise feedback as you progress. For music creators, this opens up a whole new dimension of musical play and expression.
“Music learning and playing have been far too difficult for too long: intimidating, expensive, and one-size-fits-all,” said Roland Lamb, CEO of ROLI. “At ROLI, we are on a mission to free the music, making it possible for anyone to learn the language of music with new digital tools that open up new possibilities of human expression. With recent advances in computer vision and AI, we are finally able to innovate beyond the keys, and can now bring this human-centric technology to music learners and creators alike.”
ROLI Airwave leverages 3D infrared cameras and newly introduced ROLI Vision technology to see your hands and capture precise finger movements and gestures as you play. This allows for highly personalized, responsive feedback, and also invites musicians to play in new, more intuitive ways across many more dimensions.
The ROLI Airwave experience is powered by the ROLI Music Intelligence (MI) platform. Building on core technologies developed over the last decade, the platform is powered by 5 “keys” of technology: sound, sight, touch — and now vision and voice. The ROLI MI platform will be the foundation of a roadmap of future intelligent products, starting with Airwave.
ROLI Airwave’s cameras can see your hands in 3D detail, bringing new capabilities to any ROLI keyboard. Just add Airwave to Piano M (formerly LUMI Keys) or Seaboard to unlock a new world of musical interaction. Double up with two Piano Ms or two Seaboard Ms to expand your playing surface.
In parallel, Airwave also works seamlessly with ROLI’s new Piano AI technology, utilising large language models alongside hand-tracking. Along with seeing your hands, your piano can now understand and respond to natural voice commands, provide real-time assistance, and more intuitive forms of interaction. Ask your ROLI Piano to show you a chord, a full piece of music, or give you some tips to level up your playing.
For music learners, ROLI Airwave, when combined with the light-up keys of ROLI Piano M, represents a complete music learning system that can teach good habits across all 5 principles of technique: posture; hand position; harmony; rhythm and dynamics. Akin to a personal, intelligent practice assistant, users can play the songs they love, play how and when they want, and learn through a friendly, engaging experience that’s personalised to their specific needs and skills.
For music creators, ROLI Airwave unlocks a whole new world of intuitive musical expression. With the simple raise of their hands, creators can transform a piano into a full orchestra, just as a conductor would, or morph mellow synth pads into searing leads with a tilt of a wrist. With Airwave, musicians can unlock deeper levels of creativity using 5 intuitive new dimensions: Air Raise; Air Glide; Air Tilt; Air Flex and Air Slide.
“With ROLI, musicians can explore new forms of sound and expression,” said Marco Parisi, globally renowned musician and producer for Fred Again, Ed Sheeran and will.i.am. “Airwave is a game-changer for creating music and in the way we perform. Every movement and gesture create a new sound unique to them, which will make music much more expressive, and could even lead to new genres of music.”
With ROLI Airwave and the Music Intelligence platform, ROLI is delivering on its mission to free the music, making it more accessible and joyful to learn, create and play. The launch of ROLI Airwave represents the dawn of a new era of intelligent, intuitive musical instruments for all.
The Ariwave is now available to pre-order for 299 EUR/USD at the ROLI website.
