Roli Seaboard - any experience here?

thecolourbox

Having swooned over the amazing sounding Little Wing and Purple Rain videos featuring this amazing bit of kit, it has set the gas cogs turning and making me start the process of justifying it to myself to get one.

Anybody here got one? Used one? Heard any experience from friends etc?

I'm a piano player originally so thinking I may have the dexterity skills so main difficulty would be in the detection of instruments and sounds to use with it, and adapting my brain processes to combine guitar thinking with piano hand playing

Because they are awesome here are the vids again

Stuckfast

I've toyed around with the original Seaboard Grand, though my keyboard skills are limited, to put it politely. I found it quite different from playing a conventional keyboard, and you do need to adapt your technique, both to take advantage of its distinctive features and to avoid triggering them by accident. Having said that, if you stick to fairly simple parts it doesn't take long before you can get it to do some pretty cool stuff. I reckon you could do a pretty convincing pedal steel emulation for instance, which is more or less impossible on normal keyboards.

My main reservations about the Grand are to do with the lack of user control and feedback. It appears to be modelled on that black spaceship in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy except that nothing even lights up black -- there's nothing to tell you what patch is selected, no editing functions, etc. And at the time when I tried it, there weren't many virtual instruments that could take advantage of it as a controller. That may have changed now, and newer Seaboards might offer more control, I'm not sure.

wave100

My only experience was about 30 mins spent playing the 25 note Rise in a shop. I really liked it and found it very intuitive, however it's long suit was not playing nice piano parts, a regular keyboard would still be better for that kind of thing. However for realistic strings and brass, and playing synth sounds expressively I found it exceptional, as the vids above demonstrate. It (or most likely the cheapest version) is number 2 on my GAS list after a Push 2. As you say, a combination of keyboard and guitar sensibilities.
MPE is now part of the MIDI spec, I believe, so support is only going to increase - the newly released Cubase 10 supports it natively, Moog Model 15 iPad app also supports it and I think the synth that comes with the full version sounds pretty good. I have watched videos on the Roli site about setting it up with different hosts/ instruments but TBH it does look like a faff.
The only thing that has put me off really is the price of admission...

Funkfingers

@thecolourbox ; Wait a week, then, drop GavRichList a PM.

thecolourbox

Funkfingers said:

@thecolourbox ; Wait a week, then, drop GavRichList a PM.

haha!

GavRichList

Fair shout. Mines bought and paid for. 

goldtop

Not directly equivalent - but also with MPE - I bought a Linnstrument. Completely different feel - the whole playing surface is rigid. That feels very odd at first.

But I bought that because the Linnstrument doesn't have a piano layout - I wanted to get away from my typical finger/chord/arp shapes - not properly trained and rather cliched! And for that it's perfect - you can span two octaves or more with one hand, plus there's all the extra expression. I find I work by ear rather than even thinking about scales/notes/etc.

I write music (OK, that sounds pompous... I make up stuff that sounds interesting) that I just wouldn't write on guitar or piano keys. Which was worth the price of admission.

WiresDreamDisasters

Funkfingers

thecolourbox said:

Funkfingers said:

@thecolourbox ; Wait a week, then, drop GavRichList a PM.

haha!

GavRichList said:

Fair shout. Mines bought and paid for. 

My comment was only intended in the sense that one of you might be able to convey some helpful advise to the other about the Seaboard. Maybe, even, one of your brief video demonstrations.

It should not be inferred that anyone on tFB has a high turnover rate for gear purchases.

As it turns out, goldtop’s post does a thorough job of explaining the advantages of adopting an unconventional MIDI Controller instrument.

The other approach is to do something different with one’s existing instruments. Nashville High Tuning turns conventional guitar chord shapes into interesting note clusters. Devices such as the Roland VG99 and BOSS SY300 allow alternate tunings in the box without restringing/retuning the guitar itself. Parallel Fifths, Fripp’s New Standard Tuning and some of Joni Mitchell’s open tunings should all yield interesting results. 

Funkfingers

Back on track.