ROLI on the Seaboard BLOCK M: “MPE has become accepted in many producer’s workflows — MIDI 2.0 will be another big step forward”Music makers will always look for ways to express themselves more creatively but, in the field of electronic and software-based music, it’s all too easy to run up against the limitations of the 40-year-old MIDI specification. When ROLI created the Seaboard Grand in 2013, founder Roland Lamb envisioned an instrument that re-imagined how people could perform music using a touch surface; a whole new way to control software instruments. Winning a number of high-profile fans including Pharrell Williams, the company went on to release more hardware, including the Blocks controllers and the Seaboard Rise and Block, while beefing up its arsenal of software instruments.

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Several years on — and having experienced bankruptcy — the company came back with the Seaboard Rise 2 in 2023 and has now unveiled its latest innovation, the Seaboard Block M. An evolution of the original Seaboard Block, which was released in 2017, it’s aimed at performers and producers who want to take their creations to new levels with the 5D Touch technology that provides more intuitive and far-reaching control than regular MIDI devices can. And, do it from anywhere. It keeps everything users loved about the original Seaboard Block but adds a hardware MIDI out for better studio integration, as well as more advanced customisation of the instrument’s response to your input.
“My deepest interest is understanding what musical instruments have been, are, and can be,” says ROLI founder and CEO, Roland Lamb. “I see musical instruments as input/output devices where the input is human movement and gestures and the output is sound and music.”
ROLI Seaboard Block M. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Italian production duo Parisi (brothers Marco and Jack Parisi) have been using ROLI products since their inception, and even had some valuable input into the design of the original Seaboard, Marco says, “I’d been shown a prototype of the original Seaboard and immediately knew this was the kind of instrument I’d been looking for my whole life. You could be expressive with it in ways that just hadn’t been possible before.
“I was invited to meet Roland, the founder, and around 2012 ROLI offered me a job doing demos for investors and artists. I became involved in the development of the instruments – the Seaboard Rise and then the Seaboard Block.”
Jack picks up the story: “I moved to London to join Marco around 2016 and being a drummer, I loved the Blocks units — I joined the company too and we travelled the world doing demos.”

The Block M sports a similar design to its predecessor but has some crucial differences — the most obvious being a hardware MIDI and CV output for connecting the instrument to other hardware, such as modular synths. Enter product manager for ROLI, Adam Pollard. “The main change is the MIDI output. We had the Seaboard Block design that we knew worked really well — I think it was our best-selling keyboard. We stopped selling it for a while but it was the most-requested one people were asking us to bring back.
“We didn’t feel like it needed redesigning in terms of the fundamental way the key surface plays, but adding the MIDI output felt like a very natural thing to do. We also added that to the Rise 2 that came out roughly a year before.”
And what about changes to the playing surface? The keywaves are rubberized, multitouch-sensitive zones that are a little like piano keys but have no physical divide between them, enabling freeform performances. Pollard continues, “We’ve tweaked the playability, but, fundamentally, it’s still the same keywave surface as the original. That key surface is slightly different to the Seaboard Rise but it’s conceptually the same in terms of how you approach it musically.”
There’s also ROLI’s stable of software — Equator for sound design, Cypher and Strobe, plus sound packs — that’s designed to integrate tightly with the MPE MIDI that the Seaboard Block M can output. And solid and growing support for the MPE format among all major DAWs and an ever-increasing number of third-party software instruments. Pollard explains, “When the Seaboard Block first came out, MPE was a bit of a headache. I remember when I first used the original with Ableton Live. I had to set up a template to get it working. But these days, almost every popular software synthesiser supports MPE so it’s just plug and play with your favourite environments. The one main exception for now is Kontakt instruments.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Roland Lamb adds that “the support for MPE has been nothing short of astonishing. We see hundreds of applications that support MPE and it’s become a very much accepted part of many producer workflows. Some DAWs handle MPE editing better than others and there’s still work to be done to make MPE a really natural part of every workflow. But, we’re definitely getting there and I think MIDI 2.0 will be another big step in that direction.”
The ROLI founder believes that MIDI 2.0 is “a huge step forward” and that the MIDI Association (who are spearheading MIDI 2.0), has “done a wonderful job.”
“I hope we can move forward with the same kind of adoption that we have with MPE, which will ultimately make expressive and creative music-making easier for everyone in the ecosystem.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Alongside expressive playing, the Seaboard Block M is designed to be super-portable, with an onboard battery and its ability to connect to your laptop wirelessly or over USB. But it’s also a very different experience to playing a regular keyboard, so how do users acclimatise to it? Do they use the ‘Piano’ mode, toggled in the Dashboard app, to simplify its responses and make your finger movements a little less far-reaching in their effects?
“Piano mode is the easiest way to start,” says Pollard. “And then it’s almost like a spectrum. So you could for example just turn down the sensitivity of the five parameters in the Dashboard app. In those first hours and days and weeks, you’re getting used to this new method of control. But then, over time, it becomes more familiar and you can turn the sensitivity back up.”
And for experienced players, Marco offers a window into how he approachers performance with the Seaboard Block M. “There are two main ways I use the keyboard. One is to replicate acoustic instruments, and there’s nothing else in the world that can do that like this instrument does. It’s the first time electronic music has become as expressive as acoustic instruments. And I think the keyboard absolutely set that bar incredibly high and is still unbeaten today for me.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
He continues, “I don’t play keyboards any more. For me, a piano is a square and you have four points — but ROLI’s instrument is a circle, so you have infinite points. Still, people haven’t realised how deep this instrument is.”
“And then”, Jack adds, “from an electronic sound design point of view it’s absolutely outstanding. The amount of in-depth control you have and also the micro values that you can achieve — there’s nothing like it.” Marco chimes back in: “When I think about the keyboard, I don’t think about it like an electronic instrument. I think about it like an acoustic instrument — I compare the keyboard to a guitar or a cello.”
The duo have also used the Seaboards on some big records, as Marco continues. “Sometimes when we record strings we use the audio modelling software, it’s all physical modelling. There are a few records from Ed Sheeran that we played brass and strings on and it’s all expressive playing from the keyboards, but nobody can tell. We actually had to check when we heard the finished record that they hadn’t replaced our parts with real acoustic instruments.”
We ask Roland and Pollard about ROLI’s plans for the future and his views on developing for the iOS platform, where currently the company’s offerings have remained static for some years. While we don’t elicit any scoops about future products (it’s rare that you do), we learn that the company has one eye on the iPad, though nothing is imminent.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“Earlier on with Blocks, we put a lot of attention into iOS. And then more recently, as we’ve been focusing on the Seaboard Rise, our attention has been more on desktop. Now that we’re launching the Seaboard Block M, we’re beginning to focus back on our iOS offering and will be developing new products for release on those platforms in the near future.”
“At some point, I do feel the music creation industry will embrace tablets and phones and watches more,” Pollard says. “There are lots of successful examples of apps that are doing fascinating things on the platforms; it’s just 10 to 20 years behind the desktop. It’s literally our job to explore all these things and keep an eye on everything so pretty much anything you can imagine — whether it’s new devices or new computing platforms — we have looked into at some point because we always want to be on the cutting edge.”
And what would Parisi like to see regarding the future of the Seaboard Block? “From a physical point of view,” says Marco, “the keyboard is pretty incredible. If I had to think of something, one thing I struggle with is rhythmic guitars, so maybe some kind of method where you could pick? Or maybe in the future, some way where the keyboard knows when you’re about to strike it. But really, the development could be more on the software side of things, more innovative instruments being developed in future.”
The last word goes to Roland Lamb: “Going forward, the capability set that we’ve developed to innovate across hardware, software, sound and other forms of content puts us in a unique position to release powerfully integrated products — which is exactly what we plan to do.”

It’s no surprise that the portable Seaboard was the instrument that ROLI’s users and fans wanted resurrected the most. More compact than the Rise 2 and significantly more affordable at just $349/£299, it’s far more advanced than the LUMI Keys hardware that the company still makes for beginners but more accessible than the flagship Rise 2. It’s a seriously expressive instrument but also one you can have fun with.
As the industry moves gradually towards widening support for MPE, ROLI’s 5D touch system, pioneered years ago, looks set to be at the forefront of it. And at this new, much more accessible price point, the Seaboard Block M is sure to find its way into many more studios.
 
Find out more about the ROLI Seaboard Block M at roli.com
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