cm mini reviews
ROLI
Songmaker Kit Studio Edition £599.95
Web roli.com
Format Mac/PC, iOS
It’s hard to believe that ROLI have been making their unique touch-controlled hardware and software for over a decade now. In that time they’ve moved in price and size from super-expensive ‘five dimensions of touch’ Seaboard controller keyboards right down to the Block system that uses the same MPE touch system for some different ways to compose and play.
The Songmaker Kit Studio Edition is like a ‘best of’ covering all of the above, including the Seaboard Block keyboard – a much reduced in size version of the original Seaboard – and both the Lightpad and Live Blocks. In truth it’s a bunch of already-present technologies all held together in a neat-ish magnetic ‘Snapcase’. It is, supposedly a package that is more than the sum of its parts – which more than the sum of its parts – because it comes with significant software aimed at making it a ‘complete kit for creators’.
