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  • Products of Interest

ROLI Blocks Modular Music System

UK company ROLI is best known for its Seaboard continuous-surface keyboard instruments (see Products of Interest in CMJ 38(1) and 40(1)). Its latest product is a modular music system called Blocks, a set of connectable touch-sensitive playing surfaces. There are currently three different units available: the Lightpad, the Live Block, and the Loop Block (see Figure 1). Each of the Blocks is small enough to fit in the user’s hand. They connect magnetically, allowing the user to easily expand their system. The devices connect to iOS devices using Bluetooth and they require ROLI’s free iOS app, Noise.

The Lightpad Block is a 94 × 94 mm square block with 225 RGB LEDs. It has a pressure-sensitive surface with three main configurations: a 2 × 2 drum-kit grid with four available sounds, a 4 × 4 drum-kit grid with 16 sounds, or a 5 × 5 grid for playing melodic/pitched sounds with different colors used for each note of the scale.

Users can strike the surface to sound a note, slide their finger across to create a pitch bend, slide up or down to modulate the sound, and press harder on the surface to increase the volume. The speed at which they lift their finger from the surface will affect the resonance of the sound. More than 100 sounds are available, including acoustic, synthetic, and percussion sounds.

A Learn Mode uses LEDs on the playing surface to guide users and help them learn the gestures needed for creating music on the device. The notes of the scale can also be displayed using different-colored LEDs on the grid; users can choose from 15 different scales in the iOS app. In addition, chords and arpeggios can be set to automatically play and sequences can be recorded and looped.

The Live and Loop Blocks are designed with performance in mind. They activate features that are available in the Noise app but provide a hardware device with buttons and controls to do so. The Live Block has buttons for functions such as selecting scale, switching octaves, triggering chords and arpeggios, sustaining notes, and selecting volume. It can be connected to any of the four sides of the Lightpad Block and the setup can be reconfigured mid-song if required. The Loop Block functions similarly and it has buttons for recording and playing back loops, toggling between loops and tracks, setting the tempo, quantizing loops, and adjusting the volume.

The Lightpad, Live, and Loop Blocks are listed for US$ 179.95, US$ 79.95, and US$ 79.95, respectively. Contact: ROLI, 2 Glebe Road, Dalston, London E8 4BD, UK; Web roli.com.


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Figure 1.

The ROLI Lightpad Block connected to a Live Block.

Neyrink Spill Surround Plug-In for Pro Tools

Neyrinck’s Spill plug-in is designed to allow the user to quickly and easily [End Page 87] adjust the channel levels on surround audio and bus tracks in Pro Tools. It is available in AAX Native, DSP, and AudioSuite formats. The plug-in can be inserted onto multi-channel tracks from stereo to 7.1-surround formats and onto auxiliary and master tracks. It offers the user control of eight faders and gain values and includes channel metering. The faders can be easily grouped for quick adjustment of surround channels. The fader levels and the Bypass function can be automated within Pro Tools so that the settings only apply to specific sections of a mix.

An iOS app, V-Plugin, can also be used to control the Spill plug-in from iOS devices. The user can select a track name from a list of tracks to have immediate access to channel levels without needing to open a plug-in window on the computer. The plug-in can also be used in conjunction with Avid’s S6 and S4 control surfaces and can give them access to individual channels of a multi-track channel or bus.

The Spill plug-in is available for individual purchase and is included in Neyrinck’s V-Control Pro Bundle, which also features V-Control Pro, the V...

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