This video, via ROLI, features Heen Wai performing a medley of some of the most iconic soundtrack themes of composer Hans Zimmer on the Seaboard RISE 2 MIDI controller.
Wai’s medley features themes from Gladiator, Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Sherlock Holmes and Dune. The performance does a good job of highlighting some of the unique expressive capabilities of the Seaboard RISE – especially the expressive pitch bends and modulation some of the leads – while also demonstrating that it can be used for standard piano performance.
Technical details:
The track is performed on Seaboard RISE 2, featuring SWAM Cello and Violin leads by Audio Modeling. The backing track was rearranged entirely with Equator2’s Orchestral Ensembles soundpack and Kontakt factory library percussion.
ugh, so sick of pirates.
Vangelis would have had a riot with this..
The Osmose is getting more of the spotlight at the moment, but this demo makes it pretty clear that there are still worthwhile alternatives. It seems like you may have to feed the Seaboard a few specialty libraries to reach certain goals, but we’ll see how the Osmose plays out in this area after its had a decent breaking-in period.
If ROLI wasn’t so over the top with their marketing it probably would’ve been a far greater success I think. It seemed the owners cared more about fancy lifestyles than deliver top notch quality. So far Expressive E seems to do a far better job making good products at ‘affordable’ prices and keeping customers happy. (even when a product is delay for 3 years). It doesn’t mean ROLI is doomed yet but from the looks of it the Lumi is booking no success and the updated Seaboards Rise are still overpriced and don’t really bring much new stuff to the table.
Just to be clear the Osmose and Seaboard are of course 2 very different beasts. Osmose is in a way more traditional but I see that as a big plus as anyone playing keys can easily get something meaningful out of it while with the Seaboard this is going to take months of training and still you wouldn’t get the same results. (also things that wouldn’t be possible on the Osmose). Maybe if they design a more affordable Rise or one that’s easy and cheap to repair I think they’ll have better success. And they should stop pushing their users into their ecosystem. Nobody wants to be part of that.
Not plugged in. Lolz. Is it wireless? Run on batteries? Looks more like audio played over video to me.
Yes, it has an internal battery and can do MIDI over bluetooth. There is clearly some backing material he is playing to, but you can do what he is doing in the video no problem.
I love my Seaboard. I’ve been following the Expressive E although it is a bit like apples and oranges with the Osmose built in engine. The Expressive E looks great as far as the keybed goes but it doesn’t look like the glide implementation is as versitile and I don’t see any slide capabilities at all so it is missing some of the expressivity potential that the Seaboard has, at least at first glance. But I’m glad to see more instruments like these coming out.