Hello Everyone. I'm 48 hours deep into some serious experimentation with the ROLI Seaboard Rise (49 keywave), and I thought I'd share my experience so far using VEPro and VIPro:

The expressive control is amazing, but unfortunately VIPro isn't really built to take advantage of many of the features quite yet. The Rise has a system that allows 5 dimensions of expression, those being Strike (initial velocity), Glide (along the horizontal axis of the keywaves), Slide (along the vertical axis of each keywave), Press (continuous pressure while touching the keywave) and Lift (velocity upon release of a keywave).

If you really want to understand how to unlock the magic of the Rise controller, you need to truly understand its inherent multi-timbral nature (not to be confused with polyphonic) and how it communicates its MIDI information. Here is a good starting point:

https://support.roli.com/article/how-the-seaboard-handles-midi/
https://support.roli.com/article/multi-timbral-instruments/

The following is a configuration that I used to get fair results with a Dimension Strings Ensemble of 6 cellos (3 chairs). Although this is far from perfect, here is what I did to configure my setup, which includes the Roli Seaboard Rise 49, Roli Dashboard software, Cubase Pro 8.5, Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 and Vienna Instruments Pro 2.

1. Open the ROLI DASHBOARD software and under MIDI SETTINGS: Channel Mode = MULTI, MPE = OFF, RANGE FROM = 1 to 3, GLIDE/SLIDE = Last Note, Press Mode = Polyphonic Aftertouch.

2. Open Cubase Pro and add an instance of Vienna Pro Ensemble 5 and connect to your server instance. Configure with MIDI Channel = ANY. Make sure you choose the Roli Seaboard as your MIDI controller.

3. Under Note Expression assign Poly Pressure to CC75 (or some other unused, arbitrary channel).

4. Open Vienna Ensemble and configure 3 instances of Vienna Instruments Pro. Assign those instances to Channels 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Add your instrument/ensemble (I choose to use Cello Desk 1, Cello Desk 2 and Cello Desk 3, respectively for each channel). Choose a legato patch with no vibrato.

5. Open each VIPro channel and assign the following in Vienna Instruments controls: Program the PRESS dimension on the ROLI by assigning that to Velocity X-Fade (ON) = CC75. Program the GLIDE dimension on the ROLI by assigning Pitch Bend = Wheel. Program the SLIDE dimension on the ROLI by assigning some other VIPro control to CC74. I experimented with assigning tuning, humanization, attack and slot crossfade which all give very different results.

The above should give you a multi-timbral configuration that works really well for sustained 3-voice chords with independent crossfade and pitch controls for each voice/key.

So, the above is far from perfect but hopefully is a starting point for experiments.

What's missing?

First, a mismatch between the pitch wheel range that ROLI supports (minimum of 12 semitones) and what Vienna Instruments supports (maximum of 2 semitones). The glide dimention simply won't work right until those configurations can be matched.

Second, Vienna Instruments has no support for Polyphonic Aftertouch or Poly Pressure. This is why we had to do the trick above in Step #3, which essentially translates those values to an assigned CC message (CC 75 in the example above).

Third, I'm not sure how the LIFT dimension (note off) can be leveraged in VIPro (if its of any use) but it would be great to hear some creative ideas).

Regards,

Jason T. Shannon
Composer & Technologist
Tunewelders Music
jason@tunewelders.com
www.tunewelders.com
www.jasontoddshannon.com

I'd love to hear from anyone out there who has had good success with Roli integration.  I thought I read on another forum that Polyphonic Aftertouch and Poly Pressure may be something that would be integrated into future versions of VIPro.  A successful integration of that would really change the game.  Is that valid?

For what it is worth, I'd happily sign up as a beta tester of that feature!  Thank you.

Hi Jason
thanks a lot for your post. I will try it this evening and I will write you how it works. I have also discover some useful things with roli, so I will write it here during this week. Yes - aftertouch works very well and it brings to Vienna samples live :) 

Let's stay in touch and discover Roli together!

Pavel Kalina
www.pavelkalina.com
www.musartedo.com
kalina.pavel@gmail.com

That sounds great, Pavel! It would be great to hear about some of the things you've learned.

In addition to the information above, I talked to Dave at Roli and he let me know that currently the only way to deal with the pitch bend mismatch is to use a MIDI modifier/transform function in the DAW to scale the pitch bend range. I'm going to try that later today and will report back.

Future updates may make integration easier.

Regards,
Jason T. Shannon
Composer & Technologist
Tunewelders Music
jason@tunewelders.com">jason@tunewelders.com
www.tunewelders.com
www.jasontoddshannon.com

Hi Jason

I was also speak with Dave. He gave me consultation about aftertouch etc. and it works. But he also told me that there is a possibility of programming Glide and that there is a way how to transmit this Glide messages to Vienna. But that's all I know and I didn't succesed in programming that.

If you will speak with Dave, try to ask him about this. Maybe he coul make for us a manual how to programm Glide to make on string etc.

Have a nice weekend and if I will have some new informations I will write it here.

Best regrads

Pavel Kalina

What is the intention behind the min of one octave for the pitch dimension of the roli? The limit to 2 semitones within VI is well chosen, as a further simple pitch shifting will give unnatural results. The concept of VSL is that instruments that are capable of seamless portamentos have dedicated samples therefore, e.g. portamento for strings, glissando for trombones. The concept also involves that you know in advance what interval you will be gliding, so that the proper transition recording will be triggered.

The VSL instruments never were meant for live playing. It would require a total new concept for sample-treatment to be implemented. Samplemodelings The Trombone has this technique for +/-3 semitones with seamless phasing-free blending between all recorded semitones inbetween. So it's not just a matter of adjusting one simple parameter boundary.

To me it seems the roli is much more targeting electronic sounds where a free portamento can simply be done using the algorithms of the synths.

MassMover, thanks for your feedback. The intention is one having more to do with scale alignment between the Roli and Vienna Instruments rather than a desire to pitch bend more than 2 semitones. Quite simply, I want a glide of a semitone on the Roli to sound a semitone pitch bend in VI. In the current release, these are misaligned.

I definitely understand your point about portamento and glissando samples, and I agree that the pitch bend isn't a replacement for those. What I will offer is this. Getting the pitch bend aligned between the Roli (glide dimension) and VI opens up all kinds of human performance options. For instance, this would allow you to play your own vibrato on stringed instruments. It would allow a new dimension of humanization due to the fact that the keywave is more like a fretboard (an unfretted fretboard, that is) than a keyboard key, which means you can access all kinds of tuning and pitch effects by playing slightly off center of the keywave.

If you combine the above with the ability to control x-fade velocity with the poly pressure dimension of the Roli, it really does open up some incredible opportunities for real-time, expressive performance control.

It is all experimental at this point, but it should be interesting to see how it all develops.

Regards,
Jason T. Shannon
Composer & Technologist
Tunewelders Music
jason@tunewelders.com">jason@tunewelders.com
www.tunewelders.com
www.jasontoddshannon.com

Hi Jason,

I am so far using an ordinary keyboard, but the Seaboard looks very interesting. I have two questions:

- How well can one control the pressure dimension? Is it possible to reproducibly dial a given value (say within an error range of 5 or 10)? How does it compare to a good keyboard action with aftertouch?

- Does the slide dimension work only after the key is triggered, or can one trigger a different sound depending on where one hits the wave (vertical position)? I.e. is the corresponding controller sent already simultaneously with the note-on event or only once one starts sliding? 

Yes, (mono/poly-)pressure is great to control dynamic changes via the (unfortunately not polyphonic) velocity x-fade parameter. The problem is that standardly in VI one would loose note-on velocity when using velocity x-fade. I have created a small midi-processing Macro in Logic to use both note-on velocity and aftertouch (note-on velocity as usual sets the initial dynamics of a note and aftertouch subsequently in-/decreases it relatively). This strongly increases the expressive capabilities and feels much more natural than moving an additional slider.

Moreover I am using custom VI presets that for each orchestral instrument react to two more continuous controllers: cell x-fade controls the section size (e.g. blending  orchestral and chamber string) and another controller “quasi-continuously” blends different articulation patches using the 12 cells of a matrix (each cell with distinct mixer levels). The latter method allows to blend even more than two patches - e.g. going (basically) continuously from a patch with a soft to one with a normal to one with a hard attack. The possibility to control velocity plus these three continuous controllers with a single finger using the different dimensions of a keywave sounds very tempting and I wonder if this is feasible with the Seaboard.

Cheers

Kai

Hi, I found a way !

Buy the Libary from "Samplemodeling", thats work with Roli.

Look at here, is a amazing live perfomance !

http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/technology.php

I wait for VIPro3 for Roli …

Regards, José

Jose, thanks for the link.  That is interesting to see.  I think most people on this board, however, are going to be more interested in integration with VSL products specifically.  I imagine that many on this thread have invested a great deal and believe in the quality and detail of VSL products. 

However, it is great to know that the ROLI is gaining support!