Buy Seaboard Block before April 3 and get full versions of Equator and Strobe2 for free :)

[joeyluck]

I can't recommend the Seaboard Block enough. And Roli has exceptional customer service. It's a great time to grab one.

At $299 without anything included, it's a steal. Throw in full versions of Equator and Strobe2; two amazing synths, both with MPE support, it's a no brainer IMO. You get a controller that introduces incredible expressiveness into your setup and a new, fun way of playing. And it can be connected via Bluetooth. It's really great

One downside of using the Seaboard Block with Reason, is Reason doesn't currently offer multimbral/MPE support. So, while playing in Reason, you can't take advantage of all the benefits of such an expressive controller (such as expressing notes individually, bending multiple notes in different directions of each other, etc).

But plugins like the SWAM instruments, and solo instruments work very well. Or playing anything where you aren't looking to express simultaneous notes individually; leads, bass lines, or playing in 'piano mode'

And if you are an iOS user, you also get lots of great stuff via Roli's Noise app (such as SWAM noisepacks).

I'm sure Reason will add support for MPE at some point. Particularly now that it's adopted by the MIDI Association to the MIDI specification.

Both Equator and Strobe2 are included as standalone with full MPE support.

https://roli.com/products/blocks/seaboard-block

[Quiloc Lim]

I fooled around with one of these at Sam Ash today & was very impressed. It was a different tactile experience with unexpected surprises while playing with it. Some amazing & some... not so much. However, the not so much part, I'm sure was my own inexperience with the Roli. The whole time I was playing with it I kept thinking "would it work with any Reason synths?"

And now I know.

I'll buy one when the Props add the support code for it, or whatever is current when that happens.

[demt]

Right!

[Catblack]

I think Propellerhead will add MPE support via a Player device, coupled with a Player device that adds support for VST Midi through an internal midi routing bus. So you could throw MPE support on an instrument and decide what the various signals do, perhaps using this player to decide the aftertouch (channel or poly) routing if you didn't have MPE. (And an internal midi bus so the MPE Player doesn't have to have cv outs.) I don't know if that makes sense, but I can't see them adding MPE support without it extending Reason and not having all the existing REs to be rewritten.

I would love a Seaboard Block, wish I could afford it this month!

[jayhosking]

OK, can somebody help me understand all this? (God, I am not as old as this sounds, I swear, only a marketing ignoramus.)

You buy a Seaboard Block. It comes with a couple of "Players" for 200+ presets on the computer. You can also use their "NOISE" app for most of those same presets, plus you can buy other packs (e.g. SWAM) for $10? But if you buy SWAM for the computer, they're $120+ each? And in any case, you're not getting MIDI out of these things for Reason, so it's either audio from the desktop or audio out of your phone via that NOISE app.

Is that all correct? I'm interested in the control surface and the unique ways to play and express, especially when it comes to "real" instruments. Plus $60 for SWAM woodwinds, saxes, treble quartet, bass quartet, flutes, and strings seems like a crazy good deal (even if you're getting audio only). I'm also interested in how it would change playing analogue synths, especially gliding on pitch. But am I getting all that right?