No More Seaboard GRAND

US ROLI discontinues production of their flagship MPE keyboard 02/01/19

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ROLI has discontinued their Seaboard GRAND and posted this YouTube video which shows the evolution of ROLI founder Roland Lamb’s thinking in the days when he studied at London’s Royal College of Art. Here’s what they have to say…

The museum of ROLI history would put the Seaboard GRAND on a platform, center stage, under a spotlight. Launched in 2013, it was the first ROLI instrument. It dazzled the music world, winning fans from Hans Zimmer to Sound on Sound magazine to a high school band in Pennsylvania. It’s entered pop cultural history through La La Land with Ryan Gosling playing the Seaboard GRAND in John Legend’s band.

Iconically sleek and sinuous, more innovative than any keyboard in decades, it immediately won design and technology awards. “I saw this invention in a dream. Too bad someone had the idea first!” said a commentator on social media at the time.

ROLI founder Roland Lamb sketched the concept and built the prototypes. Like the inventions of the industrial revolution, the Seaboard GRAND was based on prior forms. But its integration of sensors, silicon, MIDI, and the gestural manipulation of sound was entirely new.

From the moment it launched — initially for $8,888 — there was one big question about the Seaboard GRAND: how would the technology become more accessible? Was there any way to make the Seaboard smaller, more portable, more approachable, more compatible with music software, and above all more affordable?

The decision to discontinue the Seaboard GRAND is a sign of how far ROLI has come with the Seaboard project. A fraction of the original’s size and cost, Seaboard Block and Seaboard RISE are by far the best-selling Seaboards ever made. They’re at the forefront of MIDI Polyphonic Expression — a movement that grew worldwide in 2018, involving dozens of music hardware and software makers.

We’ll continue to service the Seaboard GRAND, which is at the center of many musicians’ studios. But it will no longer be sold. Instead, we’ll focus on the more accessible devices that evolved from it — not only the Seaboard Block and Seaboard RISE but also the Lightpad Block, BLOCKS Kits, and the new music-making tools that we’re working on.

So at the end of 2018 we’re saluting the Seaboard GRAND. Surely the best sign of a musical instrument’s success is when it's the progenitor of many others. That’s a cause for celebration.

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