“It’s always hard to try to find the right innovation sweet spot, because you can do things that are too far ahead of the market”: ROLI CEO Roland Lamb on Airwave, setting music free and the challenges of innovating in today's industry

Since 2009, ROLI has become something of a byword MPE-based innovation, with uniquely designed instruments such as the La La Land-starring Seaboard offering more dimensions of control to musicians, and acclaim from the likes of Hans Zimmer, Grimes and - ROLI's former Chief Creative Officer - Pharrell Williams. Despite its status as one of the industry’s most celebrated boundary-pushers, the company has faced no shortage of challenges, namely its filing for administration in 2021, forcing a re-brand as Luminary, before a switch back to the original monicker.

As far as its CEO, the inventor and entrepreneur Roland Lamb, is concerned, ROLI is now a firmly re-established company. In his view, ROLI continues to drive a forward-facing path as a beacon for ‘freeing the music’ within people.

ROLI’s recently announced Airwave underlines this philosophy, positioning itself as a revolutionary way of both learning and interacting with music. Harnessing a series of 3D cameras, the device can map the position of the hands , granting further dimensions of expression and intuition.

We spoke to Roland in the wake of the Airwave announcement, intrigued to find out just how the company’s latest venture can ‘free’ the music…

MusicRadar: Hi Roland, the Airwave cements ROLI even further into the music education space that you’ve increasingly become a major player in. Was the Airwave concept envisioned as an educational concept from its inception?

Roland Lamb: “It's an interesting story, because when I first started working on the Seaboard, it really was about ‘how do we bring more expressiveness to piano and digital instruments?’ At that time, I actually looked into computer vision as a way of doing that. It was in the back of my mind as one possibility, but the technology and the processing requirements just didn't seem to be precise at that stage. Especially for understanding very subtle touches and directions. So, I went down the route of exploring more touch-based tech, which led to the Seaboard. But that seed had been planted. Years later I realised there was a key problem [that keyboard/piano learners] all needed to get around - how do you use the right finger at the right time and get good hand posture?.

ROLI Airwave: Turn movement into music - YouTube

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“I went back to that thought of, what if we could use computer vision? And at this point the tech was actually good enough. It had improved hugely over the years and we were at a a place where all of [what I first imagined] was possible. As soon as I started thinking about that, the question of expression also arose.

"So, yes, we are leaning in on the learning side. But I think what really happened was, as we went further and further in the development of Airwave, we started to think of this technology, ultimately as a platform technology.

“That means that it will have different applications, and learning will be just one application, and expression will be another application. There will be further applications still, because playing any musical instrument is all about your hands, whether you're learning it or you're playing it and creating micro-corrections and more depth. An instrument that can see and understand what you're doing with your hands is a fundamental upgrade.”

MR: With that in mind, I guess there's the novel prospect that a young music learner might start with Airwave and, when they’re ready to begin their artist journey, take it with them into into the creative world as an expressive instrument. I can’t really think of anything comparable…

RL: “Think about an iPad - you don't think the iPad is for ‘learners’ or the iPad is for ‘creators’. It's for everybody. it's a platform set of technology that includes camera, big screen, touch, etc. We now know that on that platform, many different applications can succeed.

“The nice thing about that is you can take your iPad with you through life. I’m actually traveling with my kids now, and when they were really young, they might have used it for games, now they're watching movies, they do their homework on it, and later, they'll do other things. We have the same vision for Airwave. Wouldn't it be amazing start building products that could sit in the living room. Kids could start learning with it, later maybe Dad can do a little bit of music production. As the kids get older, they can also start learning about creation and performance. I’m confident that computer vision is a necessary component for that [idea], and we feel really lucky to be the first people to do it [in our] marketplace.”

MR: Do you think something like Airwave is actually pretty vital for young people today, considering the mass of competing content and time-swallowing activities pulling people away from discovering music?

RL: “Absolutely. I think it's really important to look back, say 40 years ago. We were at a moment where, obviously there were no smartphones, and we had just reached the time of the electronic word processor. When you think of what's happened [over the years] to the electronic word processor, and the number of steps that that it has taken to become a modern laptop, before then moving into smartphones and tablets. But electronic keyboards, I mean, they're better than they were 40 years ago, but are they fundamentally different in terms of design?

“If you look at [the evolution] of gaming, and you look at all the other things that now compete with music that are digital, then it's no wonder that people are spending more time doing those kinds of things because modern digital tools are so well-designed. That's absolutely the aspiration for Airwave, building a modern, natively digital platform for music learning and creation that can basically make variance feel as seamlessly intuitive as so many of the other great digital experiences we have at our fingertips today.”

MR: With innovation in general, it’s surely pretty hard to get people to change the way they approach music, especially for those who’ve been doing it for a long time. How do you intend to sell this vision?

RL: “It's always hard to try to find the right innovation sweet spot, because you can do things that are too far ahead of the market. You can do things where you're really no staying ahead, and you're a couple steps behind. A lot of judgments go into that that are both about medium-term to long-term technology trends as well as the immediate market.

“Obviously, I want to balance all of these and try to get them all right. I think for us, innovation is in our bones. It's our spirit, it's what we do and and we need to make that our competitive advantage. As we've been taking a lot with this little rebrand that we did, bringing together our learning and creation into one platform. We said what we really want to do is ‘free the music’. We want more people to have more opportunities to engage in music.

“When we look at innovation, we have to look at it at two levels. We say, 'what's the platform-level innovation' and then 'what's your product innovation?' We have to try to make sure that our products deliver really deliver good value to our customers on day one.

“We'll be putting out some more videos and tutorials on how to use Airwave in the coming days, [to really help] with learning. We think we can make that easier, more efficient. In terms of existing artists and musicians, though we've been sort of focusing the attention at launch on what you can do with our Airwave player with its own native sounds from Equator (ROLI’s signature synth).”

“Airwave has six dimensions, and those could be mapped to any [software parameter]. That’s going to add a lot of ecosystem value for composers, producers and others. Based on the testing that we've done, we're pretty confident that Airwave’s day one product value will be high.

“But you’re completely right - innovation is hard, and we have tried so many different sort of ways of producing the software and form factors for the hardware, and they haven't all been right. Some of those things you know you have to leave on the cutting floor, but it's who we are and what we like to do. So we try to take it on the chin.”

MR: At your product launch [at London’s Fabric nightclub] one of the slides that you displayed in your keynote really resonated - it was illustrating the idea that so many people out there have music ‘inside’ of them, but lack the ability to unlock it within themselves. Would you say that belief is central to ROLI's mission to ‘set the music free.’ And, do you think that that is something that a lot of people in the industry have kind of lost sight of?

RL: “I don't want to speak in any pejorative way about all the amazing folks who work in this industry, because actually, I think everybody in the music industry wants people to create music. But, I will say that maybe it's easy for companies to get a little bit too zoomed in, if you know what I mean, on one particular customer. Every single person who is a creator was once a learner, and it probably wasn't that long ago. I think that we companies naturally [operate] in micro segments, and it makes for a disconnected, overall musical journey.

“There’s actually very few other companies that have that wider arc. But, when you look more at music tech companies, they pretty much are either looking at learning or looking at creation - and they speak to those audiences in completely different ways. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to speak to these audiences at a broad level. With one voice? Because actually what's bringing us on the love of music?

“This feels like a moment, like when we launched the first Seaboard where we're doing something that we know is ahead of the market. Because [Airwave] is so intuitive and straightforward and has these values, we really believe that the market will see it and understand it. There's so many releases that happen in the industry which you [at MusicRadar] cover, but are fundamentally the same, slightly repackaged with slightly new features and slightly new configurations, which are important, you know. But I think with products like Airwave, it's obvious we're doing something very, very different.”

MR: So, with Airwave leading the charge, do you hope that the industry takes note, follows your footsteps and develops further tech for music-makers with 3D tracking built-in?

RL “Well, not too soon! I've never figured out how to square the circle on this, because I think, you know, as a CEO, building a business, obviously we want to get ahead and retain our kind of advantages and so forth. But, as as an inventor, many of the things that I have invented have been copied elsewhere, you know, or adapted or changed - which I generally take as a compliment. I think it means that we were on to something.

“We were not the first to be looking at more expressive instruments. Of course, the Haken Audio Continuum came well before us, amongst many others. But, we were really ahead of our time with the Seaboard, and we played a big role in pioneering MPE. Now that’s a well-recognised part of electronic music production.

“Everyone's involved in it and supports it in different ways. We're really proud to have been key pioneers in that process. Similarly, I think Airwave is actually a next generation technology that goes beyond MPE. There's such incredibly valuable features that simply cannot be done without computer vision.”

For more information on Airwave (which launches early next year) and ROLI in general head over to their website.