ROLI Lightpad Block Modular MIDI Controller

Shape any kind of music on one powerful surface

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the Lightpad Block packs more power than a roomful of instruments. When it’s paired with the NOISE app you can make any kind of music — drum beats, guitar leads, orchestral melodies — on its versatile surface. It’s totally approachable and easy to learn. So you can express the music inside of you — whether you play an instrument or not.

Touch Sound. It Glows.

Making music on the Lightpad Block is a delightful interaction of touch, sound, and light. Its silicone surface is pressure-responsive, and you shape sound by striking the surface, pressing into it, and moving your fingers around it. Not only do you touch sound. You also see it. The LED-illuminated surface glows, and each touch leaves a trace of light. Colorful grids guide you to make different kinds of music.

Strike, Glide, Slide, Press, Lift
The Lightpad Block gives you five ways to shape sound through touch. Strike the surface to sound a note, as you would on a piano key or a drum. Glide your fingers from side to side to bend the pitch, as violinists do. Slide up and down to modulate the sound. Press into the surface to deepen sounds, like a saxophone player does by breathing more. Lift off the surface at different speeds to change a sound’s resonance.

Learn to play
The easiest way to learn music is to see it right in front of you. In Learn Mode, Light Trails appear on the surface that guide you to make beats and melodies. Follow a few zigzags and end with a strike. You might not know it until you finish, but that’s a cool riff. Learn Mode teaches you the gestures for making music, so you can move more quickly to performing.

Drop some beats

The Lightpad Block is a beat-making machine. Choose a drum kit in NOISE. Tap the surface with your finger at different speeds and on different pads of the illuminated grid. You make beats just like you would on live drums. Choose a Groove Kit and drop some grooves simply by moving your fingers around the surface.

Take your beats to the next level
As you learn more you can do more with your beats. The NOISE app puts within reach techniques that electronic musicians use all the time. Record loops of your favorite beats — a bass drum here, a snare drum there — and build your loops into a track. You don’t need to be a DJ. But you might sound like one sooner than you think.

For more information visit https://roli.com/products/blocks/explore/lightpad