Using Synthesia with Roli Lumi (or other led keyboards)

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danklim
Posts: 8

Post by danklim »

Hi, is there any way to use Synthesia with the Roli Lumi (or any other similar keyboards that light up)?

I would like to be able to use Synthesia with a couple of Lumi's attached to each other and make it so that the keys light up according to the notes in the MIDI file. It would be helpful to be able to do this so that I can easily hit the keys that are lighting up instead of (or in addition) to needing to look at the screen to see the keys that I need to hit in the Synthesia app window.

Thanks!
tsaylor
Posts: 2

Post by tsaylor »

I use the Yamaha EZ-220 from the "Our Favorite Keyboards" section of Synthesia's main site. It has light up keys which do the job nicely, and in practice modes they will remain lit until you hit the correct key. I find it very helpful for learning. Presumably some other light up keyboards would work as well but I've only tried this one.

The Roli looks very interesting but they seem to have gone with their own software infrastructure. Not sure if it has midi compatibility with other apps such as Synthesia.
Someone_764
Posts: 1

Post by Someone_764 »

Thumbs up for this. I would love to have the lumi key lighting functionality work seamless with synthesia.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

tsaylor wrote: 11-28-20 2:36 pmThe Roli looks very interesting but they seem to have gone with their own software infrastructure. Not sure if it has midi compatibility with other apps such as Synthesia.
It looks like someone was able to reverse-engineer most of the protocol (and it doesn't look much scarier than what Synthesia has to send to the Casio LK-S250 for its proprietary lights).

That said, at $150 per octave--and probably more development work to address multiple keyboards connected in a row--this feels like a strange, niche use case that might end up being more trouble to support over the longer term than it's worth. (A little bit like Android! :lol: )

Are there people out there spending $600 for 48 mushy keys? With only one of them, 24 keys is nearly useless for all but the simplest (usually single-handed) practice. So far it looks like there are at least two of you out there. I'm also not sure why the Lumi website still has it listed as a "pre-order" when there are reviews of the product out there from over a year ago. Did they pull it and are re-releasing it?

That sort of thing reminds me of the McCarthy Music situation where they released a cool new product and then not only stopped supporting it but essentially went out of business just a couple years later.

With Synthesia's development team size that rounds to one person, chasing the latest new hardware feels like it might not be the best strategy. :?
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Roli is real but their focus is on bleeding edge keyboards that extend the paradigm of keyboard instrument performance. I haven't looked closely at what you can do with a Roli keyboard but I doubt it is a good fit for use with Synthesia. My guess is that if you are ready to use a Roli keyboard you don't need Synthesia.
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
PianoMan55
Posts: 3

Post by PianoMan55 »

I found by using the Roli Dashboard, you can assign your Modes to single channel. The lights WILL change in STAGE mode color and it recognizes the notes played. Hope this helps someone! You can change it back to MPE channel when you're done. In Synthesia settings for lights, use channel 1.

Please add support for Roli studio!
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