ROLI | Beatmaker Kit - Wireless, Expressive Beat Making Bundle| Finger Drum and Create Dynamic Melodies on Lightpad Block, Access Production Controls With Loop Block | Learning Software Included

Like the overall ease of usage! Great product. Would recommend to others

Everything is great , new and cean , the delivery of dhl been delayed for 1 day but everything else is good .

Super cool tech and incredibly portable (battery lasts long too). The contents are exactly as described. It's a very easy set-up and there are tons of videos and instructions to walk you through setting up the block all the way through how to use it with a free trial of Melodics. The only catch is to create your pad presets/configurations and/or play Melodics, you will need your computer. They have added a bunch of feature to the app that makes managing the block easy on the fly but there are still features that are only accessible via desktop. Luckily it's pretty intuitive and you don't have to change things too often. Can't wait to see what ROLI comes out with next!

Only used it for a week and already using it for music and tracks

This could be a great product but it seems Roli's engineers are not working together which makes for an awful onboarding experience.Got the blocks, single cable makes it straightforward to connect. Plugged in, blocks are... dead! After some playing around it appears they need to be charged to some minimal level before any connection can be made. Anything I have ever purchased with Li-ion batteries would be charged to at least 30%, more common is 70%. Not Roli's blocks. On top, charging goes slow even on a 2Amp USB port. After 3hrs they are almost full. Nuts!Now with fully charged blocks we can let loose right? Nope. Without any instructions what's next, roli's site says I need to register the products. This is done by downloading software which permanently needs to stay on the computer. This software seems to be part of a "lets make sure the users of our products don't steal our stuff" strategy - i.e., it seems to be some underhanded software dongle, sucks! Anyway, trying the register the product, the box has a little card with a number on it - I take it this it the registration number? The number has letters and digits, one of which is a 0 (zero) or an capital "O". I can't make up which so type a cap-O. The software bleeps back with "your product as already been registered". Since that's not quite true, I decide to type in "adsf" -cleary a wrong registration number- to understand what failure looks like in this software but... the stupid software accepts it as a valid registration. No way to remove it or back out. Luckily, it does appear I can use the software to check the devices.Oh, after poking around more, it looks like I need Roli Dashboard software too - Roli does not tell me this, google did. With the dashboard software running, it connects to my blocks yay! Oh wait no, it just connects to my loop block, not the lightpad. The lightpad is dark but pressing on it somehow does send MIDI to Logic Pro as it generates notes, wacky! Lots of fiddling and turning on/off the blocks (where is that switch, how does that switch work?) and some time later I have both blocks lighting up and dashboard software recognizing both. I also see these blocks can be connected via BlueTooth. And after some play with BT, I got both to work without the USB cable. OK, off to the races!Well, no. Some more googling teaches me I need "Apps" to program the lightpad. The software shows 6 apps, 1 of them a game (why do I EVER care for a game app - that is not why I spend 300 bucks for to play a crappy game!). The happy lady who does a demo video on YouTube tells me to load my Logic Pro control app... which I don't have. Pressing all the buttons, going on the support site, nothing tells me how to download more of these lightpad apps. Perhaps I should restart the software then?After the software restart, the dashboard shows I have no blocks connected - even though they are! Whatever I do, it does not recognize the blocks connecting via BlueTooth anymore. Though I can press the lightpad buttons and Logic Pro happily plays stuff. A MIDI monitor software I am running also confirms all is well supposedly, just the dashboard software is off in the weeds. Connecting the USB cable instantly shows the blocks in the dashboard software and at the same time I now have a Logic Pro app for the lightpad. How did that happen?Over the course of the day playing with the blocks, the lightpad or loop control block alternatively lose connection or simply do not show in the Dashboard software. Also selecting an app for the lightpad may or may not show the various modes for it. Some apps do not have modes but ones that do are not shown consistently.At this point, the software and connection to the blocks remains untrustworthy and obscure in its use. The demo videos on Roli's site are laughably incomplete - a simple to the point instruction would leave one more educated on how it is supposed to work than their videos. However, the real complication is that these devices and software are ridiculously unstable and bug ridden. Whilst the hardware looks and feels nice, the software is a forgotten world to Roli. So much potential and great ideas wasted because of their lack of software quality control.So if you are considering this device (or possibly other Roli products), are you OK with banging your head against the wall and accepting instability as part of your play? Are you so attracted to the _potential_ of this device that you are going to overlook the problems with it? Then go for it! If you are not an engineer and don't want to become one and want to play, create, and entertain. Look somewhere else.EDIT:I have decided to return these blocks. The software is ultra crappy, the functionality of the blocks not well explained (sorry I am not going through video after video where the Roli person is riffing on his own music again and again), I don't like the software dongle aspect of the registration process (my bad, should have read up on that) and the biggest reason is that these units cannot be trusted to work consistently. However slick the videos make Roli look, I do not think professional work can be done with these in a reliable manner.

SOOOO, I would say that this and the seaboard are almost pointless because the apps are free, and they work the same. also its impossible to make a full track with breakdowns, and add ons, without having other interfaces such as ableton, and maybe garage band. Also keep the phone or your ipad charged, because you can not get any sound out of these with out the apps running. You feel like you wasted your money when you realize you have 2 more bluetooth blocks, and you cant switch youre existing seaboard and pad to the other open apps, so you just play the other 2 beats on your phone or ipad. You realize at that moment that you could play all 4 spots from the phone or ipad. The seaboard and rolipad are just for cosmetics, or having the physical machines in front of you, because as stated before they do the same as the apps. Admittedly I am disappointed.

I was hoping these little blocks could be used simply and quickly to make drum loops and songs, but everything about them is difficult.The Beatmaker Kit, which is made up of the Lightpad Block M and the Loop Block, is an interesting idea which just doesn't work very well. The primary device is the Lightpad Block, which musically operates as a pad (so you can play drums or other sampled instruments on it), but can also be used as a minimal controller for certain DAWS (at least Garageband and Logic). It apparently can also be programmed to control other software, but that is beyond my skill and knowledge as a beginner with this device.I bought the Beatmaker Kit because I was looking for a small, simple device for making drum tracks, and, on the surface, it seemed like this could be the thing. But, as discussed below, the included software ranges from bad to ok. More significantly, the surface of the Lightpad M, a kind of hard, malleable plastic, is just not very sensitive. When tapping from softest to hardest (whether in MPE or regular MIDI mode), you get about a range of four different volume levels (possibly just three, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt). Changing the "strike" sensitivity in the Roli Dashboard did not change this at all. This is four fewer volume levels than the pads on a drum machine could give you thirty years ago. You can also make additional textures with other sampled instruments from the MPE "expressions" - slide, glide, pressure, and lift - but these don't make any difference with percussion instruments, where the main thing is how hard and fast they are being hit. So it's not very good as a drum pad, and the Seaboard Block , which also has about the same sensitivity to striking on percussion instruments, has a greater range of control and ability to make music utilizing the MPE expressions, rendering the Lightpad M superfluous. (Note also that I have not been able to figure out how to get the Seaboard and Lightpad M Blocks, when connected together in an app or a DAW, to be able to play different instruments - you get the same sounds from each. Perhaps there is a way to program this, but it is certainly unobvious.)I was also hoping that this set would be plug and play, but it is not. It has taken me a couple of dozen hours to figure out what works and what doesn't work so far. There is almost no documentation in the box. There are a few online video tutorials by Roli, but they operate under the assumption that you will be able to do what they are doing onscreen right away, which is highly unlikely. There are also manuals for each Block buried deep in the Roli website, but these are very basic and mostly just cover the physical elements of each Block. So there is a lot of trial and error (mostly error) when you are getting started.The Blocks are designed to be used via Bluetooth (for phones and tablets) and via USB for computers. (Supposedly, you can also connect a Block via USB to a pad or tablet via the Apple Camera connector, but when I tried that, my iPhone and iPad each said they did not have enough energy to support the Blocks and didn't recognize the midi signals). Unfortunately, the Bluetooth connection is not solid when used with Roli's two proprietary apps, Play and Noise, and beats were consistently dropped (I'd say about at least once very sixteen hits). So it's a pain in the ass and not very useful if you were trying to record something. Also, it is very difficult to get an iOS device to find and link with one Block via Bluetooth, and getting it to link with two Blocks is extremely difficult and only seems to happen randomly.Of the two Roli apps, Play is, as it's name suggests, a sort of game for recording basic beats and notes. It's fun for about 10 minutes. Noise is supposed to be a functional DAW and synth engine of sorts, but it only comes with two drum sets (one for hip hop, which has crappy, crappy sounds, and one, I kid you not, for bongos). There are also a couple of dozen instrument sounds (mostly synthy) which are ok, but this thing is sold as a "Beatmaker", so you would think it would have the ability to make some actual non-lame beats out of the box. You are then supposed to make in-app purchases of other sound kits, presumably some of which have decent samples, but after shelling out over $200 for the Beatmaker Kit, I was not in the mood to give Roli more money. In any event, along with the bluetooth dropped beat/note issue, Noise is pretty useless.But the Blocks can also be used with computer apps (and DAWs) via USB, and this is where they are moderately useful. The kit includes downloads for three synth engines (Equator, Cypher 2, and Strobe 2), all of which recognize 5D/MPE midi signals and are owned by Roli. Unfortunately, Cypher 2 does not recognize the midi signals coming from the Lightpad M, but the other synths work with it, and Strobe 2 and Cypher 2 have some interesting sounds. You can also use the Beatmaker kit with the Roli synths or with other sampled instruments in several DAWs (but not Pro Tools). Roli has also just released an app in beta called the Roli Studio Player, which incorporates Equator, Strobe 2, and Cypher 2, and which could simplify using them (it is buggy - lots of static and noise - at the moment).In some DAWs (Garageband, and Logic, not sure about others), the Loop Block acts as a basic controller for recording, which is nice if you don't want to reach for you mouse, but if you are habituated to using a mouse with a DAW, not that helpful. (You can also use the Lightpad as a controller for volume, muting, and panning for up to four tracks, and as an effect controller in Garageband and Logic).You also get a six month subscription to Melodics, which has lessons on how to use the Lightpad as a pad/drum machine, which is the most helpful software included in the package.

Awesome product. A bit weird to figure out, but lots of tutorials online. I ultimately sent it back. I found a cheaper used variation and long and McQuade and kiboshed the looper for my boss 212. Very cool device tho. Good response, interesting design.

Il Roli è perfetto, unico inconveniente appare già registrato sul portale Roli.

Excelente producto es divertido y la calidad de materiales es la óptima, si bien es un poco caro es un controlador fuera de lo común

Fantastico strumento!

prodotto non funzionante, se mettete prodotti usati, almeno provateli!!!!