
- Melodics piano review mod#
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- Melodics piano review Bluetooth#
- Melodics piano review tv#
Though the hardware integration with the LUMI Music app is pretty seamless, occasionally the tuition is hampered by the keyboard’s form. There are also scale and chord practice modes which are useful for building muscle memory and, importantly, drilling the colour-note relationship into your head. It’s this impressive level of interactivity that’s the big sell for piano learners.

During classes, the keyboard lights up in step with the tutor’s instruction, making the experience both personal and immediate. These bite-sized tutorials come from four approachable teachers and start with the fundamentals. The critical first step with LUMI as a learning tool is to take advantage of the built-in lessons.

These range from First Steps, which mainly follow melodic right-hand parts, through to Expert, which offers incredibly complex arrangements involving two-handed playing.īack to school The teachers in the LUMI apps Learn section are approachable and start with the basics If you’re picking up LUMI for the first time, you can avoid similar humiliation by selecting songs by difficulty level. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, having 24 keys is much harder than hitting four buttons on a Guitar Hero controller. With enough practice, we could probably get close to nailing it, but it re-iterates what we knew already: learning the piano takes time. We’re immediately humbled by an advanced arrangement of the Jurassic Park theme.
Melodics piano review tv#
Learn is for interactive video lessons, while Play gives you access to an ever-growing library of songs, sorted by difficulty, with four styles of notation, which we’ll get into shortly.įor maximum off-the-bat entertainment, we dive into the Play section and pick some classic film and TV themes, hoping to be able to keep up in the Guitar Hero-like Cascade mode where notes fall down the iPad screen towards you. The app has two main modes: Learn and Play. But mercifully, these are pretty cheap online.

The only slight frustration here comes from Apple’s decision to exclude headphone outs from iPad Pros, new iPad Airs, and more recent iPhones, so you’ll need an adaptor. Sensibly, wireless headphones are not supported because they’d introduce too significant a lag. You can either listen back on your tablet/phone’s speakers or use wired headphones.
Melodics piano review Bluetooth#
Practice makes perfectĬonnection to the LUMI Music app via Bluetooth is stable and free of any perceptible latency. You can get work around the lack of modulation and pitch bend by programming aftertouch to control these parameters, but not at the same time.
Melodics piano review mod#
There are also no pitch or mod controls if you choose to use it as a controller for other iOS music apps. One odd omission is a sustain pedal input, given that LUMI Keys 1 is designed to help you learn piano. In fact, as soon as we started digging into the learning experience, we virtually forgot about key size. And if you spend enough time with it, you do get used to the feel of it with the LUMI app. The feel certainly isn’t as springy as some budget controllers – and that’s a good thing. When playing, it might be useful to think of LUMI Keys 1 as a big ROLI Lightpad Block with a keyboard playing surface. That makes a big difference to the playing feel.īut, to think of LUMI as piano-like may not be particularly helpful, anyway. In our tests, there was more like half the plunge depth (around 5mm) before hitting the resistance of the keybed. ROLI also claims that LUMI Keys 1 has 92% of the plunge depth of a grand piano, which in real terms is somewhat misleading. Having a LUMI Keys 1 on your desk is joyful and invites you to play If you have smaller hands, then this might well be a plus, but if you’re already used to the size of a full-sized keyboard, there is the potential for this to feel a little confusing. Because they’re significantly longer, there’s a bit more space for chords than with regular mini keys.

Intriguingly, the keys are the same width as the mini keys on the Novation Launchkey Mini, but that’s where the similarities end. For playing monophonic parts they’re fine, but the narrower keys can sometimes make chords feel cramped. ROLI describes them as “better sized for the average human hand”.
Melodics piano review full#
This magnetic ‘DNA’ connection, developed for Blocks, shares both power and data meaning you only have to connect one via Bluetooth, which is a timesaver.Īs far as playing goes, keys on the controller are not full piano width. With each device being 24-notes, extending your range is as simple as magnetically attaching another LUMI Keys 1. Just having a LUMI Keys on your desk – or better, two – is joyful and invites you to play. The plastic keys sit in a sleek and sturdy plastic housing with a rubberised base that stays put. Its keys are incredibly bright, with consistent backlighting across the entire playing surface.
