ROLI, a U.K.-based music technology company, was founded in London in 2009 and is focused entirely on innovative keyboard products. New for 2025, the ROLI Piano and Airwave system is an A.I.-powered music platform designed for both learning to play piano and advanced musical creation. It combines a light-up keyboard with a hand-tracking camera peripheral, Airwave, and a unique software system.
The ROLI Piano is 49-key keyboard controller with full-size, semi-weighted keys that feature per-key pitch bend and polyphonic aftertouch. The keys are RGB illuminated and light up to guide users through songs, scales, and lessons. You can bend notes with a glide to one side, and vibrato works with a wiggle of the finger.
ROLI Airwave uses two infrared cameras to track hand movements and translates those movements into MIDI CC messages. The cameras track 27 points in each hand at 90 frames per second, offering real-time feedback. These gestures can be used to control parameters in software or external synths. Airwave comes with the Airwave Player plug-in, which provides over 100 custom sounds designed to react to the gestures.
ROLI Piano and Airwave do not generate sound on their own; they are both MIDI controllers that must be connected to a computer or sound source. The hardware combination captures your input, key presses and hand gestures, and the accompanying software generates the sound.
ROLI has two tiers of software, Learn Edition and Create Edition. Paired with the ROLI Learn app, the light-up keys and Piano A.I. Assistant guides users through songs, exercises, and games, making the learning process interactive. It acts as an “intelligent practice assistant,” providing real-time visual feedback on posture, finger positioning, and technique. Piano A.I. can teach music history and theory and gives prompts on new things to learn. Learners can speak to the piano, asking it questions about music history, chords, scales, melodies, and popular and classic tracks. It’s a music encyclopedia at your fingertips.
For accomplished players, ROLI Create can be used as a MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) controller in your DAW. ROLI Create is a suite of plugins and management applications. Here are a few: ROLI Studio Player plugin plays ROLI’s synths Equator2, Cypher2, and Strobe2. ROLI Studio Drums, the world’s first MPE-enabled drum plugin, allows you to shape and bend drum sounds and grooves using gestures on your ROLI controller. ROLI Dashboard allows you to customize sensitivity, pitch bend range, and different performance modes (Piano, Pro, Stage, User). Airwave Player plugin provides custom sounds and the interface to map your hand gestures to control sound parameters.
ROLI Create brings advanced Airwave functions into play. ROLI Vision A.I. tracks hand movements in 3D space, in categories Air Raise, Tilt, Glide, Slide, and Flex. Airwave tracks and maps them as MIDI CC offering real time sound modification. This is the performance core of Airwave. If you’ve ever seen an EWI, (Electronic Wind Instrument), the non-linearity of that controller enabling all the incredibly expressive “in between” notes is somewhat analogous to what the ROLI system enables.
When you combine ROLI Piano, the Piano A.I. Assistant, and Airwave, you get what ROLI calls, “the most intelligent and intuitive system for musical learning and creation ever made: The ROLI Piano System.” The ROLI System adapts with the user’s ability, catering to beginners and pros. Connects via USB-C and Bluetooth. Piano + Airwave Bundle $758
