The drones, together with the built-in speakers, create a “sound field” around the musician that provides rich sound.
Japanese company Roland introduced an unusual electronic piano with drones for sound reproduction. The manufacturer announced the features of the project on its official website.
Roland built a high-tech musical instrument in honor of the work’s 50th anniversary. This is not a finished commercial project yet, but a concept showing the company’s latest developments and experiments. Demo performance was held at CES 2023 held in Las Vegas (USA).
“The 50th Anniversary Concept Piano is a jewel box – an elegant case that holds many treasures,” the developers said.
In the pre-electronic era, the shape of the piano provided a “sound field” for a lively sound to the outside and a rich sound in the room. Sound does not only arise when the strings inside the piano are struck, it is reflected from walls, ceilings and other surfaces and is echoed and amplified. In an electronic instrument, sound is produced by chips and circuit boards that cannot transmit the same rich sound.
The problem was solved thanks to the spherical speakers placed in the lid and the upper edges of the case: seven on the right and left. According to Takahiro Murai, general manager of Roland’s keyboard development department, the 14-speaker array creates a three-dimensional sound field that conventional stereo systems cannot achieve.
But that wasn’t enough, the team wanted the sound to come literally from the air around the musician. To do this, they created custom flying speakers by combining the technology of Roland’s enhanced version of PureAcoustic Ambience (used in high-end pianos like the LX708) with modern remote-controlled drones.
The main issue with drones was signal latency – 200ms when using Bluetooth, that’s too much for a real-time game. To reduce latency, they decided to use a proprietary communication platform of their own design, originally created for wireless headphones. The sound is much better, but the drones are still a bit noisy and distract attention from the game. Roland noted that they will launch the technology when completely silent aircraft become available.
These are not all Roland digital piano features. His “heart” is a touchscreen tablet whose panel is in front of the musician instead of the music stand. It connects to the Internet and supports video conferencing and synchronization with Roland Cloud. User can install Zenbeats music production software on tablet and use piano as studio control center.
“Performance information can be sent anywhere in the world, including the area around the person. The entire stage, including the performance area, can be played anywhere. You can also take the music played and send it to another location,” Takahiro Murai explained.
Famous pianist Darius Mazhyntas played in Izyum before. The Lithuanian musician gave a concert in Kremennaya Gora, performing compositions from the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s “Naive Music” cycle.
Before that, scientists understood why music made people dance. The secret lies in the bass – low frequencies help to feel the rhythm better and move to the rhythm of the sound.
Source: Focus
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