I was always a fan of the Roli keyboards, but unable to find one locally to try. But my enthusiasm started to wane when I heard so many demos by extremely talented musicians that failed to master the additional degrees of control.

To be honest, the only person I heard demonstrating it well was/is (not sure if he’s still using it much) Marco Parisi, whose work on it is jawdroppingly authentic and amazing. Whether emulating guitars or saxes, his was the only use of it to utterly convince. Well worth looking up…

However, in the hands of others, including the amazing Jordan Rudess, it was far less convincing. From this I pretty much figured out how truly difficult it must be to master. Yes, of course, you need phenomenal straight chops and an ear for the instrument you’re emulating, but in addition, you appear to need a precision of motion on those extra axes beyond most people’s control.

We spend our entire lives training our fingers to press keys with only regard for downward speed/pressure, and any sideways or vertical (in or out on the key) force is irrelevant, even sometimes necessary for speedy motion to the next key. Unlearning all that and having to concentrate not just on the notes but also the position on the note and any downwards, sideways and upwards pressure or movement when it ALL can be heard is a daunting challenge.

Very, very few seem to have mastered it.

I remember playing Yamaha’s in the 70’s with the sideways sensors. The ones I played had a smaller third keyboard about the main ranks, dedicated to solo sounds. It wasn’t a GX-1 sadly (I’ve always wanted a go on one of those!) but a very high end home organ. It was great as a solo keyboard, but even as crude as the single axis of motion it detected was, it was still difficult to affect pitch (and thus bring in vibrato or affect intonation) accurately. While it DID give me the best single hand way of creating a natural vibrato, it was very difficult to NOT trigger the vibrato accidentally. (EDIT: A bit of Googling got me the model Yamaha I played, a D-80)

Things like the Osmose and Roli MPE keyboards strike me as more of the same, exponentially more so!

For me, I find ribbon controllers far more controllable for doing finger vibrato or trills and shakes for solo sounds, taking the difficulty of hitting the right note AND the correct sideways vectoring and splitting it between two hands. And yes, it ties up both your hands… But even as modest a player as me can get stunning results from it, when even Jordan Rudess struggles with a Roli and doing everything with one hand.

The odds of me getting to try an Osmose out are practically zero in my area, but I’m dying to have a go. At least it kept the traditional key shapes..!

Who knows, maybe a generation will come up trained from the beginning on MPE keyboards and mastery of them will be more commonplace, but for now, at least for imitative synthesis, it seems to be more than most mere mortals can do! 😂🎹🤔