Fresh sounds for spring: inspiring ways to refresh your music
Reinvigorate your workflow and let your creativity blossom
As the season shifts into spring, it’s the perfect time to inject new life into your music production practice. Whether you're sculpting expressive synth lines on the Seaboard, composing cinematic textures with the ROLI Piano M, or anticipating what you can do with the upcoming instruments like Airwave, spring offers a compelling moment to revisit your workflow, explore unfamiliar sounds, and reconnect with your creativity.
Need some help coming up with new ways to bring the renewed energy of the season into your music? We’ve got a few tips that just might help.
Break free from grid-locked composition
If your workflow has grown rigid from over-quantizing and perfect automation, now is the time to reintroduce flow and natural movement. MPE instruments like the Seaboard and ROLI Piano M are uniquely suited to looser, more expressive performances. Spring is the season for letting ideas breathe—why not let your compositions breathe, too?
Try sketching ideas live and leaving in human imperfections. Instead of adjusting velocity manually, let Press and Lift create natural contours in your phrases. This kind of expressive timing works beautifully in creating dynamic performances where happy accidents can lead to flashes of brilliance.
Record a live melodic performance, then layer a contrasting rhythmic part played freely—no grid, no click. The interplay between the parts can give your track a compelling, organic push and pull.
Get inspired by what's coming: ROLI Piano and Airwave
The newly announced ROLI Piano marks a bold next step in expressive keyboard controllers. With its 49-key format, it opens the door to more expansive playability. It’s ideal for two-handed performance, lush voicings, or complex harmonic layering, with the vivid backlit keys we all know and love.
If you’re already a Piano M user and thinking of stepping up to ROLI Piano, you might find that now is the right time to get inspiration and think about how this instrument might shift your creative process. How might you approach chord voicings differently when you can modulate per-note pitch or timbre with a greater range? Could the ROLI Piano become the expressive centerpiece of your setup, bridging your Seaboard and DAW workflows? Thinking ahead lets you prepare ideas and templates now, so you're ready to hit the ground running when it arrives.
A breath of fresh Air(wave)
Airwave marks an exciting new era for what “performance” can mean in a modern setup. This motion-responsive controller introduces Spatial Expression, taking the intuitive gestural control capable with Seaboards and ROLI Pianos to new dimensions.
Integrating seamlessly with the ROLI ecosystem (and with other hardware controllers), Airwave lets you modulate effects, morph sounds, or trigger transitions through natural movements in the air. Controlling filter sweeps or reverb tails by tilting your hand mid-performance, morphing between synth layers in real time during a live set, or using Airwave to perform automation on the fly—no mouse, no MIDI mapping hassles. The sky’s the limit.
Switch up your palette with new sounds
Spring is about rebirth, and your sound palette can reflect that, too. If you've been cycling through the same presets or virtual instruments, now is the time to break out of the loop. Dive into the rich libraries within ROLI Studio or Equator2, and explore categories that challenge your usual preferences— think airy pads, organic textures, evolving granular soundscapes.
If you’re working with Seaboard M or Seaboard 2, spring might be a great time to revisit the expressive presets that take full advantage of 5D Touch. You’ll already be familiar with using Glide to bend into notes, Slide to filter in real time, or Press to add evolving modulation—but maybe changing up the sounds you’re used to modulating can help spark some inspiration.
Trying out spring-themed presets like airy and ambient pads, “Blue Sky Chimes,” “Forest Trip,” and hundreds more available in Equator2’s expansive library can shift the atmosphere of your project with a single, expressive phrase.
Let spring inspire a seasonal sample pack from real-world sounds
Nature is in full bloom, and for those of us with an affinity for sampling, it’s the perfect time to get out and sample the world around us. If pre-made sample packs aren’t cutting it for you, capture the sound of leaves in the wind, birds at sunrise, footsteps on different textures, or spring rain against glass—the world is your sonic playground! These field recordings can form the raw material for a custom sample pack that reflects your environment and creative vision.
Once you’ve captured your samples, bring them into ROLI Studio or Equator2 as custom sounds. Then, apply expressive modulation using Slide, Glide, Press, or Lift to morph those everyday sounds into playable, dynamic instruments. With these sounds, you’ll be creating truly unique music unlike anything you (or anyone else) would’ve heard before.
Set a spring challenge
Now, we know we’ve been going on about the freedom and expansive nature that spring evokes, but maybe you’re prone to being a bit too free and expansive, and need to set some guidelines for your creativity. That’s fine, too! Setting yourself some goals or challenges, such as committing to a track-a-week challenge or limiting the presets and tools you use, can be a great way to reinvigorate your creativity. The key here is momentum, consistency, and experimentation, not perfection. By giving yourself constraints, you unlock innovation. Each week, explore a new sonic idea, technique, or production approach using your existing setup, and see where the ideas take you.
Spring is the perfect time to rethink how you approach creation, a time to revisit your creative instincts, embrace change, and explore the full expressive range of the tools at your fingertips.
Whether you’re deepening your relationship with the instruments you have, looking to bring something new into the fold, or simply breaking old habits, this is a time to reconnect with your sound. Don’t be afraid to try something new this spring; more importantly, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If anything, embrace them! Just as spring marks a new beginning, a beginner's mindset might be just what you need to land on a new idea that’ll inspire your next great production.
When that inspiration strikes, why not share what you've made with our ROLI Community this spring? Find us on social @roli_create, use the hashtag #FreeTheMusic, and we'll share our favorites on our feeds to help spread that seed of inspiration.
Music made with intention, curiosity, and joy will always resonate. So lean into the new, the unfamiliar, and the expressive. Your best work might just be a season away.
