ROLI’s Songmaker Kit (www.ROLI.com) is a portable music studio for creating a track anywhere. It combines the Seaboard Block and Lightpad Block M, two cutting-edge controllers.

The tactile, touch-responsive surfaces of these Blocks — both released within the past year — introduce a new way to shape sound and create songs. The Loop Block, which helps to record tracks and toggle between sounds, completes the kit.

The Songmaker Kit — priced at $649.95— comes with a software bundle worth over $400. Each software tool integrates with the MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) capabilities of ROLI BLOCKS controllers. Equator, ROLI’s premium software synthesizer, is part of the package along with two digital audio workstations — Tracktion Waveform and Ableton Live Lite — and Strobe2 Player. Customized integration of hardware, software, and sounds make Songmaker Kit far more than the sum of its parts.

The kit showcases ROLI BLOCKS, the modular music creation system that launched in 2016. While it’s possible to create dozens of kits with different Blocks, the Songmaker Kit’s combination of Seaboard Block, Lightpad Block M, and Loop Block is a tested configuration for next-level music-making.