Over the years, Roland has worked to make professional-quality digital musical instruments, and called on designers to imagine an ambitious digital piano. Jong Chan Kim, who studied Industrial Design at San Francisco Art Academy, won the Roland Digital Piano Design Award in 2015 for his concept work called “Facet”. Roland’s piano design team took the project in 2019 and explored how they could turn Kim’s stunning design into a real digital piano for outstanding live performance. The Roland team started with improved keys and decided to re-create the piano sound card with the new PureAcoustic Piano Modeling system and place a flat speaker panel on the frame and base of the instrument. The concept gives the pianists the feeling that they are sitting on a Steinway piano, giving the speakers the closest experience to harmonic sounds and the hammer mechanism. The piano is fully digital and has an Android-powered system that supports performance. Also included is Zenbeats music software and a small visualizer boot that reacts in real time while playing the piano. Roland does not plan to produce the product yet, but with its futuristic design it can be a solid investment for the future. You can watch the details of the product design process from the following video:
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