What we've been building

RK-1 software release notes

How updates work: every RK-1 checks for free software updates over Wi-Fi and installs them with one press — no computer, no app store, no subscription. Updates are optional and the box plays fine without ever going online. Pre-order units ship with everything on this page already installed.

Version 1.1 in final testing

August 2026 — ships on all pre-order units

Backup & move. Export everything you've played — every practice session, saved take, lesson score, custom lesson, setlist and sound preference — as a single file, and restore it onto another RK-1. Replacing a box, handing one to a student, or adding a second one no longer means starting over. Your unit number stays with its own box: it's signed to that unit's processor and deliberately isn't copied. Restoring always sets your current state aside first, so a restore can't be the thing that loses your history.
All-new lesson player. Falling notes stream toward a hit line, arcade-style, with two modes: Learn waits for you to find each note; Perform counts you in and grades your timing. Stars, streaks, and per-lesson progress.
83 built-in lessons across 12 genres — from first songs through blues & boogie, gospel, jazz & swing, Latin rhythms, rock & pop, Chinese and Japanese melodies, and the classical corner. A genre picker sits right on the panel, and every lesson opens with a short story about where the music comes from.
A real performance looper. Record a phrase and stack layers — recording starts at your first note, the loop length snaps to the beat, and every layer can be muted or undone on its own. Flip the whole loop into reverse or half/double speed (it's MIDI — the pitch stays true), watch the cycle on a live position ring, and download any loop as a MIDI file. The correction engine cleans up every pass.
Rewind that plays back. Scrub back through the last minutes of playing and hear it again, not just see it.
135 instrument sounds + 9 effect presets, organized by family — including a new 808 kit (kick, sub, cowbell, metal hat) and a Synth lab of leads, pads and plucks. 25 of the 135 are synthesized from scratch in our own FM engine; the rest are the freely licensed FluidR3 General MIDI bank.
Sound designer with a real oscilloscope. Tone, drive, attack and release controls shape the Rise Keys voices live, and the scope draws the actual output waveform. The whole dashboard also now pulses gently with your playing on every tab.
Factory-tested hardware. Every unit runs a full pre-ship test — sounds, correction engine, storage, display, buttons, Wi-Fi, thermals — plus a burn-in, and the signed report is archived with your unit number.
Next-chord suggestions. The dashboard proposes likely next chords as you play, so practice turns into songwriting.
Six stage scenes. The visualizer is now a show: Rise trails, Nebula, Ribbons, Spectrum, Kaleido and Fireworks — colors keyed to the key you're playing in, an auto-cycle mode, and a one-tap camera mode that hides every readout for a clean clip. Press V to switch scenes mid-song.
Seven visual themes for the dashboard, and full-screen visualizers built for performing.
Device screen controls — choose what the hardware display shows (key, tempo, assist, sound) and its brightness, from the dashboard.
Easier Wi-Fi setup. Out of the box the RK-1 broadcasts its own setup network; join it from a phone, pick your home Wi-Fi, done. No Wi-Fi? Everything still works.
Practice streaks. The Learn tab tracks your minutes, shows the last seven days, and counts your streak — the gentlest possible nag to come back tomorrow.
Take your music with you. Download the last minutes of your playing as a standard MIDI file, straight from the dashboard — and replay any passage two ways: corrected, or exactly as your fingers played it.
Player's practice tools: tap tempo, metronome subdivisions (quarters, eighths, triplets), a velocity curve for soft or heavy touches, lesson search, a drill mode that loops a lesson until you've earned all three stars, and full-screen falling notes.
All-new chord trainer. An eight-level curriculum — three chords to inversions to a timed lightning round — on a live on-screen keyboard that shows exactly what you held. Ear-training mode plays the chord and asks your hands to find it; chords you miss return sooner until mastered, and your progress persists on the box.
Arpeggiator. Hold a chord and the box plays it as a rolling pattern — up, down, up-down or random, in eighths, triplets or sixteenths across up to three octaves, locked to your live tempo. Devastating with the Synth lab voices.
Chord transcript. Every chord change you play is written down with its timestamp. Improvise first, read later — then download the session as a beautifully laid-out PDF chord sheet, a playable MIDI progression for your DAW, or plain text.
A real sound browser. Browse the 135 voices by family, star favorites, hear a quick preview the moment you switch, and let each Rise Keys voice bring its own curated effect. Your sound, effect and tone settings now survive restarts.
Daily update mention. Once a day the box checks whether an update exists and shows a small badge — nothing installs without your press, the check carries no identifiers, and one switch turns it off entirely.
Panel & jacks control. The built-in speaker (with headphone auto-mute), the AUDIO IN play-along ducking, the sustain-pedal socket and live MIDI OUT are all controllable from the dashboard \u2014 and simulated on any computer, so you can drive every control before your unit arrives.
A practice-grade metronome. Time signatures, swing, a one-bar count-in, a visual beat you can follow with sound off — plus a gap trainer (the click drops out for a few bars while your inner clock takes over) and a speed trainer that nudges the tempo up as you hold on.
Takes. Every session the box records is now a managed list — play it back, rename it, download the MIDI, turn it into a lesson, or delete it. Your music, organized.
True plug-and-play. Any MIDI keyboard that appears — USB hotplug now, Bluetooth once paired — attaches automatically in seconds. Unplug mid-session and the box keeps running; swap keyboards and the new one just works.
Guided setup. No keyboard detected? The dashboard walks you through connecting one — USB or classic MIDI — and springs to life the moment it sees keys.
A real Progress center. Fourteen-day practice chart with your assist percentage trending over it, personal records, a daily goal you choose — and a one-page PDF report card made for fridges, parents and piano teachers, plus CSV export because your data is yours.
Setlists. Save a song's entire setup — sound, effect, tone, transpose, key lock, arpeggiator, metronome, sustain — under one name and recall it in a tap. Step through the set with two keys between songs. Built for worship teams, gig players, and anyone tired of ten knob-turns per song.
Unplug-proof. Pull the keyboard's cable mid-session and the box keeps running — it watches for the keyboard and reconnects the moment it returns.
Your songs as lessons. Drop any MIDI file on the dashboard — a download, a teacher's assignment, or one of your own recorded takes — and it becomes a graded falling-note lesson in your personal "My songs" genre, chords preserved, octave-fitted to your hands.
A coach with a plan. Tips now come with a "Do it" button that jumps to the exact lesson or trainer level, a daily three-item practice plan is built from your real playing data, and your assist trend across sessions shows the box helping less as you improve — which is the whole idea.
A dashboard that teaches. Hover anything and a tooltip explains what it does and why it matters — the key display, the enhancement meter, every knob. No manual needed.
Teacher mode. One tap puts a QR code on screen; everyone who scans it follows your playing live on their own phone, view-only, over local Wi-Fi. Built for classrooms and living-room lessons — nothing leaves the room.
DAW output + mute. The corrected stream is published as its own MIDI output ("Rise Keys Out") for recording into Logic, Ableton, and friends — and a one-tap mute silences the box so it works as a pure MIDI processor.
Any-size keyboards. Displays optimize for 25, 37, 49, 61, 76, or 88 keys, or auto-detect your range.
A guided first-run tour so new owners know where everything lives in the first thirty seconds.
Sharps/flats notation choice, mobile-friendly dashboard layout, and dozens of smaller refinements from tester feedback.

On the roadmap free updates

honest status — not yet shipped

International shipping — the first run is US-only. Tell us your country and we'll say when it opens.
More sound packs — the FM engine has room for them, and they arrive as free updates like everything else. (Bluetooth audio stays off the roadmap for live play: 100-200 ms of latency is not something we'll ship around.)

Version 1.0.2

July 2026

Emergency recovery mode. Hold both buttons at power-on and the RK-1 restores itself to a known-good version — and if an update is ever interrupted mid-install, the box rolls itself back automatically. Tested by deliberately breaking one.
Update downloads are now verified end-to-end before a single file is touched, and every update keeps a backup of the version it replaced.

Version 1.0.1

July 2026

First over-the-air update, used to prove the update system on real hardware before anything ships. Reliability fixes to the updater itself.

Version 1.0

July 2026

The heart of the RK-1: real-time note correction that listens to what you're playing — key, chords, tempo, skill level — and gently fixes notes that don't fit, in under 10 ms.
Implied sustain (pedal-free sustain that follows the harmony), smoother chord voicings, timing help, and a per-key fix for keyboards with a dead or weak key.
Live dashboard with piano roll, key/tempo readouts, practice coach, chord trainer, and session scoring.

RISE KEYS · Shipping & returns Which keyboard? Dealers · hello@risekeys.com
Feature lists describe software in testing on prototype hardware; pre-order units ship with version 1.1 or newer installed.