simonsound

Yamaha release the much anticipated Tenori On, a musical interface based around a grid of touch sensitive buttons/LED’s which can be seen from the front and back, in the UK next week and I for one will be keen to try it out. I’ve followed Toshio Iwai’s work since his Elektroplankton sound ‘game’ for the Nintendo DS which offered every DS owner the opportunity to create some underwater inspired electronica. Whilst Elektroplankton was a lot of fun it was always hampered by the fact you couldn’t save your work. The Tenori On solves this problem and adds a lot more functionality.

Update: Official Tenori On website is now live. Some cool videos of the different modes, interviews with musicians and all the specs confirmed (no infra red). I also heard from a friend who is performing at the Manchester launch today. He’s had a Tenori On since last week and confirms that it is easy to use, immediate, spontaneous and great visually.

It has a built in sound module based around the Yamaha Motif series of synths, sampling (which is the real reason to get excited for me), built in speakers, the pitch vs time sequencing matrix, midi in and out, SD memory card slot and infrared connectivity for playing with other Tenori On musicians.

It is always interesting to explore how different interfaces influence the creative process and I’m really keen to get some hands on with the Tenori On to see if it lives up to the online hype. Its interesting that Yamaha are test launching this in the UK first before a worldwide roll out, and apparently the launch units are almost hand made which is really interesting for a company used to shifting mass produced musical instruments. But innovation isn’t a new thing to Yamaha - click here for some synthesizer history.

There is a lot of info online about the Tenori on but try some of these out first -

Behind the scenes development images

Tenori On video round up at One Tonne Music

Tenori On official site

I’ll let you know how I get on at the launch next week.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under news, sound, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.