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Yamaha's New Tenori-On Music Sequencer Instrument Thing

by Tim Stevens on October 10, 2007 at 12:31 PM


The hey-day of electronic music, techno, and its various other flavors has passed. Groups like the Crystal Method and The Prodigy don't get the radio play they used to, but digital music's influence on modern rock can't be ignored. Software like Apple's 'Garage Band', for example, makes it easy to lay down tracks, but a new product from Yamaha pledges to also make it tactile and fun.

The Tenori-On is a sort of music sequencer tablet created in concept by Toshio Iwai, the guy behind the fascinating 'Electroplankton' game on the Nintendo DS. The Tenori-On is a small pad with a 16x16 array of LED-illuminated buttons. Each button can be assigned a specific sound which can be "played" in time by hitting its respective button. The machine sweeps from left to right and up to 16 "pages" can be created in sequence to create full songs.

With MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) outputs and the ability to load custom sound samples, the Tenori-On has some serious potential for music making. But, the £599 price (roughly $1,223) puts it out of reach for most, and reviewers found its construction to be a bit flimsy for surviving nightly duty on the road in dive clubs. So, a cool gadget and toy, but perhaps overpriced and not quite practical.

From Boing Boing Gadgets and SonicState.com

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Tags: MIDI, Yamaha

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