Yamaha's New Tenori-On Music Sequencer Instrument Thing
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Marcelo @ Oct 10th 2007 12:57PM
I want one of that NOW!!! awesome
Larry Lubell @ Oct 10th 2007 4:34PM
If this is the "Future of Music" I feel sick.
And then the music industry complains that their sales are falling. I have a choice between Britney Spears, 50 cent, or I can sit around and listen to this 20st century version of that toy "Simon".
Yea, this has some value as a toy, but you're not going to create "The White Album" on this.
It might be fun to play with- but who is going to want to listen to what you made?
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