Tenori On

Oliver Chesler let me note on an earlier Tenori-On story saying that he’d posted about his experiences at the Tenori-On introduction at the club Berghain in Berlin:

When I walked into Berghain they had kiosks hooked up with several Tenori-on available to use. Right away I was shocked at how bright the white leds bling out at you. You instantly get that “wow this is futuristic” feeling.

Upstairs in the main room it was crowded as I suspected it would be. I mean come on this is Berlin where even the women are sequencer freaks! (emphasis mine) Lots of people wearing Ableton shirts and the stage had four Macbooks ready to accompany the Tenoris. This was my kind of geekfest!

Finally it was time for Tenori Toshio to speak. He gave a really incredible powerpoint style talk. He detailed how he got the idea to create the Tenori-on. He showed the early software he programmed, including a game that was never released for the Super Nintendo system. He showed his art installations all which had elements of the Tenori-on. Finally he took us by video to Yamaha and the factory where the Tenori-on is created. He ended with a video of a Robot who polishes the metal on the Tenori. I was laughing pretty hard when I realized the Robot was talking to itself as it finished tasks.

Check out the full story at Chesler’s site!

The international hype juggernaut for the Tenori-On continues.

Yamaha Corporation of America is set to introduced the Tenori-on in the United States with launch events for the public and press in New York on April 16 and San Francisco on April 18, 2008.

Tenori-on literally means “sound in the palm of your hand” and is a twenty-first century digital musical instrument that is part art-piece, part music gadget for the iPhone generation.

The brainchild of Japanese Media Artist Toshio Iwai, Tenori-on grew out of his experiments with light shows and musical boxes, resulting in a hand-held, burnished magnesium-encased matrix of 256 LED buttons that glow as you access different sounds and textures (’Layers’) over an infinitely repeating sequence of notes.

Sound images are literally drawn with Tenori-on using a host of internal sounds as well as samples loaded from external sources. 

Iwai has teamed with Yamaha, the world’s largest and longest-established musical instrument company, forming an unusual partnership of old and new, art and music, light and sound, to bring Tenori-on to market. 

“The beauty of Tenori-on is that it offers a fresh approach to music creation no matter what your musical background and experience are,” said Athan Billias of Yamaha. “It’s exciting that Yamaha , a company known mostly for making traditional musical instruments is investing in cutting-edge technologies that will expand the market for music making.”

Launch events for the media and the public will take place in New York (Southpaw in Brooklyn on April 16th) and San Francisco (1015 Folsom on April 18th). The events will not only feature Toshio Iwai himself, explaining this new musical paradigm, but also a host of edgy new electronic artists such as Sutekh, Safety Scissors, Pole, and I Am Robot And Proud, who have already incorporated Tenori-on into their stage shows. The events are free to enter and will feature Demo Stations for an interactive experience.

Public registration for a launch event is free at http://www.tenori-on-tour.com./. 

The Tenori-On, which previously had been available only in the UK, is now getting a global launch.

Yamaha has announced launch dates in:

• Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany
• Paris, France
• Montreal, Quebec
• New York, NY
• San Francisco, CA
• Tokyo, Japan

The events will include presentations by inventor Toshio Iwai and performances by early Tenori-On users. As for me – I still think the experimental bikini wrestling electronic music interface would be more interesting to watch.

If you don’t know about the Tenori-On yet, here’s everything you need to know about the Tenori-On.

pepemogt has posted an interesting jam with the Tenori-On as Midi-CV-Gate controller for Analogue Solutions tr-808 and tr-909 drums, the EML modular synth, Drumulator and Oberheim Xpander.

PC World has published its list of the 25 most innovative products of the year, and Yamaha’s Tenori-On is number 16:

16. Yamaha Tenori-On

Innovation: Inspired and intuitive handheld instrument redefines music-making.

Benefit: Nothing else even comes close to Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai’s digital instrument.

While the Tenori-On is likely to appeal to a fairly specialized audience, the device screams innovation. Consisting of a 16-by-16 grid of LED-illuminated buttons that a user touches to manipulate sound in a variety of intuitive and eye-catching ways, the Tenori-On–designed by the creator of the cult-hit Nintendo DS music game Electroplankton–is like nothing you’ve ever seen. It has 256 built-in sounds, and an integrated SD Card slot lets you copy original samples from your computer. You can also use its MIDI-out port to connect with your PC’s music software or your other hardware instruments. Currently it is sold only in Great Britain, but anybody willing to pay £599 (about $1200) can order one from dolphinmusic.co.uk.

We’re not quite as sold on the Tenori-On as PC World, because of the Tenori-On’s limited expressive capabilities. But in a year that offered electronic music instruments by the buckets, the Tenori-On stood out.