2008 Summer NAMM Show: Yamaha announced the new MM8 Music Synthesizer.
Like the MM6, the MM8 features sounds from the popular Motif Series, real-time control, computer integration and adds an 88-note Graded Hammer action Yamaha keyboard.
“The MM8 has all the great sounds and features of the MM6 in a full-size package,” said Yamaha’s Athan Billias. “It’s [...]

2008 Summer NAMM Show: Yamaha announced the MOTIF-RACK XS Tone Generator.
Description:
Utilizing the very same sounds as the famed MOTIF XS, the MOTIF-RACK XS includes 1,152 dynamic and authentic Voices, 65 exciting drums kits, and a comprehensive synthesis engine for building custom Voices. These Voices are the basis for further sound creation and customization using the [...]

2008 Summer NAMM Show Update: Yamaha announced Audiogram 6 and Audiogram 3, two new Computer Recording Systems (aka digital mixers) designed to easily turn your computer into a tool for recording and editing audio from virtually any microphone, instrument or audio device.
The Audiogram Series bundle together a hardware interface with audio inputs and outputs, software [...]

EM’s Geary Yelton has an interesting review of the Tenori-On.
Their take:
You could easily argue that the Tenori-on is not suitable for professional music production. It has no filters, LFOs, envelope generators, nor any of the user-programmable parameters you’d expect in a real synthesizer. It has only one oscillator per voice, and it provides no access [...]

Ready for some 80’s-tastic synth drum action?
The YAMAHA ED10 Electronic Drum is a electronic drum pad with a built-in analog synthesizer engine.
Features:

1OSC + 1Noise + 1 ‘Subsonic’ OSC + 1Filter + 1ENV synthesizer.
Analog synth engine
All the parameters are edited with knobs - pitch, sub-sonic pitch, filter, noise, decay, bend, click, filter-env-mod, volume.
The envelope is velocity [...]

Yamaha says that the Tenori-On is a hit - and it will turn you into a composer in 20 minutes!
It has already sold a few hundred of the new instrument at 121,000 yen (1,170 dollars) each, compared to planned sales of 1,000 in Japan for the entire first year, according to the company.
The square device, [...]

Yamaha’s Tenori-On is getting a prominent introduction with Björk’s latest tour.
The new controller/synthesizer is part of the rig of Damian Taylor, above, who uses the Tenori-On on the track Who Is It?.
“Björk felt it would be cool to feature the gear,” says Taylor, “ to make it part of the stage set rather than using [...]

Yamaha has introduced a collection of Yamaha Key designs for Milano Salone 2008, an international furniture design trade show and competition, based on the theme “key for you”.
According to the company, the designs use a Minimal Element/Maximum Effect concept.

Let me know what you think of these design concepts in the comments.

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. [...]

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 [...]

At the 2008 Winter NAMM Show, Yamaha introduced the KX Series USB MIDI Studio, featuring a Yamaha keyboard, numerous creative control features, and integration with Steinberg DAW products.
The KX series gets its “feel” from a long lineage of Yamaha pianos and keyboards. With the addition of four assignable control knobs, dedicated performance controls, and DAW [...]

Winter NAMM Update: IK Multimedia announced that a special edition of IK Multimedia’s SampleTank, with sounds from over $3500 worth of IK’s award-winning virtual instrument products, such as Miroslav Philharmonik, SampleMoog, Sonik Synth 2, SampleTron, Studiophonik and SampleTank, will come bundled inside the Yamaha X-Factor DVD, which ships with all Yamaha music production products, including [...]

Winter NAMM Show: Yamaha intro’d the Pocketrak 2G, a compact pocket recorder featuring 2GB of built-in memory, long battery life,  USB file transfer, and Steinberg Cubase AI DAW software.
The Pocketrak 2G features 2 tracks of CD quality recording in PCM, MP3 and Windows Media (WMA) formats. It’s designed for podcasting, field and location recording, audio [...]

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 [...]