Tenori-On+Instrument+Presentation

__**The Tenori-On **__

The Tenori-On, developed by the visionary Toshio Iwai and Yamaha, is a brand new electronic instrument released in September 2007 which combines an electronic instrument with a light show.

You can start getting a sense of how the instrument works from this video. media type="youtube" key="_SGwDhKTrwU" height="344" width="425"

As you can see, the way it essentially works is that there are four dots that move left to right on the screen. By activating different lights on the board, as the dots pass the lit light, it triggers the sound. The person is essentially just layering more and more things on top of each other. On either side of the board are buttons that allow you to change what pattern you are editing (much like on the synths in Hobnox or like editing patterns in Fruity Loops).

The Tenori-On comes with 256 default samples, but you can load your own onto the instrument's memory card.

The Tenori-On also has many other tricks. It allows you to change the amount of beats it plays from the standard 4/4 (using 16 horizantal lights) to any number of beats (activating 9 horizontal lights for instance). It also has the bouncing ball function as shown in the video which bounces a light up and down on the display with a sound triggering whenever the light hits the "ground" or edge of the instrument. You can change the height the ball bounces to to change how quickly the notes trigger.

Despite the instrument being only several months old, it has already been used as the sole instrument in an album and is the focus of a group called The Tenorions (creative, right?) that has two members, one who controls bass and percussion, the other who controls leads.

media type="youtube" key="r-Ut5Xv4tJ4" height="344" width="425"

The Tenori-On is unique in the fact that it is relatively cheap (about $1200), it is incredibly portable, and it is very easy to have it be the sole instrument and create an entire song.

Sources:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/this-gadget-rocks-the-worlds-newest-musical-instrument-791234.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Ut5Xv4tJ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SGwDhKTrwU http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenori-on