Imagine drawing an interface on paper, then being able to use it as a musical interface. Or, heck, don’t imagine it – do it. Unfortunately, the kinds of intelligence necessary to make the music video in yesterday’s post just aren’t practical yet. (That is, you could draw a picture of a keyboard, and even use the picture as a music controller, but while you or I could recognize a keyboard from a drum pad and know that line is a fader, a computer would need some sort of advance structure for any recognition to work.) But you can do some really clever things, as folks have shared in comments.

And using some basic paper interfaces, you can make entire instruments for just a few dollars.

Of course, the awesomest way to do anything is with LAZORS. Greg Kellum and Alain Crevoisier presented a paper at last year’s NIME (a conference for new interface designs for music) proposing a system for making any surface a control surface. Like the music video yesterday, you can configure your surface to function however you like – even dividing it up into pads and faders.

By now, you’e likely seen plenty of multi-touch interfaces or means of tracking hands. But, to paraphrase the NIME paper, these either require a special surface (or transparent surface), or they can’t actually detect when you’re touching. You can even use multiple cameras or an IR beam, but there are limitations to accuracy and the size of the usable surface that would result. Kellum and Crevoisier use an infrared camera and two illuminators, each built by pointing a laser at a mirrors.

Yawn, you say, been there, done that, seen Jeff Han’s video… The advantage of this system is that you can use any surface, like your dining room table. And you can configure that surface however you like. There’s even a freely-downloadable Surface Editor you can extend in Java and Processing. The creators claim they can even get input latency down to a reasonable 10 ms using high-speed cameras.

Transforming Ordinary Surfaces into Multi-touch Controllers [PDF paper, NIME 2008]
Future Instruments > Projects
Thanks, Randy Jones!

db3ll has created a keyboard out of paper, and of course it works better than those flimsy rubber “roll-up” pianos you see for sale. “Conductive ink is what I used,” he says, “painted on as traces on the non-printed side of the paper.” That’s the twist – I had assumed you’d use the top of the paper, but the trick is to use the reverse side to provide the “wiring.” He also offers advice for making a fader:

You can make a paper thin fader in much the same way, but it requires a magnet. Cut a slot in a piece of paper, color around the slot with conductive ink (I use the “trace repair” pens sold at electronics supply places… it has a very fine tip), and glue some SVHS tape (resistive side up) under it. Put a thin piece of metal beneath the SHVS tape & use a magnet to conduct between the SVHS tape & the conductive ink. The magnet will stay in position due to the metal (I use package banding) under it, and aside from the magnet, it is roughly the thickness of a couple sheets of paper.

Simon Lacelle is also working on a project I’m eager to see:

In a pad controller I’m making using a HUGE Staples calculator, I’m using strips of aluminium foil separated by a sheet of paper with holes at each button as switches merely a milimeter thick, and these are quite responsive.

A YouTube uploader by the name of DJ Mocap appeared briefly online with a project that seems to show him controlling Traktor with a drawing. There’s a camera and some sort of analog input being fed into a circuit board, but I’m not entirely sure what’s going on – though I can think of a couple of ways to make this work. It stumped DJ Tech Tools’ readers, but I have a feeling it can’t stump CDM readers, so have at it.

UPDATED – FAKE (but possible) Okay, so this turns out to be a Stanton touch controller hiding underneath a piece of paper. Of course, that’s itself not such a terrible idea – by having a drawn overlay, you have visual feedback for specific positions on the controller. But furthermore, while this is fake, the idea remains possible – and more cheaply than buying a piece of Stanton gear to toss under your piece of paper. So I call this “fake but potentially inspiring.”

Thanks to Gizmo from Scratchworx. Now, show Gizmo and Mocap by making a real version of this!

Just to consider moving in the opposite direction, I have to point to Amit Pitaru’s Sonic Wire Sculptor, an interface for drawing virtually and digitally. Because it’s digital, you can draw in 3D, do something you can’t with real-world markers. Here it is in a Tokyo gallery installation version; see more information (or try it yourself online) at Amit’s site.

And back to the realm of the imaginary – could MPCs of the future be made out of cardboard? (Oh, how I love reading YouTube comments. “Doesn’t look too sturdy.” “Why do you have your MPC in a box?” Apparently some people thought this was somehow insulting hip-hop. YouTube comments – pushing the very frontier of stupidity.)

Thanks to dyscode on comments — brilliant.

The cardboard MPC comes from theycontrol.us and our friend Elijah Torn, as seen previously on CDM.

Doing it Yourself

If you’re interested in entering the world of paper, drawing, and controllers, there are two directions I’d suggest.

One way to go is to simply start thinking about drawing as an interface. The creator of Tablet 2 MIDI, a MIDI-graphics tablet interface, suggests that using the pen you can draw any interface you like, then map it to tablet input. That concept could certainly be applied more broadly.

As far as using paper and a conductive pen to doodle your own musical creations, it turns out this is one of the easiest ways to learn about resistance in electronics.

PAiA 2 Transistor “Ribbon” Kit from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Learn Musical Electronics, No Soldering: Free PAiA Ribbon Controller Kit for CDM Readers

This project, which we covered at the end of 2007 and featured at our Handmade Music event, is ideal for giving young people (or the solder-phobic) their first step into electronics. The whole kit fits on a business card; you just need speakers to which you can connect.

The Drawdio project uses the same basic circuit and principle, but attaches it to a pen, making the rig a little more portable and allowing other fascinating experiments. It’s also available for purchase.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~silver/drawdio/

You’ll find countless variations of the basic circuit, because it’s so simple, and it’d be a great way to get into the more sophisticated (or at least more complex) ideas here.

Other ideas? Questions? Stuff I’ve left out? Let me know, and I’ll update the story.

“It comes from tomorrow …but it’s here today.”

Well, now it is tomorrow. And yesterday’s tomorrow still looks futuristic. Try this test: show someone the video above for the Millioniser 2000, a MIDI harmonica designed by Ronald Schlimmer. Tell them this is a 2009 video designed to go viral, a fakery of 80s cheese. After all, the instrument itself looks impossibly futuristic. Surely this wasn’t really designed in 1979. Surely the close up thigh shots of the backup singer girls in the back are tongue-in-cheek parody.

Your friends will believe you. Of course, you’ll be lying.

It did indeed come from tomorrow – and speaking from tomorrow, I’d like my instrument back. The MIDI harmonica has sophisticated breath control, a compact form factor, clever controls for adjusting pitch, and — well, you know, all the goodness of the harmonica but with an easier pitch layout to figure out. From comments, we see that it does go well with our futuristic instruments, meaning you don’t have to get retro-sounding synths – you could get something more 2009-appropriate.

Rock Erickson -The first American called to Europe to play and record with Walter Mueller’s Millioniser 2000. Harmonica like in principal giving the end user complete control over synthesizer and midi functions with the sensitivity of your own breath. This instrument is a one of a kind powerhouse. The video starts off by showing the functions of Millioniser 2000 and then merges into the on stage video which was shot in London. Rick Fenn of “Lie For A Lie” Sony Music was the music director and lead guitarist along with Charlie Barret from The FIXX on bass. The Millioniser Breath Controller units that I’m currently using in the studio are breathing new life (literally) thru their capability to dynamically control some of the most popular software and rack synths ( Garritan Personal Orchestra, Roland Sound Canvas, Yamaha VL70 ect ) and samplers like SampleTank & Tascam Giga Studio ) in both the mono and polyphonic arena. If you have comments or questions please post here or email rock@millioniser.com

Oh yeah – and this all looks strikingly similar to the (less sophisticated) iPhone apps from Smule, featured in today’s interview.

All I know is, I desperately want one. And you might even be able to build one — the microcontroller inside, a Moto 68705, is the equivalent of what you can get very cheaply now.

Who were these forward-looking folk? According to Wim Dijkgraaf’s history of the instrument, you can thank Swiss harmonica player Walter Muller (”Walt Miller”), Ronald Schlimmer of SM Elektronik (that name should be familiar – think a lot of the sensors used in music projects now), and the good folks of Acorn Computers for assembly, who in turn had their own ahead-of-its-time products like the BBC Micro and the self-named Acorn. (The Acorn drove the original version of the Sibelius notation product now owned by Digidesign/Avid. Sibelius engineers swore they never got the performance out of Windows and Mac OS that they once had on the Acorn.)

Via our friend Elijah B. Torn and Matrixsynth.

Anyone out there who knows how to get this, yes, I want one. I’ll start working out and seeing if I can make my physique transparent, as that’ll help.

Lesson learned: tomorrow is yesterday.

Via comments: RA has more links, plus promising news that there may be indeed be a modern update of this instrument.

http://www.musicweb.ch/millioniser_2000.asp (long demo)
http://www.musicweb.ch/millioniser_geschichte.asp (sound demos and great pics)

The Guthman Musical Instrument Competition is a cash prize contest for new musical instruments held this month at Georgia Tech, judged by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk, Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy, and Georgia Tech’s Parag Chordia. There are some familiar faces in there, but some fascinating, new ideas, too, like a motorcycle engine you can play with a keyboard. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Wired.com has a slide show of images with audio samples and videos for many of the projects:

New Musical Instruments Battle for $10K in Prizes

CDM held a similar contest judged by drum machine pioneer Roger Linn and the members of tech-loving band Freezepop, held at NASA’s Ames Research Center and Yuri’s Night last year. The difference: we offered one Tenori-On; this had $10,000 in cash prizes. Oh, and we sort of had folks show up randomly and judged them partly based on how loud the crowd cheered. But I love the idea, and hope we see more of this kind of spirit of experimentation.

I know we have some Georgia Tech readers here, and I expect a few of the contestents – did anyone get video of the competition itself? Anyone want to send along some additional documentation of your project? Remember, you’re Always a Winner on CDM (SM)!

I quite like this self-contained sampler tool with monome-style controller:

The faux-Pan Am logo. The sleek, mod, curved white casing. The elegant controls. Yes, this is indeed a synth that would look at home in the space station in Kubrick’s 2001. Technically not the future so much as the 1960’s version of the future – but surely we’re getting around to reshaping our future to look more like that, right? At least for synths?

The synth in question is the Omega 8, a “luggable” 20-pound, 8-voice analog synth with individual stereo pairs for each voice. It’s really, truly, old-school analog, with discrete analog oscillators, voltage-controlled filters of the 24dB and 12dB variety, multi-stage envelopes, and all the extras. In the “new-school” category, though, it is MIDI savvy, with MIDI destinations for just about everything (including the envelope breakpoints) and even breath controller support. How do I know this? Why, off the top of my head, of course; I’ve got three. Erm. Okay, I read it on the old Omega 8 page, then lost half an hour dreaming of my new lounge-style studio where I adjust envelope breakpoints from a giant aluminum sphere like the one in Sleeper.

All of that luxury will set you back US$4700. (If you can do with fewer voices, you can get down to a more Earth-bound US$1679. But that’s only 10 pounds, so it must make half as much sound.) But normally, the Omega ships in a pedestrian-looking synth case, like every other synth. Enter the Orion rendition.

2008: An Orion Odyssey Teaser Page

Studio Electronics News

As the manufacturers say:

what is this? it is art. it is light. it is glorious design brought to life by Antoine Argentieres, the man, who sagely let his fondness for Stanley Kubrick’s past century enigmatic odyssian vision of the future (and re-visioning of pivotal past events) inspire a house fit for the majestic voice and verve of the Omega8––a cathedral of transformation; the great work of the synth; a mind before matter mystical alignment of awareness: light and sound waves that reveal the ORION GALAXY, expanding and growing and luminous.

I’m not sure it’s art, but it is spectacularly groovy. Studio Electronics also promises a special sound bank befitting its forward-looking body.

I’ve heard varying answers to what availability will be from “I can’t conceive how expensive this is” to “rumors say it’s a one-off.” For their part, SE says it’s

available now for those who "have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

There you have it. You just have to believe. You have to think really, really hard about how you want it, and believe in why it matters, and you’ll own it.

Okay, it must be really, really, really, really expensive.

But I do believe in the mission. Steampunk’s over, folks. So is arbitrarily sticking cheap knobs into a cardboard box and rendering a “polished aluminum sheen” on the case by using duct tape. Let’s get back to the future with our synth designs. (I’m encouraged by the fact that our friend Nostromo found this for us on the SDIY list, by way of the music bar list.)

You still have time to do something for 2010.

See also: Music thing (hmmm, Tom got the jump on me, so maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so lost in that reverie of owning the thing…)

Update: Music thing also points to some artistic inspiration in the same vein.

Some were disappointed that the Segway was not, as promised, “an invention that will “sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking.’” But there’s hope, in the form of Brisbane, Australia-based electronic duo Segue’s vision for the future. Clearly, the first Segway was just a 1.0 device. What it needs is additional accessories to make it the globe-shifting device it should have been. It needs a beer fridge, Ableton Live sync, and Monome control.

Okay, backing up to the “real” Segue, Segue is the combination of Leo Hede and Dave Dri. They regularly team up with visualist Jaymis Loveday, a big force behind CDM and co-editor of Create Digital Motion. Sadly, for now, their rig is not built out of tricked-out Segways, though I’m hopeful for the future:

With two laptops, synths, MPC sampler, MIDI controllers and FX units all triggered live on stage, Segue are willing to walk the tightrope in the live arena where some contemporaries baulk at performing without a safety net. “It’s the eternal and much argued balance between risk and self indulgence” Dri says wryly, and reaction to their sets so far suggests the risk is paying off big time. Leo is more abrupt with his explanation of the extent of their stage setup, stating with a characteristic smile “this is what we enjoy, so this is how we play”.

If you’re interested in their music, here’s some additional background:

Segue’s Chemical Brothers remix featured on Palms Out Sounds [at AU dance site inthemix.com.au]
Chemical Brothers – EBW9 Segue remix [seguesound.com]
About Segue

And if you’re in Melbourne, go check out Segue + CDM’s own VJ Jaymis at Smashbang lounge on October 5 — erm, 5 October.

But I dare someone out there to do something as outlandish as the sketch above.

See also: Yamaha TENORI-ON Launch: Photos, Videos, Interviews, Demos, Details, and a Music Box

THE TENORI-ON : I know this. This means something …

Literally what TENORI-ON means in Japanese is "sound in your palm" but what I came away feeling after hearing Toshio Iwai’s story and later experiencing this innovative musical device for myself at Yamaha’s UK Launch event last Tuesday was more akin to the Richard-Dreyfuss-Close-Encounters quote. Never mind that the light-and-audio-synched performances can bring back visions of that film’s alien jam session.* I may not be articulate enough to explain fully why or how I was so affected by my short time with this snazzy gadget (my logical working-musician-self keeps on telling me that, measured by today’s music hardware standards, this is still just mashed potatoes, albeit in a very cool shape) but I do consider myself self-aware enough to appreciate the very real visceral impact it had on me. I’ve a sense the TENORI-ON is important, but not in a way most of us can fully appreciate today or probably anytime soon.

Let me start off by saying what the TENORI-ON is not:

• It is not a programmable synthesizer or sound module.
• Although it can hold some limited samples, it is not a sampler.
• It is not a compositional tool, not in the traditional sense at least.
• It has a tactile x/y matrix element but is not a Kaoss pad.
• It is definitely not the type of highly flexible "soup-to-nuts" production workstation device most working musicians would use to compose and produce their next musical opus on.

I find it commendable that Yamaha’s marketing manager, Peter Peck, was very upfront in stating the first two points at the outset, especially in a market where so many new music products attempt to be everything to everybody. It also appears to be the reason, although this wasn’t confirmed, why they have decided to market and sell these in record stores rather than music stores here in the UK.

What the TENORI-ON is:

• A well-designed piece of interactive art.
• An innovative and fully-contained musical instrument that allows anyone to easily produce very listenable music.
• A very tactile feedback-loop experience. The interplay of the lights with sound is incredibly mesmerizing and draws you in immediately.
• Incredibly immersive.
• Expensive – approx $1200 USD.

If there is just one particular point I would make in attempting to explain why it is I am so extremely smitten with this slick gizmo, I would have to say this:

THE TENORI-ON HAS PROBABLY THE BEST ELAPSED "ZERO-TO-FLOW" TIME I’VE EVER
EXPERIENCED AS A MUSICIAN.

I’m coining a term here, so allow me to explain: "Flow" is something most all creative people can easily identify with. That’s when your wife – your partner, your better self, whomever – comes to you at your desk or studio at 4:45 in the morning and says "Do you know what time it is?" and you really don’t. Now while many musicians certainly have established their own paths to get to this place, most find there are typically nowadays more than a few frustrating and time-consuming hurdles that must first be overcome.

Granted, I now live and work in a world made up mostly of DAWS, virtual synths, samples and plug-ins, not to mention hardware interfaces, mixers, outboard gear and more cables than I would prefer. As a result, I often feel several layers detached from dealing with my sounds and music, so it may be only natural that the direct, more tactile experience the TENORI-ON provided may have conjured up for me memories of twiddling knobs on my first hardware synth or working a beatbox in real-time.

Regardless, the real story here may not be about the TENORI-ON itself, but more about its artist/inventor Toshio Iwai (seen above). About how one’s lifelong artistic vision can sometimes, in what would seem to be incredible odds in a corporate environment, manage to manifest itself and make it onto the world stage as an actual retail product, and not just another one-off museum installation. Can you imagine what it must have been like persuading a huge corporate behemoth like Yamaha into investing who-knows-how-many millions on the making of what’s essentially a piece of "interactive music art?" I can’t. I have a hard enough time just shilling my little jingles and tunes for loose change to anyone willing to listen.

When you hear Toshio speak about his life-long passions for interactive music and art you realize this isn’t just another creative guy in touch with his inner-child, he IS his inner child! Toshio spends over half of his lectures focusing on his childhood – how his parents encouraged him to create his own toys and the profound impressions he had upon receiving his first microscope, his first tape recorder, his first synthesizer, his first computer. Apparently it was a much-loved crank music box that could read perforated cards that gave him first inspiration for the TENORI-ON and other interactive music projects. I found it most interesting that somebody instilled with the kind of drive and confidence to push an uphill vision in a corporate world, not to mention to speak openly about his inner childhood development, still shied away from calling himself a musician. This after spending a lifetime literally obsessed with music and providing performances like the one below. Alright, so Toshio’s not a musician in the exact same manner that Brian Eno said he wasn’t a musician while in Roxy Music. Get over it, you’re a musician already!

Perhaps that’s the real juncture here. As the lines between musicians, DJs, performance artists, and just "normal" people who happen to enjoy music continue to blur and even evaporate, this may well be where the real TENORI-ON impact could come into play. Case in point: the current Guitar Hero phenom. I consider myself a fairly shreddingly-adequate guitarist, but I was so intimidated by the virtuosity of some of those who played daily during our lunch-breaks in the office at Sony, I didn’t dare join in for fear of being shown up by one of these non-guitar-playing virtual guitar heroes (oh, the humility, the shame!). To hear these guys talk they were experiencing a "real" music-making experience and without a doubt it probably was a very real tactile experience of making music when you think of it.

Other game companies are suddenly jumping on to clones of Guitar Hero with other interactive music/graphics based games. Yamaha has had a long history of promoting music education and this could have definitely had some play as a basic thrust of that initiative. Even Toshio’s own previous work on his Nintendo DS title, Electroplankton, contains many of his TENORI-ON elements.

As for its immediate future, I would love to see this thing become a commercial success, for Toshio’s hard work if for nothing else. I believe Toshio’s intentions are good, that he envisioned setting out to provide to others something he himself had experienced as a youngster. But there are some real issues, the price point being the most glaring. There is no doubt that if this were a $299 product, and not a $1200 one, I and many others would own one right now. Just because I said the TENORI-ON could be important isn’t the same as saying it will sell. What will likely happen – and it could be happening as we speak – is some kid is going to reverse-engineer a virtual software-based version, which is probably not that difficult a thing to do. Perhaps a Monome coupled with a PC running this kid’s software may even come extremely close to that experience I felt the other night, who knows. At any rate, I still think this is just the beginning – I know this … this is important.. <long awkward pause> and "I guess you’ve all noticed that there’s something strange with dad."

Gary Kibler is a game and film composer who most recently worked for Sony Pictures in their Games Studio in Culver City. He recently relocated to the UK just outside London where he is now working on several new projects.

* Speaking of Close Encounters and alien jam sessions: Did that incredibly insipid effect of Spielberg’s having the synthesizer keys move up-and-down player-piano-style totally ruin that otherwise great movie for anyone else? I’ve always wanted to ask that.

Yamaha hosted an event last night in the heart of London’s Soho district to celebrate their official launch in the UK of what’s been described as a "revolutionary hands-on instrument that seamlessly fuses lights, sounds and music". The TENORI-ON is a unique handheld performance controller designed by Toshio Iwai, an established interactive media artist and designer, that has taken a full six years to go from initial concept to final production. Its basic makeup is a 16×16 matrix of LED buttons that not only provide the control interface to its 16 layers, 256 preset tones, and 6 sequence/loop modes, but also displays in lights what is often a stunning visual feedback loop on whatever is being output by the device. The device is planned only to be sold in the UK presently with a list price of £599 (approx. $1200 USD)

The highlight of the stage presentations was this first solo performance by Toshio:

Below is a short video interview with Toshio (he begins with signing my "Electroplankton"
DS game that he had designed earlier for Nintendo).

Here is the link to this and other photos I took at the event.

Peter Peck, the Marketing Manager for Yamaha, got up on stage just before the performance segment to make a few announcements, including some official details on the launch of the product:

• The price point is 599 UK pounds and will likely remain there for the foreseeable future.
• There is currently no set date for an international or US release of the product.
• Yamaha will be displaying these through nearly a dozen retail record outlets throughout the UK. This list is available here.

The evening featured discussions and performances by Toshio himself as well as some guest artists who had been given prior access to the device during its development. One such artist was Robert Lippok, who is well-known in Berlin’s electronic music scene with his noted band "To Rococo Rot". I counted seven or eight demo stations where people could try out the device for themselves, most equipped with headphones but some with powered monitors (Yamaha, of course). Like most people who have only been able to watch demo videos of others playing this device, it doesn’t necessarily appear intuitive, but I personally found that after about 15-20 minutes spent with it in combination with a quick read of the quick-start guide that it all begins to make sense to the point you’re able to produce something fairly quickly and effortlessly. I found myself drawn in and after 45 minutes that appeared more to me like ten, I had to be dragged away kicking and screaming.

Videos

Gary shot loads of video for CDM over the course of the evening; take it away, YouTube!

A personal demo: Peter Peck from Yamaha gives a full demo of the Tenori-On for Gary and CDM.

The inspirational music box that started it all:

Robert Lippok’s soundcheck and a 360 shot of the basement under Phonica Records:

Hands-on Experimentation

Gary’s first-ever TENORI-ON composition, part of his hands-on time with the new instrument:

And a second masterpiece. Gary: “Just because I understand a bit better what I’m doing doesn’t necessarily translate into producing better results. That may be the beauty in this beast.”

Further experimentation, shortly before the “dragged kicking and screaming” moment. “Not only did I have just one hand available to me due to my holding the camera with the other, but I couldn’t hear a thing because I needed to have the headphone resting on the camera mic. Not as satisfying a result as when I was using two hands and could hear, but a tribute to the device that blindly allows you construct something halfway listenable, without even listening!”

Stay tuned…

Thanks again to Peter and CDM for allowing me to cover this event for them. I had a great time. I have some definite impressions after having some direct experience with the device, as well as after speaking with Toshio and the other interested parties attending this event. I’ll write up these comments in the next day or two. I’d like to see some additional discussion started among CDM readers as a result of some of my comments.

For more in-depth info on the TENORI-ON, be sure to visit Yamaha’s Official Tenori-on site.

(Just added in the last 48 hours, areas on the official site where you can actually download the product manual and quick-start guide.)

Gary Kibler is a game and film composer who most recently worked for Sony Pictures in their Games Studio in Culver City. He recently relocated to the UK just outside London where he is now working on several new projects.

Can you create a new electronic musical instrument and make it succeed, without relying on the models of the past? That’s the ongoing challenge of instrument design, and it’s one that’s been largely ignored by the incremental revisions of most large music instrument manufacturers. Little wonder, then, that people are paying attention to the Tenori-on: it’s nothing if not different. The creation of Japanese innovator Toshio Iwai (famous for his art installations and the Nintendo game ElectroPlankton), the instrument has to be one of the few experimental devices to receive mass-production in recent years.

Via the ever-vigilent Matrixsynth, it seems Yamaha has started ramping up for the launch of its unusual new piece of gear with official sites. Here’s what’s available from Yamaha so far:

• Official Tenori-on UK site, though there’s actually less information there now than when the device was in prototype stage
• Tenori-On minisite with another video on the bottom right, links to sample MP3s composed by artists, and more promised info for the September 4 launch date
• Tenori-on Artist videos, featuring Jim O’rourke, Atom Heart, and Robert Lippok. See, you knew you should have returned that mysterious voice mail from Yamaha in Japan. Look what an opportunity you missed.

No, I don’t know how much it costs or when it’s shipping in various parts of the world. Expect answers to these and other questions September 4.

And Yamaha has a scoop on what lucky artists have gotten their grubby hands on the prototypes, as well as details on the event:

[Tenori-on has been] road tested by cutting edge electronic music artists: Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Matthew Herbert, Mouse On Mars, Cornelius, To Rococo Rot, Jim O’ Rourke, Rei Harakami, Tortoise and Atom Heart…

The launch event will see inventor Toshio Iwai talk and answer questions on the TENORI-ON plus live performances from a selection of artists lucky enough to be asked to road test this exciting new instrument.

Flying in from Berlin To Rococo Rot’s Robert Lippok will perform an exclusive UK set alongside cutting edge disco edit maestro Secondo (Dreck Records) and the man dubbed ‘the savior of acid house’ Capracara (Soul Jazz Records)

(Note that the global site seems a little unstable as I publish this.)

Experimental rocker Jim O’Rourke is a natural for experimenting with the Tenori-on, as a ground-breaking musician himself, a Sonic Youth vet (to say nothing of Merce Cunningham), and a producer for the likes of Wilco, Stereolab, and Beth Orton. So far, though, while the Tenori-on is innovative, we’ve yet to see it prove its versatility. The music keeps coming out like Steve Reich on acid crossed with the TB-303. (Help! Crazy xylophonists have landed from Mars!) One of the criticisms of Iwai’s ElectroPlankton was that it was musically limiting. Theoretically, though, the Tenori-on could be bent to different musical intentions, so I suspect we may just need to wait a while as people discover what to do with this thing — such is always the way as an instrument one person designed has to become second nature to someone else.

Background on the Inventor

To fully understand the Tenori-on, it’s worth a look at Iwai’s past, and the development of his distinctive musical aesthetic:

Iwai’s own older site covers early installation work and inventions like SimTunes
Wikipedia has an exhaustive timeline and links
Pixelsumo features a Futuresonic keynote by Iwai himself, along with an insightful look at his earlier work

For the best first look at the Tenori-on itself, head over to Sonic State, who are lucky enough to be in the UK for the Tenori-on premiere:
Bonkers or Total Genius? The ‘Tenori-on’ Unveiled [Video interview with Yamaha]

Want to go to the launch/UK tour?

Okay, UK readers, want an inside pass to the Tenori-on launch event? Seeing as it’s in London (and then touring the rest of England) and I’ll be in — oddly enough — Pittsburgh on tour with a dance company, I can’t go. What I can do is find someone willing to photograph and write about the event for CDM, and I’ll pass along an official assignment to my contacts at Yamaha.

In the meantime, I’d better keep working on my custom Monome. Let me know, Brits, who’s up for it?

Fans of radical exploration in instrument design have watched the Tenori-On since 2001. The instrument, designed by composer / sound artist / visualist / interactive designer Toshio Iwai, is part sequencer, part sampler, but with a novel, integrated interface using a grid of buttons. And now it has a launch date from its manufacturer, instrument giant Yamaha: September 4 is the date the Tenori-On steps from design concept to commercial product.

Yamaha decided to launch first in just one country, presumably chosen for its hipness, love of design, and adventurous embrace of nontraditional instruments. And they came up with the UK. (What, not Australia, known for its unusual concentration of createdigitalmusic.com co-creators and readers? Norway, which we just generally think is awesome? Thailand, which has a brilliant music tech blog? Oh, well. Too bad they’re all logical and not compulsively impulsive like me.)

Long story short: you’ll have to be in London to see this 9/4 — erm, make that 4/9. Then, you can follow it around England as the product tours. We do expect the tool to follow with other parts of the world after that; I’ll make sure Yamaha keeps us in the loop.

Full details on the launch, UK tour, and lots of great Tenori-On coverage, at Pixelsumo:
Tenori-On is finally here

Previously:
Yamaha to Ship Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-On, But Will Open Hardware Win? — I should really qualify this one. My point was not that Tenori-On and the open-source Monome hardware were equivalent, nor that open hardware was preferable to, say, Yamaha supporting new design. What I found interesting was that, for their personal use, musicians I knew were showing greater interest in Monome than Tenori-On, and that an upstart, open project with no funding was able to similarly experiment with ideas about what instruments should be. For a long time, hardware experimentation was often limited to one-off, academic research projects. There seems to be a new resurgence in design that actually brings ideas to market, even if in limited runs, and now increasingly opens up that research to the user. The fact that the Monome and Tenori-On take very different paths to both development and resulting design in almost every way, yet share a certain design sensibility and experimental spirit, to me further validates both projects.

New Videos, Blog for Toshio Iwai’s Imaginative Musical Creations

In June 2005, we first saw the Tenori-On, a futuristic music-making device covered in a grid of interactive, lit buttons, designed by the talented interactive artist Toshio Iwai as a prototype for Yamaha. Last week, Yamaha revealed some details about plans to make Iwai’s experimental device into a shipping product. (I missed this in preparations to fly off to Oahu.)

Basic specs: 16×16 grid of buttons, MIDI out, sequencing, and perhaps most surprising, built-in sampling and Motif sound capabilities with internal speakers (plus line-out, naturally). (Notably missing: any mention of network capabilities, which was arguably the most compelling part of the prototype. MIDI out would be notably limited in this respect. Perhaps these features will resurface.)

Anticipated price: £500.
Availability: Unknown, but soon — UK launch first, evidently.

Tenori-On specs [Future Music blog]
Hands-on Tenori-On video [Sonic State]
Tenori-On official site, Toshio Iwai Tenori-On blog, neither of which have been updated as I write this

Much like a car maker releasing a concept car as a factory model, it’s exciting to see this happen. Now there’s only one problem: a lot has happened since June 2005, and light-up buttons you can turn on and off aren’t exactly inaccessible technology. Here’s a quick review of what’s been developing in the world beyond Yamaha since 2005:

1. Toshio Iwai goes Nintendo. We’ve all gotten a chance to play with Iwai’s brilliant sound toys in the form of the Nintendo DS game ElectroPlankton. At the same time, musicians got the first indication that interactive art doesn’t always translate to musical instrument use. As CDM’s Nat noticed, just a few key missing features could have made ElectroPlankton truly rock (like multiplayer capabilities). Now, the Tenori-On looks terrific and I won’t judge it until it ships, but I notice some similar conservatism when it comes to next-gen functionality, like the lack of a protocol that would easily network multiple Tenori-Ons.
2. Korg goes on the grid. The KAOSS Pad KP-3 comes out sporting — what else — an interactive grid of lights. Now, unlike the Tenori-On, you can’t use these for visual effects onstage, it’s an 8×8 grid not 16×16, and they’re a touchpad rather than discrete buttons. But, powered by Korg’s experience building these sorts of devices, the KP-3 actually does more, with added effects and (as near as I can tell) more sophisticated sampling capabilities than the Tenori-On. It’s not nearly as elegant a design, with buttons and toggles hiding all these extra features, but it remains to be seen whether the Tenori-On will turn out to be musically useful or overly simplified.
3. Grids go DIY in software. Froggy Frog built his own Windows app called gControl, with touch buttons, for use with a touchpad. Result: it works however he wants, and runs on cheap touchpad hardware that can double as a computer interface. More similar experiments may follow.
4. Monome does Tenori-On, the open-source way. Most importantly of these, inspired by the Tenori-On, some enterprising hardware hackers built their own solution called the Monome. If the Monome were just a cheap clone, that’d be the end of the story. Instead, it shows how a simple idea (grid of buttons with lights) can yield very different results. (Ed. note: Vlad rightfully points out in comments that the Monome prototypes actually came before Tenori-On. Toshio Iwai, among others, likewise worked on similar ideas before. Ultimately, all of these ideas have been readily available, meaning this is even more a matter of execution — and your preference / working style. -PK) The Monome is 8×8 rather than 16×16, but it’s arguably more useful than the Tenori-On in that it’s completely hackable in hardware or software, and richly-documented by a user community. The Monome uses OpenSoundControl (OSC) for communication rather than MIDI, allowing much-easier communication with a computer. And its open-source nature has already yielded fruit in the form of community hacks. That’s just for lovers of soldering irons, right? Wrong: with roughly a year lead-time on Yamaha, the community have made the Monome better-documented and more widely-supported than the Tenori-On is ever likely to be.

Of course, I regularly advocate that music manufacturers talk about products they’re developing. In this case, you could argue that what’s happened is that the Tenori-On’s public demos inspired imitators or changed expectations. But I think something very different may be happening: open-source hardware may wind up beating the big manufacturer, not by cloning it but by doing something genuinely different.

Now it Heats Up: Which Next-Gen Hardware will Stick?

The Tenori-On already looks like a triumph of design and elegance. But Toshio Iwai didn’t invent the idea of grids of buttons with lights. As I look at the Tenori-On demo, I’m struck by all the things I would want this device to do — and then immediately wonder whether it will let me. Hardware makers just seem to believe the flexibility of computers is bad. On the contrary, a lot of us have been spoiled by it. That’s why Yamaha’s choice of MIDI over Monome’s OSC is disappointing. It’s simply going to be easier to send data between a Monome and a computer than a Tenori-On and a computer. It also makes it worth considering losing some of the nifty internal hardware capabilities on the Tenori-On, saving a little bit of money, and getting the far-greater flexibility of the Monome.

“But, wait!” you say. “The Yamaha is a pick-up-and-play device.” True. What’s wonderful about the Tenori-On is that it’s a fully-integrated hardware device. And what’s terrible about the Tenori-On is that it’s a fully-integrated hardware device. Flashy lights aside, what you get is a simple sampler / sequencer. Ultimately, this comes down to the question of how digital music will evolve — the question Iwai asked in his original design briefs for the Tenori-On. Anyone who can afford a Tenori-On probably already owns a laptop, and my question is, how easily will you be able to adapt the Tenori-On to your individual way of working? Iwai compared the Tenori-On to a violin. But violins have very steep learning curves, with lifelong payoff. Where will the Tenori-On sit on the toy vs. instrument continuum? Alternatively, which kind of tool would you want: one that immediately makes sense for a single task, or one that can be easily customized to adapt it to different tasks over time? There’s not a right answer to these questions, of course, but I don’t think the answer is as simple as “only hackers and geeks want customization.” My experience suggests that musicians of all types do.

This is all speculation, mind you, until the Tenori-On ships — apparently in the UK first. I’m very, very eager to try the Tenori-On in person. I’m always inspired by what Toshio Iwai does, whether I use it in my own music or not. And I look forward to challenging this design with these kinds of questions — and, perhaps, even reconsidering the Monome in a new light.

But how times have changed since 2005. Whether successful or not, a succession of hardware (Monome, Lemur, the continued interest in the Haken Continuum and others) have demonstrated that we’ll never again think of a two-octave keyboard with eight knobs as the final answer for digital music. They’ve also proven that far-out interfaces can turn into shipping products. And, most interestingly, the rise of open-source hardware (through the rise of x0b0x, Monome, Arduino, and Make Magazine) has made DIY gear a serious alternative to commercial hardware for specific jobs. Musicians happily use this gear alongside commercial hardware and commercial software like Ableton Live, so this isn’t just for open source nuts.

Now, it’s time to see which of these experiments sticks in the long run. Which — if any of these — whet your palette? Or are you waiting for the Next Big Thing, while happily twiddling knobs on conventional hardware? (Hey, it gets the job done. You can always hook up flashing lights separately if you have to.)