$26,000 at the time, the Fairlight CMI was the commercial product that really launched the notion of computer as musical instrument to the general populous - along with various electronic cliches in its wildly-popular preset bank. Our friend James at Retro Thing alerts us to the fact that none other than Fairlight co-founder and co-designer Peter Vogel has been uploading vintage videos to YouTube. There’s a behind-the-scenes tour of the Fairlight factory, circa 1984, and below, a demonstration of the Series III instrument by Greg Sneddon:

There’s also this charming 1980 appearance on "This Week" on Australian TV.

What about making music with computers?

"No, no — you don’t feel like a technician."

Curious that we still have to answer that question today.

Dig the groovy imagery at the end. (around 5:00 in).

Here’s the good news: the Tenori-On is really going on sale here in America. It’s about the same price as in the UK, as expected. (GBP600 = about US$1200.)

The bad news? If you want to buy one, good luck. Yamaha says initially only about 100 units a month will be available. (We also heard “1000 units” for the whole year, which would mean they stop doing 100 units each month after September, if that’s right.) To put this in perspective, the Monome 64, with zero press behind its launch, sold out a 100-unit run in 120 seconds. After getting hands-on with the Monome, I want to reemphasize that a square grid of buttons are the only things these two designs have in common — but you can bet ravenous demand will be one other common feature. (Another example: the permanently-backordered x0xb0x.)  Heck, even the Arduino board, a USB kit for electronics makers, has 500 units on-hand at one vendor alone, and they typically sell out when a new semester begins.

That means that Tenori-On is getting the same cautious launch it got in the UK, even though the UK is a much smaller market than the US. (We may not be as electronically-savvy, but there are five times as many of us Yankees.) And there’s the US press blow-out likely to happen (Gizmodo and Engadget were on-hand at the press event last night; Friday the launch hits San Francisco.) And there’s a full half year of buzz. We didn’t even hear word that Tenori-On would be available in record shops in the US as in the UK; word was distribution will be exclusively online, via Keyfax. (Updated: There’s nothing on the Keyfax site, so head to www.tenori-on-tour.com.)

It’s not for lack of manufacturing capability; the Tenori-On is expensive to produce, with its unusual, rounded magnesium frame, but Yamaha literally has robots for that. (They had pictures of what would look like mass production, but isn’t.)

It was curious to hear people muttering "too expensive" in association with the unit, because I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Anyone wanting one, plan to have a party by your mouse the night before 5/1.

Benny Goldman has an early review at Gizmodo. That’s actually my voice you hear in the video, talking to Yamaha about when the "experimental" limited run will end and the Tenori-On will become a mass-market product. I’ll have to see if I screwed up Engadget’s sound, too.

Of course, the best way to get a Tenori-On in the US is to build a sophisticated interactive table and win over a crowd of people, but that’s been done already, and there is the danger of winding up with just a hat. More on that later today.

Peter Dines, known for his work with Reaktor (don’t miss his fantastic Reaktor Tutorial Project blog) got a first-hand look at the Yamaha Tenori-On’s first North American stop on its launch tour. He brings us some impressions of the launch, and introduces the phrase "switchboard acrobatics" to the lexicon, which I think will have to find a home in these discussions from now on.

I’ll be at the Brooklyn event tonight, so if you’re there, do say hi! We’ll have coverage of the artists and event soon. (Yeah, I cheated — these are London launch event photos.)

Here’s Peter — and yes, it’s interesting to know that those buttons aren’t necessarily immediately intuitive when you’re under the gun!

Since I am an extremely lazy person I had only a cursory knowledge of the Yamaha Tenori-On when I arrived at SAT for its gala Montreal launch. A number of the little blinking beauties were set up at kiosks separated from the loud music of Pheek by the flimsiest of curtains. I waited in line for my turn to have a poke at it, and when I got it I was baffled.

Yes, there were instructions. Step four required the user to hold down a function key while pressing an LED in row nine. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t immediately recognize groups of nine out of an array of sixteen by sixteen identical, evenly spaced das blinkenlights, especially when there’s a queue of impatient people behind me. There was also no obvious way to turn up the volume to a level that would be audible in the venue. Disheartened, I passed the headphones to the guy breathing down my neck, got a beer and settled in to watch musicians who evidently knew the ins and outs of the thing as they worked it on stage.

Windows is getting enough instrument and effect madness for free to make your head spin — a lot of it previously commercial software. Here’s the latest addition: Beatburner, a looping sampler combined with a wave shaper and enveloped filter. In short, Beatburner takes your loops and makes them into sonic insanity. I’ve been playing with it a bit this evening, and making things sound … well, scary. As the author describes it:

BeatBurner, using innovative wave shaping and filtration methods, turns innocent drum beats, loops or sounds into new, fresh and vibrant audio parts for you to incorporate into your musical arrangements. BeatBurner comes with a myriad of sample loops to get you started but it doesn’t stop there, you can mangle, whittle or process any sound you want! Full automation and preset morphing means there are literally no limits to the soundscapes you can create.

Beatburner is NOT made with Synthedit.

Beatburner blog, downloads, and donation link, via DigitalLoFi

The plug-in also includes a healthy selection of bass and drum loops to get you playing right away.

I like having some free software to add to the arsenal — you get to experiment with some unusual soundmakers without the pressure of, you know, having a financial investment on the line. And if you appreciate the developer’s work, send a donation. There are still quite a few tools worth paying for, but I’ve gotten some musical ideas jump-started with the free stuff, too.

This isn’t the only free plug-in from Fat-Ass (aka CodeAudio, and yes, that’s their real name — I’m not just being mean or something). There are a whole bunch of synth and effects plugs available for free, some quite nice.

Just keeping score: on Windows, you can grab the rich Acusticaudio Nebula Hispasonic edition, a faux Commodore 64, the unique and powerful Open Circuit sampler, many of the excellent xoxos plug-ins and the highly-controllable Mechaverb, and the now-open source discoDSP HighLife sampler from the late Argu, all for free. There are a zillion more great choices from Adrian Anders, as well.

We got an interesting discussion going on the last free round-up here. It almost became a boring platform war, but for the most part, it went more along the lines of asking, honestly, why is there so much more free stuff for Windows? (And 7oi showed up, whose music I really love, a sign that it wasn’t just another boring platform thread.)

The conclusion for Mac users:

1. Check out Studiotoolz to track down hundreds of free Mac tools. There’s still not the quantity or quality of what’s on Windows, but there’s easily enough to distract you from doing any real work — erm, I mean, round out your creative arsenal.

2. Look at the open source SonicBirth for making your own plug-ins, along the lines of SynthEdit and SynthMaker on Windows. If Mac developers start to embrace this tool, it should deepen the available options

There’s a disturbing amount of free sound-making stuff out there, enough to clutter up your VST folder and make you forget where you put that multi-tap delay you wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. So, as a regular, erm, public service, I’ll be semi-regularly rounding up some of the free instruments and effects appearing around the Interwebs.

This week: a brilliantly deep reverb, plus everything from a beat box (as in human beat box) to a motorcycle simulator.

Hayden Bursk, aka CDMer ohtravioso, has built a brilliant free game-slash-step sequencer for Windows, downloadable free. The ghosts represent music tracks moving across a grid; drag and drop bubbles representing sprites in one of four different views for different samples and simultaneous tracks (4 ghosts each = 4 tracks x 4 screens = 16 tracks).

Beat Step Sequencer [YoYo Games]

You can make your own games at YoYo using simple tools

Where it gets interesting is the ability to change the direction of the moving ghosts. Hold down the W, A, S, and D keys and click on a square, and you can add an arrow that redirects the path of the ghost. That allows you to create irregular, syncopated patterns and manipulate a pattern as it unfolds rather than let it repeat endlessly.

Part of why I think a lot of electronic music ends up being needlessly repetitive is that the interfaces we use too often encourage that repetition — or make it too difficult to introduce change. You can work around that limitation to inject variety, or even musically harness the repetition itself. But changing just a key variable in this case makes a very different step sequencer.

The step sequencer also works with your own samples, so you could actually use it live. Now if it could just sync … get that tap tempo ready.

Next step, Hayden: add in Pac-Man himself (or Ms. Pac-Man, if you prefer) and let us play the game while playing the samples!

Bless Nintendo for making the Wii controller: inexpensive, lots of internal sensor data (motion sensing, tilt sensing, buttons), elegant design, and standard Bluetooth support allowing it to be used with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Now there’s free and open source software for making the most of your Wiimote as a musical instrument. First up: Wiinstrument, a multi-purpose percussion instrument, now available for all three operating systems (a Windows version was recently added).

• Plays percussion / drums with gestures
• Use an (in-development) internal sampler with WAV files, or trigger other software via MIDI
• Use tilt for control changes
• Supports tilt, velocity (how much force you use when you move your Wiimote), with acceleration from both the Wiimote and nunchuk
• It works with Mac, Windows, and Linux, via a standard OpenGL-based interface, thanks to the awesome 2D OpenGL library Gosu. (Programmers, take note.)

Of course, drums are just the beginning — you could use this to trigger clips, grooves, visualist videos and animations, whatever. And it comes with demos, tutorials, source code, the lot.

Wiinstrument Release Information
GarageBand tutorial (relevant to other apps, too)
Support information for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux
Via thread with the creator on our forums

Here is in action.

But, you say, that’s all well and good, but it’s not … air guitar. Today is your lucky day:

Game and film composer Gary Kibler is back from Tuesday’s TENORI-ON launch event with words and images reflecting upon this new instrument. (See comments for lots more discussion, of course!) And for some reason, he’s been playing with his mashed potatoes… -Ed.

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.

Afters years in development, the closely-watched TENORI-ON instrument from Toshio Iwai was officially launched in London by Yamaha last night. Noted game and film composer Gary Kibler was there, and he’s back with lots of juicy details, from the origin of the instrument’s conception to details on its launch and even a link to a PDF manual.. He’s also put loads of videos up for us on YouTube. -Ed.

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:

Nothing appeals to most electronic musicians more than a home studio filled with vintage instruments. But few of us stop to consider the responsibility we take on by purchasing an old Moog Memorymoog, Sequential Prophet-5 or even a mammoth E-mu Emulator II: They require constant care and attention. I’ve owned a number of classics and have become fairly used to popping them open from time to time for a bit of calibration or a quick fix.

To make matters worse, there’s a dark cloud looming on the horizon: Many electronic designs from the 1970s and 1980s don’t age well. If you’re not careful, your beloved vintage instrument can be seriously damaged by leakage from the battery that preserves its patch memory, or fall victim to chip or component failure. Here’s a quick look at some of the most common problems that can befall older instruments.