Tenori-On and iPad apps, hardware designs and visual creations: set against the beautifully-generative mind of Japanese/New York artist Yayoi Kusama, the flurries of dots and circles and patterns in musical interfaces take on a richer meaning. This video, from a workshop hosted at the Tate Modern alongside an exhibition of Kusama’s work, needs little introduction. Instead, the dizzying cuts of geometric abstraction, the array of visual ideas for musical interface begin to take on the same personality of her expansive creations. The galaxies produced out of the minds of musicians somehow overlap with this iconic artist. I hadn’t really made the connection before, even as a fan of her work, but with this workshop, the sympathetic vibrations – intentional or not – become clear. Description:

Sonic Kusama:
Workshop exploring connections between the work of Yayoi Kusama and creation and representation of new music & sound art through visual audio interfaces.
Presented by Simon Little and Kelvin Brown with Chase Lane.
Audio track by Capstone Music
Video production by Territory Studio

If you’re in London, Infinite Kusama is on view now at the Tate Modern.

What happens when you meld the most futuristic Microsoft technology with the most futuristic Apple technology with the most ColecoVision-esque graphics as built in Jitter? Or you create gameplay that couples physical human contortion with the step sequencing rhythms of music? A different take on music games, that’s what.

Developers Matt (“M@tt”) Boch and Ryan Challinor work, in their day jobs, on the music game as most people know it, at Harmonix. Harmonix’s roots remain in the rhythm game, so that music play, even at its most serious, is still about musical timing accuracy. Pxl Pusher is a very different mechanic: imagine a step sequencer grid on an iPad, presenting blocks that, true to the classic game Twister, require another player to balance and stretch their bodies to match.

I caught up with Matt and Ryan over the summer at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Before throngs of crowds swarmed the game – easily one of the most popular of the night – I managed to get some quick footage of the creators doing last-minute patching and trying out gameplay. (The quiet there is atypical; we got to shoot before the doors opened.) An insane travel schedule kept me from publishing sooner, but here, Matt and Ryan share their process.

Another interesting twist: Max/MSP and Jitter allowed extremely rapid prototyping with Kinect, something of interest to anyone doing this sort of work. (And dig those “3D” images … if they don’t blind you.)

CDM: How did you work together on this project?

Matt: Jamin from Kill Screen had asked me to make a project for the Pop Rally, and I was looking for someone to team up with to make it happen. Around the same time, Ryan was developing Synapse, and I got super excited about that tech. Having worked with him closely on Dance Central 2, I was positive we’d make a killer team, so I proposed we team up and make it happen. He got the ball rolling immediately.

Max/MSP is a pretty ideal environment for the both of us to work in, as it lets us evaluate ideas really quickly, and completely obliterate the lines between disciplines that we’re used to in traditional game development. Each of us designed, coded, sound designed, and made art for the game. It was awesome to be able to share in the creation of all parts of the game.

Ryan: We riffed on ideas with each other until it snowballed into the final product. Max allowed us both to work in the same space, as opposed to the traditional programmer/designer arrangement, where I would work in code and Matt would tweak values that I expose. This allowed us to work much faster and blurred the line between programmer and designer.

Any roadblocks, discoveries along the way?

Ryan: The whole project was driven by discovery: discover a fun interaction, then figure out how to leverage it. There were no real roadblocks, other than Matt being on painkillers for the entirety of the project!

Matt: I fell, knocked out four teeth, and fractured my jaw, so I was on heavy doses of painkillers for much of the development. I’m doing much better now, almost fully recovered.

The greatest discovery for me was more of a rediscovery. I remembered how freeing it is to design a game for a very specific context. Before working at Harmonix, I made arcade games in a contemporary art context. Getting back into that mindset was a blast.

Tell us a bit how you work with Max for rapid prototyping. How did you set it up? Any specific tools you made use of? Any tips, either related to Max or Kinect specifically?

Ryan: No real tips for Max, other than do a lot of commenting when you’re working on a file with someone else. As far as Kinect tips, my main advice would be to explore and discover what fun you can have with he input, other than starting with a specific goal. The only tools we used outside of Max were Synapse for the Kinect data, Adobe Premiere for the background movie, and some web app Matt used to generate some of the sound effects.

Matt: We ended up using Beanstalkapp & Versions for version control, which was huge for us in the late stages of development when we both needed to be working simultaneously. It was great that we structured our patch in such a way that we could easily turn elements of the patch into standalone patches, so simultaneous work could happen. You lose some flexibility, but it’s worth it to be able to work in tandem.

How did you conceive the idea for this game?

Matt: Largely through iteration and idea exchange. I VJ around Boston a fair amount and often used TouchOSC to VJ with my iPhone, so I’m not stuck behind my laptop for hours at a time, so when Ryan brought up the idea of using TouchOSC with MAX and Synapse, I was totally sold. We quickly arrived at the mashup between Twister and Step Sequencer, and every after that was polishing mechanics, arriving at a unified aesthetic, and then finding the best way to ramp difficulty.

Ryan: Matt approached me to work on a game for the PopRally right around when I just finished up Synapse, so I wanted to leverage that in the project. I had also just learned about TouchOSC, so I thought it could be fun to incorporate that. So, the initial concept was born out of experimenting with interactions that combined the Kinect and iPad.

How did things go at MOMA? Any surprises in terms of reception? It was effectively rapid playtesting — anything that you would now incorporate into the game? Or things that worked well, for that matter?

Matt: It was a phenomenal success. I never imagined we’d have a line of people waiting to play the game all night, never mind a line full of people cheering, laughing, and clapping as they watched others play. We’ve talked a bit about ways to modify the existing game to make it a bit deeper and more broadly compatible, but I’m also wary of upsetting the balance we arrived at.

Ryan: I was pleased with the reception at MoMA, it was very satisfying to work on a project and then immediately have people playing it, literally 10 minutes after it was finished (thanks to a last-minute feature request from Matt’s friend Christina)

What does it mean to you to have this game in this landmark art museum?

Ryan: I’m really grateful that we were able to show it off in such an amazing space. It feels a little unreal to me, my brain hasn’t really processed it yet.

Matt: It was hugely validating, especially because my Dad was in town and was able to make it to the event. He’s never seen crowds of people play the games I’ve worked on so to have him there, seeing how much fun everyone was having, was awesome in and of itself. That it was at the MoMA? Still haven’t totally processed it. It was the stuff of dreams when I was getting my art degree; it’s going to take a bit for me to internalize that that dream was realized. Not only was I able to show work at the MoMA, but it was shown in the context of so many great games: Bit.Trip Beat, Limbo, B.U.T.T.O.N., QWOP, the list goes on…

How about the connection to Kill Screen Magazine?

Matt: I think Kill Screen is far and away the best game writing happening right now. Both their daily updates on the web and their themed print issues are staples in my life. To be fair, I might be biased as I’m good friends with [editor-in-chief] Jamin, but nevertheless, I think what they’ve accomplished is undeniably phenomenal. What other publication could convince the MoMA to have a video game night?

Can you tell us a bit about your roles at Harmonix, and how you came to be there?

Ryan: I’m a programmer at Harmonix, I’ve worked on The Beatles: Rock Band and the Dance Central series. I was a CS major at the University of Texas, I got an internship at a game studio in Austin that turned into a job, then a few years later a coworker talked me up to someone he met from Harmonix, and I got recruited to work there.

Matt: I am a Project Lead at Harmonix, though I’ve occupied many roles previously, most recently Senior Designer. I started at Harmonix as a Production Assistant while I was finishing my thesis at Harvard. My friend and VJ partner, Josh Randall, is the Creative Director of Harmonix. We’d been VJing together for a bit while I was in school. He gave me a call one day, suggesting I apply for a Production Assistant role. One of my jobs was to track all the prototype hardware, but I ended up spending most of my time repairing it, as my art practice of building arcades gave me a fair amount of experience about mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and coding. That landed me a role as hardware designer, and, many Rock Band iterations and trips to China later, I was tasked with investigating tech for a potential dance game. That lead to me heading up the development of a game prototype that would become Dance Central, and I’ve been designing for the franchise ever since. A circuitous path for sure, but I’m really happy with where I ended up, and deeply grateful to Harmonix for allowing me to occupy such varied roles throughout my 4 years tenure.

Synapse is something other folks can use, too, correct? What does it do, and where might they begin?

Ryan: Yep, Synapse is a freely released toolset. The primary focus of the project was for controlling Ableton Live with Kinect, but it can be used with anything that receives OSC input. You can find more information at http://synapsekinect.tumblr.com/

Any future plans for this game, or other Synapse-powered stuff?

Ryan: In the immediate future, we’ll be showing off PXL PUSHR at Indiecade in LA on October 8th. Beyond that, I’m not sure what the future is. At the very least, we’re going to keep the ideas of the gameplay mechanic in mind to be incorporated into future projects. As far as Synapse, I’m currently exploring other ideas so I don’t have any Synapse stuff in the works at the moment, but I know of a few other people working on Synapse-powered projects currently.

Matt: As Ryan stated, we’re showing it at Indiecade, and are hoping we’ll get more opportunities to show the game publicly. I deeply enjoyed working on the game with Ryan and I hope that TeamPXL, the moniker we’ve adopted, will develop additional games with the same working methodology. For now, given that we both just wrapped development on Dance Central 2, we’re taking a much needed break to recharge. I know Ryan’s got some awesome audio manipulation patches in the works, and I’m excited to see what comes of those. In time, I’m sure an awesome idea for a game will cross one of our minds and we’ll have no choice but to dig in and make something new!

http://teampxl.tumblr.com/

On the road from futuristic instrumental concept to real-world product, the Yamaha Tenori-On as shipped lacked some of the functionality its creator, gifted media artist Toshio Iwai, originally imagined. Notably, wireless networking, which promised social music-making with other devices, was gone, replaced with a more-limited MIDI connector.

Now, in a surprisingly literal translation from the hardware to iPad, it appears the Tenori-On has added that feature – but lost some of its charm. An iOS developer notes to me that pitches don’t sound when you tap the screen, only when they are played in the sequence. That fundamentally changes the interaction with the sequencer: you can’t hear notes until they’re sequenced, and you would presumably lose the sense of playing an instrument. That report is happily incorrect; both the developer and I were mistaken from our video impressions. That makes this far more useful.

My reaction here should be taken with a grain of salt – this is only a demo video. But in observing what is new (networked features look terrific), it’s likewise worth saying that something is lost when you move to tangible hardware. To me, a lot of the appeal of the Tenori-On was tangible: the machined metal case, with curved edges designed to be comfortable to hold, and the feeling of running your fingers against discrete, round keys on the array of buttons. Those are lost by necessity. Yet, oddly, some of the Tenori-On’s features designed primarily for hardware – the menu system and navigation keys – are reproduced here, features necessary on a hardware design but not a tablet.

Yamaha Japan, apologies for going on a rant on a product I haven’t yet used, but I’m concerned at what seems to be a missed opportunity. And designer Toshio Iwai has already conceived imaginative touch-based interfaces that are designed for a screen, in works before iOS had even been announced, like ElectroPlankton for the Nintendo DS and interactive installation work going back some 15 years or so.

Simply translating hardware designs to a screen is novel, but rarely usable. Just ask Tascam, who were roundly (and rightly) criticized for making a Portastudio app for iPad that required you rewind every single time.

At least the good news is, some of the musical personality of Toshio Iwai’s work remains, and in a form that doesn’t require a costly hardware investment. Updated – also, via readers, there’s evidence of MIDI support.You’ll find other videos on Yamaha’s official Japanese channel.

Just mark my words: the hardware is still cooler, and there’s a lot of potential in hardware and software sequencers alike beyond this yet to be realized, whether by Yamaha or by someone else.

Updated: I want to re-emphasize that there appears to be auditory feedback as you press buttons for sequences, which is great news and vastly improves usability. And while I stand by some of what’s advantageous in hardware, I’m excited to learn that we may get both networked and MIDI functions here, as we’ve seen in apps from makers like KORG.

Reader comments are very positive, so amidst this hopefully constructive criticism, I think it’s encouraging that the software looks promising and people are eager to try it! (And being critical of some features does not mean you can’t eventually like the product – part of why I tend not to shy away from criticism.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/yamahajp

In the blurring areas between gaming and creation, toys and tools, there’s certainly a lot of action, spurred on by platforms for sharing software.

Pulse is a new title for the iPad, an ambient rhythmic gaming experience with a unique interface centering around a series of concentric circles. The graphic design looks gorgeous in its abstraction, as much music visualization and animation as game UI. The developer, Cipher Prime, has done this kind of terrific work before – their work includes the ambient streams of colored particles in Auditorium, the Flash-based browser game, followed by the Mac + PC game Fractal. Items of note here:

• The game combines melodic and rhythmic gameplay elements.
• Pulse is as much interactive album as game, accompanied by a release of songs (including the single below).
• Gameplay can be collaborative, not just single player.
• The title is built in the awesome Unity engine, which means, by the way, Android development isn’t ruled out. Ahem. Let’s hope those OEMs get their tablets straightened out – I repeat my mntra, choice is good.
• The developers credit their community of geeks and musicians in Philadelphia, PA.
• In addition to the existing tracks, the developers are looking for indie musicians in Philly looking to get in on the action. Game developers: the new record labels.

Pulse: Volume One

The title is already earning praise and recognition, including topping the charts and getting featured as iPad game of the week.

Interestingly, as the iPad morphs into game platform, that hasn’t stopped people from reconsidering game platforms as venues for music creation tools. So, by way of contrast and comparison – and in case your Xbox is feeling lonely with all the iPad news – it seems only right to counterpoint Pulse with a new Xbox 360 title also released last week.

Music Box is a Tenori-On-inspired music sequencer for Xbox Live Arcade. It’s fairly simple in conception, but makes clever use of the spare controls on an Xbox game controller, and at only a buck, it’s almost certainly a must-buy for music lovers with an Xbox.

Grab the 99-cent title from the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Developer Vadim of Facetious Creations built Music Box with Microsoft’s XNA toolset, which opens up the possibility of Windows Phone, too. He says the response so far has been terrific. I find it fun to play with – and an interesting diversion for a game console.

For all our complaints about iOS and even Android, game consoles remain the most closed platforms out there. (Indeed, some of the anxiety over iOS I believe stems from concerns the game consoles locked-down model will spread to other computing hardware.) That said, Microsoft arguably does more than any other console vendor to promote indie game titles; amidst some noise, there are some real gems on the Xbox Live Arcade.

So, there you have it – two very different models for two different platforms. Let us know what you think.

Addendum: Many, many games have taken on the idea of games as albums, or at least with strong musical dimensions. There’s a nice list of inspiration listed in the sidebar of the blog for Cipher Prime, just to name a few that offer indie and ambient goodness:
Aether
Blueberry Garden
Eufloria
flOw
Knytt Stories
Machinarium
Osmos
Passage
Samarost 2
Windosill

Reader Franz (Franz Keller, VJFranzK) has been blissfully happy with a Tenori-On-inspired application for Apple’s iPad, and he’s committed his enthusiasm to video. I love his presentation style, a bit like a cheery authoritative voice from a vintage newsreel. From his description:

Aurora by 4Pockets for iPhone, iPad etc. The newest amazing synth program to enter the iScene! 14 sparkling tracks of improvisational music briliance… a full on Tenori type experience for the great price of $10!

There appear to be some tradeoffs here in the transition to the iPad. One of the strong features of using the Tenori-On was the tactile feel of those buttons against your fingertips; the feedback and precision are lost here. It’s also nice to have MIDI connectors for controlling other, often (ahem) better-sounding equipment to the Tenori-On. But there are advantages, too. Having the keyboard at the bottom and context-sensitive menu options makes programming friendlier on the iPad, and that’s to say nothing of the ability to use the iPad for other things, at a price that’s less than Yamaha’s hardware.

And, incidentally, it is very true that the iPad does multitouch better than any other widely-available device — though my big question now is, will others soon catch up? (If they do, we’ll be indebted to Apple’s developers for beginning to create usable design patterns via the iPad and iPhone.)

Thanks for the review, Franz! Now, cue the commenters complaining about the use of “Tenori-On” and “iPad” in this post. (Hmmm… if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I may have to write an automated script that posts additional made-up comments along the same lines.)

Émilie Simon is a fantastically-talented artist with a unique background: her work now falls clearly into pop territory, but her lineage is just as much experimental and classical. Conservatory training gave way to time at the avant garde nerve center of Paris, IRCAM. IRCAM’s Director, Cyrille Brissot, still plays alongside her – more on his wild invention in a moment.

Simon has been a big hit in France; you may know her composition from the soundtrack to March of the Penguins. But now, she’s a New Yorker, which brings us to the topic of the headline. The singer-pianist-artist released a new record last fall, The Big Machine. I do miss some of the quirkier style on her older records, and I rather liked the singing in French (I’m sure NYC has its share of Francophones). The new record tends in a Kate Bush-influenced direction which has divided some fans. They are just as well-crafted, however, and Simon’s writing and performance is inventive as always. It’s a new direction, but it’s worth giving it some time. I think you’ll like the results, and it shows Simon’s continued versatility and artistry.

One thing with which you really can’t argue is Simon’s exceptional musicianship. I love her new series, which has her releasing studio sessions shot in her Bedford Avenue apartment. In the edition at top, the work begins with the expected ballad form, but takes a very different direction. Commanding sounds and effects from a militaristic, future-punk controller on her arm, Simon adds electronic textures, aided by a Yamaha Tenori-On and Doepfer Dark Energy synth. The wrist-strapped controller is Cyrille Brissot’s invention, aptly named “The Brissot.” Somewhere, Thomas Dolby is very jealous, indeed. (They would match his goggles.) Episode two, released yesterday, is after the jump.

Few of us would do a multi-cam rig in our apartment (I’d better make some friends), and I could do without the faux-film effects, but there’s still a terrific intimacy of the sessions, and her stage presence shines through. It’s a reminder that adding technology doesn’t have to mean removing that sense of a live performance – quite the opposite, in fact, as a solo act wouldn’t be able to do this much of this on the spot. Electronics are, as I keep saying, the ultimate renaissance of the one-man- (or one-woman-) band.

So, if you think you can do better – heck, even if not – let us know if you release a similar session. And Cyrille, Émilie, if you’re out there, I’d love to catch up on your work for CDM.

I just spoke to Ty Liotta, the head of ThinkGeek’s custom product group. They’re responsible for the playable guitar/drum kit t-shirts, and a number of other fun geeky things.

The development team started working on a grid-button synth back in April, inspired by the Monome and the Tenori-on. Their goal was to make it as low-cost as possible while retaining a sense of fun and playability. Cost was a big factor in their design process; the Thinkgeek team is well aware of the exisiting devices in the marketplace and didn’t want to directly compete with the APC or the Launchpad’s price points.

The first prototype was inspired by the grid layout but had a set of 64 switches instead of membrane buttons and LEDs:

The switches were intended to be a cost-saving measure, but the engineers figured out that it was actually a little bit cheaper to use LEDs and the plastic buttons. The sounds come from a standard Casio-type FM synth chip, which is controlled by the onboard sequencer/logic chip. The Bliptronic can be chained together with other units to form longer sequences via the sync jack on the side, which operates via voltage pulses.

The team made sure that the operating BPMs (60 to 180 in 20BPM increments) are accurate, so you can play it side-by-side with another device until they drift apart (check out the end of the demo video with the Kaoss Pad).

The intended audience here is music/synth geeks firstly, but Ty hopes the device’s low cost and intuitive playability will appeal to kids and a more mainstream audience as well. If the Bliptronic does well, the team hopes to offer a slightly higher-priced version with MIDI (exactly how they’ll implement MIDI control is still being discussed). Ty’s first idea is that the Bliptronic could send MIDI notes as a visual step sequencer, but he talked about the possibility of external clock synching as well.

We also discussed possible hacks and modifications to the Bliptronic, and Ty offered a few suggestions and hints. Firstly, he suggested that anyone looking to build a Monome-type controller with visual feedback would find that the button-and-LED matrix can be easily repurposed. Since this is usually the most expensive/time-consuming step, people might find this a cost-effective part.

Another angle of attack may be to get at the tempo adjustment and sync controls, if you’re looking to hack in your own external MIDI clocking- I myself plan to pursue this angle as soon as the unit I ordered arrives.

Also, Ty mentioned that the synth chip is external to the logic controller, so I assume that one could circuit-bend that chip independently of the logic controls. There may also be some unimplemented sounds waiting on the chip, and it may be possible to modify the scales played. I’m fairly familiar with some of these chips used in the casio-clone keyboards found at thrift stores- makes me wonder if there are some drum sounds hiding in there as well.

I’ll keep everyone here updated on my modifications and discoveries once I get my hands on one of these little guys, but early indications are that the Bliptronic 5000 might be on par with the Gakken SX-150 in terms of both price and bendability.

You know the grid craze is in full steam once ThinkGeek offers a $50 clone. The Bliptronic 5000 is somewhere between the Tenori-On and monome. It certainly looks like the monome, with an 8-by-8 grid of light-up pads in a square form factor. But like the Tenori-On, it has built-in sounds and speaker, it’s made of aluminum, and it runs on batteries. The Bliptronic also simplifies its user interface. Its 8×8 pads are simply an eight-note octave with eight steps. There’s a play button, and knobs for tempo and tone selector. There’s also the ability to link up devices and play them together – bonus points for that, as aside from basic MIDI function, the Tenori-On as shipped by Yamaha failed to deliver some of the original collaborative features promised by designer Toshio Iwai’s original proposal.

The “old-skool” sounds are pretty lo-fi-sounding from what I can tell, but this unit does have a certain charm. If you’ve got a monome and a Tenori-On and a Launchpad in every room, you can amuse your friends by keeping one of these in the lavatory. And who knows, someone might pick this thing up and do something terrific with it. (I sure can’t argue with the price.)

Mostly what it reminds me is that it would be really fantastic to pair a synth chip directly with the monome, for a standalone monome synth, perhaps even an Arduino-programmable model (particularly since the monome already speaks serial).

Updated: Wait, hold the presses — this isn’t the work of some anonymous creator; Ty Liotta is doing the gadget design. That means this could be an eminently hackable little device, which is a good thing. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Louis Muloka and everyone else who sent this in.

The specs from ThinkGeek:

Unusual retro synthesizer is played with a grid of glowing buttons
Create looping patterns and change them dynamically while playing
Chain multiple units together and create more complex melodies
One octave range. 8 notes can be played simultaneously
8 different old-skool synth sounding instruments to choose from
Sounds created using FM waveform synthesis
Set the BPM (beats per minute) from 60 to 180 in 20 BPM increments
Built in speaker with headphone jack and line-out jack
Front panel is constructed from brushed aluminum
Includes, manual and 2 link cables for connecting additional Bliptronic units
Requires 4 x AA batteries (not included)

Bliptronic 5000 Instrument

Stay tuned here for news of the Bliptronic 10000.

The Tenori-On, the grid-based musical instrument with whimsical sequenced lights created by Toshio Iwai, has been gradually becoming more affordable. The original model, complete with its rounded metal case, has already been cut to US$999 here in North America. Now, Yamaha announces that it is making an “Orange” version which also slices costs. A plastic case stands in for the metal one, the lights are orange instead of white, and lights appear only on one side. Yamaha says this is for “home use” — that is, you don’t need the device lighting up on the other side if no one’s watching you. Unfortunately, by removing this novelty and eliminating the Tenori-On’s fantastic battery power option, I suspect Yamaha may also be slicing out some of the appeal of the device.

In the UK, MusicRadar reports the device will ship at £649. Here in the US, I’ve confirmed with distributor Keyfax that the price will be $699. Now, unlike other recent grid rivals (Launchpad, APC40, Ohm64) and the monome, the Tenori-On is capable of making sound. But I’d be inclined to either spend the extra $400 and make it light up on both sides and use it in bed sans wires or skip the idea altogether. I’m curious to know if others feel the same way.

MusicRadar also gets the scoop from Yamaha in the UK that a firmware upgrade is due for the Tenori-On fixing its somewhat problematic MIDI sync:

We’re told that this will address a number of areas, including syncing of the Tenori-on to DAWs and also the MIDI sync implementation.

Yamaha announces ‘more affordable’ Tenori-on Orange [MusicRadar]
Tenori-On product page [Yamaha worldwide]
Tenori-On USA [Keyfax]

It’s worth poking around the store if you do own a Tenori-On. Those brave early adopters can now make the instrument a pretty practical addition to a live set, with a nice case, stand, and (finally) stand mic stand adapter to feature it in your sets. And in another nod to the design, the Tenori-On recently entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In the meantime, I’m still curious to see if someone mashes up a synth engine and monome to make a computer-less monome.

Imagine an alternative universe in which simple digital handheld games evolved into sophisticated music tools. Oh, and they also made lots of really purty lights flash. Mmmmm … flashing lights.

Well, that alternative universe seems to be right here. Mike Una gave us a massive dump of unusual new DIY sequencers, crafted from the ground up to rework techno into sonic objects. Some are unquestionably indebted to the analog step sequencer, but others take as much from 80s digital toys.

Working with the Meggy, Jr. DIY handheld game platform – with a stunning 8×8 pixel resolution – Darius Kazemi has begun building a music app. He calls it “MeggySynth,” and says he’s conceptualizing it as much a video performance as it is sonic performance. Let the video get at least part of the way in, as the colors really pick up – full RGB LEDs really are a beautiful thing (and something you don’t get from projects like monome).

Our friend and Handmade Music regular, the talented hacker Collin Cunningham, covers this for MAKE:
MAKE: Blog: MeggySynth makes music

Collin rightfully compares this to Tenori-On. Part of what strikes me about Toshio Iwai’s work – not only Tenori-On for Yamaha and ElektroPlankton for Nintendo, but his installation work stretching back to the 90s – is that it often incorporates game aesthetics. Designs are reduced to their elemental interaction and visual representation, which very often includes low-resolution, pixellated grids. (Photo: Julie Delvaux.)

Now, being the greedy person I am, I really want this style of RGB grid, but with other sound sources. But I think there’s a lot of potential, and just as grids of lights can function on roadsigns, there’s no reason even a small number of pixels can’t be expressive. Just ask your local Tamigotchi.

The best part of simplicity? Darius, designing level editors — in Excel.

Tiny Subversions: My Meggy Level Editor