While Moog is a household name, the UK’s Electronic Music Studio is a kind of "forgotten chapter" of electronic music history, as the documentary above suggests. EMS is significant not just for technological innovation, but musical experimentation — not to mention their cheeky British sense of humor and topless nude women crawling toward synths in their ads. (That and the best synth slogan of all time, "Every Nun Needs a Synthi.") For whatever reason, there’s likewise very little online documentation regarding the late Tristram Cary — even though the likes of Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, and King Crimson made use of the VCS3 synth he co-designed.

Above is a brief trailer for the provocatively-titled documentary "What the Future Sounded Like." (As seen on Music Thing and recommended to us by Christian Haines, lecturer at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adeleide.) Tristram and others are featured in this film; I haven’t seen the 27-minute documentary yet but definitely will be picking up a copy whenever I can (it doesn’t appear to be availale yet).

The documentary has a page on MySpace, which has more background on EMS for us Yankees who know so little about it. If you’re really lucky and at SONAR in Barcelona in June, you can catch a live screening. And EMS itself lives on.

What The Future Sounded Like Documentary

What The Future Sounded Like @ MySpace

It’s been a rough week for electronic music — having lost Bebe Barron, we’ve now lost one of the other great early pioneers of electronic music, South Australian Tristram Cary.

Tristram is credited by some as the father of tape music, originating tape music techniques in World War II. He’s notorious to the general public and sci fi fans as the composer of the music for the Daleks in Doctor Who (along with other music) — like an evil counterpart to Delia Derbyshire, who built the studio Cary would later use. But he was also a pivotal composer of music for film, electronics, voice, and instrument alike, a well-known Australian music critic, a leading figure in studios and academies, and, oh, yeah, he did the visual design (product design, really) for the legendary portable VCS3 "Putney" synth from EMS, the synth maker of which he was a founding Director.

It’s safe to say that, out of this web of contributions to electronic sound, Tristram Cary is another of those people who charted the course for what music technology is today. From the technology to his extensive music to his work in popularizing musique concrete in England, his impact is felt even by those who don’t know his name.

Christian Haines writes to let us know of Tristram passing, evidently following a long illness.

If you don’t know his work, there’s no time like the present to discover what he’s given us.

Official Tristram Cary Site

Wikipedia article, with lots of references and an extensive composition list

Resources at the Australian Music Centre

EMS, the "Moog Music of England", lives on (apologies to our UK readers, but Americans are just discovering EMS); see also the Synthi blog

And for a little Tristram Cary listening:

Trios LP by Tristram Cary (EMS) is a trio of EMS synth plus turntables; full tracks on the Synthi blog courtesy the composer. Really brilliant sounds:

And, you know, looking at all of this I’m reminded of why things like the Dalek connection are important. For whatever reason, mysterious science fiction worlds have been the entry point for listeners around the world into the sometimes alien and frightening new timbres of electronic music. We’re all lucky enough to have grown up in a time in which we’re challenged to create music that evokes other parts of the universe, real and imaginary.

Christian sends along a complete obituary provided by the Director of the Elder Conservatorium, David Lockett:

So, you thought only Americans would be the target of anti-piracy crackdowns? Think again. Shortly after the raid of popular music torrent swap site oink.cd, British authorities now say they’re looking for a legislative anti-piracy remedy. They’ve got the backing, not surprisingly, of the British record industry, and it seems continental European nations might follow. Blogger and controversy-magnet Cory Doctorow is even getting to the debate, along with angry UK Internet Service Providers, as reported by BBC News. The apparent solution seems worse than the problem, as British officials propose monitoring individual data packets. (I’m not usually one to agree with Cory Doctorow, but surveillance of all data moving over the Internet seems impractical and wrong.)

Meanwhile, oink.cd’s homepage has been replaced with an ominous warning:

This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI,
Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into
suspected illegal music distribution.

A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site’s
users.

[Emphasis mine]

So, will the UK really come after oink’s users, or is that just an idle threat?

Meanwhile, a number of you have written in with what I think is a good criticism of the oink raid, one worth considering even for those of us who oppose piracy. Why did these agencies go after oink first, a torrent tracker that was hosting at least some torrents uploaded legitimately by indie labels, and one far smaller and less focused on pre-release albums than bigger trackers like mininova? Was it because the site’s popularity among some of the music fan elite made it a more obvious target — or simply that the really dangerous and popular torrents are harder to squash? (Or both?) See Veqtor’s comment for a good summary. Some are also putting forward various conspiracy theories, but I personally suspect laziness on the part of the industry and UK/Europe authorities. Software developer and label owner Chris Randall has a well-argued rant against piracy in the same comment thread. But separate from that argument, the failing of the authorities in this case, and some of the potential oink demonstrates for non-pirate, legitimate sites, are well worth considering. See comments on the previous post.

Several readers have written in to say that Oink, a music torrent server, has been busted. British and Dutch police raided the servers (via several properties in Amsterdam) and the 24-year-old IT worker (and his father) alleged to have operated the site.

The news:
IFPI press release
Huge pirate music site shut down [BBC News, in a story Releasedog, without explanation, claims contains "lies." Anyone know what they're talking about?]

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:

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

Europeans tired of hearing the rest of the world talking about the imaginative music exploration game ElectroPlankton, now you can get your hands on it. Creator Toshio Iwai just got his European edition, as seen on his blog. He’s also taken the lovely photos of the packaging of the different editions shown. He deserves it: it’s great seeing interactive art getting this kind of wide release.

See our previous coverage of ElectroPlankton, but at the very least, we believe this can provide inspiration for future musical games/apps/interactive music making.

The Nintendo DS just became America’s best-selling game console. Nintendo says that’s part of a transition to mobile game systems. In CDM’s world view, it’s part of the world’s transition to mobile interactive music. Of course, we’re insane.

Speaking of Toshio Iwai, he’s the keynote speaker tomorrow (probably today by the time you read this) Thursday July 20 at Futuresonic 2006 in Manchester, UK, and is performing Friday the 21st with another of his wonderful creations, the Tenori-On, as seen on its official Yamaha site. If you go to either, a) we’re jealous and b) let us know how it is! I also expect we’ll hear back from our friend Cris @ Pixelsumo while he’s there.