Sojourn of Ben

Yamaha says strong interest in new music machine

1 hour ago

TOKYO (AFP) — Yamaha says it is seeing brisk interest in a new digital musical instrument that enables users to create and play music as if they are drawing pictures.

After a successful advance launch in Britain, Yamaha offered the instrument online in Japan last week at 121,000 yen (1,170 dollars) each.

It has already sold a few hundred of the new instrument, against planned sales of 1,000 in Japan for the entire first year, according to the company.

The square device, measuring 20 centimetres (eight inches) by 20 centimetres, has 256 buttons in rows on one side that can be played in various modes.

To make a basic sequence, the player just pushes buttons which are assigned specific notes.

"You will be able to compose music in 20 minutes," Yu Nishibori, one of the developers of the TENORI-ON, told AFP.

The LED buttons also create visual effects such as dots, lines or more complex patterns as the machine plays music.

In the "draw mode," the user freely draws a line to create music, while the "push mode" makes pushing buttons cause a ripple effect, with surrounding buttons illuminating with gradually changing tones.

The TENORI-ON -- the name is coined from "tenori" meaning palm-held in Japanese, has another set of 256 buttons on the backside that illuminate to any watching audience as the performer plays the music.

Despite its silver-metallic, factory-automation look, the instrument requires a great deal of manual labour to make, including polishing, Nishibori said.

"The TENORI-ON is made entirely in Japan and manually for the most part. It's impossible to mass-produce it at a factory," he said, arguing it was a piece of "artwork" like a good acoustic piano.

Yamaha started selling the device in North America and Europe, except Britain, at about the same time as the Japanese launch last week.