Tenori-On For Live Music Performance

The Tenori-On is a new music controller interface created by Toshio Iwai, a Japanese artist/musician/inventor, and released in the UK by Yamaha. The device is in the form of a square tablet with a grid of 16×16 buttons which light up in response to the artist’s touch, allowing the creation of music to be part-playing, part-painting…

The Tenori-On is quite attractive to look at, and Gary Kibler of CDM proclaims that it has the best “zero-to-flow” rating he’s ever experienced as a musician. So it’s very intuitive and absorbing to use; but how does it fare as a live performance tool, particularly from the audience’s perspective? Here’s a video of Toshio demoing the device, and it is actually quite interesting to watch him build up the track using very simple and understandable elements. The Tenori-On has the interface LEDs repeated on the bottom panel, so that an audience can see what you’re doing if you hold it up vertically enough, but it’s probably a good idea to have it up on a video screen as well, as in the following clip.

The computational engine used by the Tenori-On is ITRON, and the device has a jog dial and four function switches in the frame. It’s good to see an alternative controller being produced by a mainstream manufacturer, although it is probably prohibitively expensive for most musicians, coming in at a hefty $1,200. Hopefully this won’t contribute to its early demise, which might seem inevitable considering that it’s being extensively billed (so to speak) as a piece of interactive art. After all, the performance aspect of electronic audio needs all the innovative music technology gadgetation it can get, especially if it helps audiences engage more with the performance and gain a greater understanding of what the artist is actually doing up there…