Tenori-On is a musical instrument for live electronic music performance, being developed by Yamaha and Japanese artist Toshio Iwai, known for his Nintendo DS game Elektroplankton. When we dreamed about the kinds of instruments we’d be using to make electronic music in the 21st century, this is what many of us most likely conjured up in our minds. A sequence is looped by the machine, and the player uses its 256 dots to activate points on the sequencer, turned on and off by the touch of a finger. To truly understand how awesome this is just watch the video above.

The Tenori-On website claims that “The Tenori-on is both a serious instrument for advanced users and a gateway for people who want to compose electronic music, but have little or no previous experience.” Somehow I doubt the claim that this thing could really be considered a “serious instrument,” but it still looks freaking cool. It will be available in extremely limited release on May 1st, for a rather steep $1200.

Tenori-On: Create - Control - Connect (via Tenori-On website)

By Jesse Mann