Lately there has been a trend towards more hands-on musical devices that remove the barrier between musician and machine/computer. This has resulted in a number of (relatively expensive) devices coming to market that rethink the way musicians create and manipulate their music.

Two such devices are the Genoqs Octopus and the Sequentix P3.

While these devices are excellent takes on the traditional 70's step sequencer, another instrument really caught my eye recently because of it's innovative approach to making music by "drawing" on its surface.

Media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON (Japanese for "Sound On Your Palm"). Basically, TENORI-ON is a 16×16 tactile matrix of LED switches which allows musicians to draw music intuitively, creating a "visible music" interface. It can trigger external MIDI instruments, or it's own internal samples – but here's the neat thing – Yamaha designed it double-sided so that the visible changes can be viewed by the audience while it is being manipulated.

There's a great video on SonicState.com of the TENORI-ON in action.

Rod MacQuarrie