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Interseting controller/digital synth

Re: [motm] Interseting controller/digital synth

2005-08-19 by Richard Brewster

Hard to say if it is more than a toy synthesizer, as far as the music 
goes.  Those tiny speakers!  But it is interesting as a controller 
concept.  The website is "flashy", but the sound is pretty boring.  
Maybe it's just the web design.  One hopes the sonic capabilities of 
Tenori-On are at least as interesting as the light patterns, and that 
the designer is concerned as much with the sound as with a light show.  
But you couldn't tell it from that site.  I might consider buying one of 
these to fool with if it had a richer range of timbre than the bleeps 
you hear on that demo.  And an output jack.

-Richard Brewster

Paul Schreiber wrote:
Show quoted textHide quoted text
>http://www.global.yamaha.com/design/tenori-on/index.html
>
>Hard to say if it's 'real' or not.
>
>Paul S.
>
>  
>

Re: [motm] Interseting controller/digital synth

2005-08-19 by Greg Wuller


On Aug 18, 2005, at 7:05 PM, Paul Schreiber wrote:

http://www.global.yamaha.com/design/tenori-on/index.html

Hard to say if it's 'real' or not.


I actually had the opportunity to play with one of these two weeks ago in the Emerging Technologies portion of the SIGGRAPH convention here in Los Angeles. The designer (Toshio Iwai) had four of what I'd call a "late prototype". From the controller perspective it was a really fun little 4 track step sequencer with both typical and unusual modes. I don't know if the little grills actually were intended to contain speakers or not as all the units had headphones.

The buttons on the frame are for:
(1) top = reset/clear the current track
(4) right = track selection
(2) bottom = volume
(4) left = pattern mode for the current track

The dial controlled the timbre used for the currently selected track. I'm trying to remember all the details about the different pattern modes.... If memory serves

Mode 1: typical 16 step pattern sequencer, horizontal is time, vertical is pitch

Mode 2: like mode 1 but in addition it did what they were calling "real time recording", instead of requiring you to press an hold a button momentarily in order to get a note to repeat all you had to do was trip the switch. By dragging your finger across the grid you could layer "waves" of notes on top of each other (the original timing was maintained).

Mode 3: ??

Mode 4: best described as ping-pong. Press a button to get note repeating, then press another. The time between notes is based on the distance between each point. Press more buttons to add additional notes to the sequence, when it got to the last note it repeated.

The sound was basic but varied enough that the device was fun to play with. No MIDI on the prototypes as far as I could tell... it also wasn't clear if it would become an actual product some time in the future.

-greg


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Greg Wuller greg@wuller.com

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