Tenori-on

First and foremost, allow me to apologize for my severe absence from the blogosphere as of late. But to quote my BFF, Jeffrey, "Blogging is the new E. Nobody's doing it anymore."

(Take a moment to ponder the irony of using that quote in a blog post.)

All kidding aside, I've been busy making big decisions and losing important things but the pieces finally seem to be falling back into place so I think I can do better this month than the one sad lonely post of last month.

And along the lines of good old E, I recently discovered a new toy that would've easily held my attention for hours on end back in those hazy, crazy raver days.

Last Wednesday night, we walked into SouthPaw (to check out German experimental dub innovator Pole) in time to catch the end of a demo featuring footage of robots building music making machines. From the fine Japanese folks over at Yamaha, I bring you the Tenori-on.

Ever play with Simon, Lite-Brite and 4-track? If those three devices somehow spawned an offspring, that would be the Tenori-on. It's a square, hand-touch light and sound midi musical interface that can be loaded with samples for live improvisational performances by dj's and electronic music producers.

The downstairs at SouthPaw had a number of these available for people to play with and we got the chance to do so once the crowd had dwindled down but it was a little hard to grasp exactly what we were supposed to do with it.

Pole, Sutekh and Safety Scissors all used the Tenori-on in their performances and Yamaha even raffled one off. Sadly, I did not win it. Even more sad, the girl who did seemed less than enthused.

The Tenori-on will be available in the States starting May 1st but Yamaha's only shipping a limited installment of 100 units. So to all the big children out there who got at least $1200 back on their taxes, get on it!