Tenori-On Orange
Photo courtesy of Yamaha

November 7th, 2009 – (Somewhat) heeding the call of musicians for a lower cost model of the Tenori-On, Yamaha has released the Tenori-On Orange. Aside from the obvious orange LED’s versus the white for the current Tenori-On, the TNR-O (as they also refer to it) sports a white plastic enclosure instead of magnesium, and omits the rear LED’s.

It will retail for $1000 (although probably less when it hits the street). To put that in perspective, the current Tenori-On with the magnesium enclosure and rear LED’s sells for $1000. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the magnesium Tenori-On even if the TNR-O sells for less at its release.

Or a Monome…there’s always that.

Tenori-On Orange via Gizmodo

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 3:05 pm.
Categories: Asides, Gear.

4 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. ~Jon~

    My Yamaha product specialist thinks they’ll be less that $1000, and has the same opinion as you on it, compared to the $1200 magnesium one, if they can’t knock off more than $200.

    Then he showed us a cool way to make Cubase 5 work in a kind of similar fashion.

    Nov 7th, 2009

  2. Tracy

    How about a Novation Launchpad? It’s probably more of a DIY project with Ableton Live, but with that comes more power and flexibility. It is also about 1/5th the cost.

    Nov 14th, 2009

  3. Sean

    @ Tracy : Yup, that’s definitely a competitor (I wrote about it here : http://www.keyofgrey.com/?p=2746). I think that the type of person that would want a Tenori-On would be someone who wants to play with a device that doesn’t need to be hooked to anything to create music.

    However on the strictly controller front, even with the cheaper price of a Novation Launchpad, I think I’d still lean towards a Livid Block (http://www.keyofgrey.com/?p=2825). It’s somewhere in price and feature-set between a Launchpad and a Monome.

    Nov 15th, 2009

  4. Tracy

    You’re right. The average Tenorist is most likely looking for a self-contained instrument. For production and making tracks, the Monome, Launchpad, and Block are probably preferable, but for stage performance, the fact that Tenori-On lights up both sides (performer side and audience side) is killer.
    I wonder if two Launchpads back to back could give a similar effect. Program one to mirror the other? Perhaps Novation should consider implementing a mode that does this automatically. It could double their sales :~)

    Nov 15th, 2009

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