Review: Yamaha Tenori-on

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO MOBILE MUSIC PRODUCTION

BONUS MATERIAL
Which Side Are You On?

UTILITY CLOSET

The Tenori-on's operating system is not especially complex and should become second nature as you gain experience. However, with only two buttons to access its menu structure, performing utility functions can be tedious and unintuitive. Pressing the Cancel button enters the main menu, and pressing the OK button selects menu items and drills deeper into the menu hierarchy.

I had to sift through the manual to find out how to perform basic operations such as saving my work to a Secure Digital (SD) card (which is not included). Even then, it took a while to grasp exactly what I needed to save and which menu to use. In the File menu, you can choose to save All Blocks, the Current Block, the Current Layer, or All Settings. Saving All Settings, oddly enough, doesn't save note data — only Voice assignments, tempo, and other parameter values.

To actually save your sequences, you need to choose Save All Blocks. Unfortunately (and surprisingly), you can't simply save to the same file; instead, you have to laboriously enter the entire file name and confirm that you want to replace the previous file bearing the same name each time you save. To make matters worse, entering text is like something from the early '80s — without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that my Timex watch has more-sophisticated text entry. I hope Yamaha soon offers a firmware update that simplifies this unnecessarily complex procedure.

TIMBRAL PALETTE

Taken as a whole, the Tenori-on's collection of factory Voices has a gentle, pastel quality. In addition to purely electronic timbres, the focus is on organs, pianos, tuned and untuned percussion, harp, bells, staccato and pizzicato strings, and staccato woodwinds. Although you could rock out with some of the drum sounds, I wouldn't describe any of the timbres as harsh, aggressive, or funky. Consequently, the instrument is probably more appropriate for ambient, down-tempo, or experimental music than for rock, funk, jazz, or dance music, unless you want to add pastel elements to those genres. Most lacking are aggressive basses, and there's a complete absence of sound effects, guitars, vocals, and world instruments. Then again, the Tenori-on's limited palette is part of what gives it such a recognizable character.

Keep in mind, too, that the Tenori-on works just fine as a unique MIDI controller. You can easily expand the range of sounds at your disposal by connecting it to another hardware synth or using it to control software instruments.

Most of the onboard samples are short, and by default, that's how they play. You can increase note length to nearly 10 seconds, but the length applies to every note in that Layer unless its Voice has been programmed with a short decay. The Tenori-on doesn't offer access to individual Voice parameters such as envelope generators.

Voices appear to be organized in a haphazard fashion. With a 16 × 16 grid available, it should have been easy for Yamaha to organize Voices by type, which would certainly speed things up when you're searching for just the right sound. Luckily, you'll find a Voice List near the back of the 123-page PDF manual.

The Tenori-on works only in MIDI Mode 3 (Omni Off, Poly), making it easy to use with a computer-based sequencer and an external MIDI controller. A quick glance at the manual's MIDI Implementation chart confirms that the Tenori-on responds to Velocity but not Aftertouch. It transmits and receives Program Change, Bank Select, Volume, SysEx, Clock, and a few other MIDI messages, but it doesn't respond to Pitch Bend, Modulation Wheel, or most other Control Change messages. It sends a fixed Velocity value of 100.

Bundled with the Tenori-on is a bare-bones application called Tenori-on User Voice Manager (Mac/Win), which allows you to import three multisamples of your own (see Fig. 3). You can load as many as 16 individual WAV or AIFF files at a time, each with a maximum length of just under 1 second. After you drag-and-drop your samples into the window, clicking on the Make User Voice button converts them to the Tenori-on's native TNW format, but you need an SD card reader for your computer to transfer samples to the Tenori-on. It would be more convenient if you could transfer user Voices via MIDI, as you could with many samplers 20 years ago.

STUDIO TOOL OR POSH TOY?

You could easily argue that the Tenori-on is not suitable for professional music production. It has no filters, LFOs, envelope generators, nor any of the user-programmable parameters you'd expect in a real synthesizer. It has only one oscillator per voice, and it provides no access to its sound engine other than the ability to import user samples. In some ways, its sequencing capabilities are rudimentary; in most Modes, you can't even vary individual note length or Velocity. On the other hand, the Tenori-on offers sequencing techniques you won't find anywhere else.

Would I consider buying a Tenori-on? Despite its limitations and some aggravating quirks, the answer is absolutely yes. It's a great catalyst for creativity that forces me to work outside of my usual compositional framework. It has a very strong personality that suggests musical directions I would never explore on my own. And its portable nature makes it a pleasant traveling companion: I'd be grateful to have one while killing time in an airport, relaxing on a beach, or even waiting out a rainstorm in my tent.

I have no doubt that soon you'll be hearing the Tenori-on in television commercials, movie soundtracks, and the music of a wide range of artists — not to mention in parks, schools, and other public places. It simplifies and democratizes composition in new and exciting ways, and most of the time, it sounds quite good. It also points the way toward future, more-sophisticated instruments based on its design, which I hope Yamaha continues to develop with pro musicians in mind. In the meantime, if the company can bring down the cost of the Tenori-on and its future offspring, it may have produced its biggest hit since the DX7.

---

EM senior editor Geary Yelton has been using synths and sequencers for about as long as Yamaha has been making them.

PRODUCT SUMMARY

sample player/sequencer

$1,199

PROS: Creatively stimulating. Very portable. Unique note-entry methods. High fun factor. Imports user samples. Sounds pretty.

CONS: Limited timbral palette. Minimal synthesis parameters. Doesn't respond to Pitch Bend or Modulation Wheel. Can't mix different step durations. Some tedious utility functions.

FEATURES	1	2	3	4	5
EASE OF USE	1	2	3	4	5
QUALITY OF SOUNDS	1	2	3	4	5
VALUE	1	2	3	4	5

Yamaha
tenori-on-tour.com

In our reviews, prices are MAP or street unless otherwise noted.