The TNR-O is an orange LED Tenorion cheaper than the original TENORI-ON released a couple of years ago. It will be released on 1st December at half price of the original one. The TNR-O is not meant for live shows and to be used on the go and needs a power adapter (no batteries like the original).  There are no LEDs on the back panel but the TNR-O has the same features and creative capabilities as the original so this is the perfect Christmas present for DTM geeks!!

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Yesterday I went to the press preview show organized by VORC RECORDS at the beautiful Synra Dome at Tokyo Space/Science Museum (Super Lisa Katayama posted about his Planetarium on io9. This dome has been created by two guys: Hikaru Okuda set up the hardware while Toshiyuki Takahei does all the software programming, including hooking the images up with complex calculations done by a giant supercomputer called the MDM, Molecular Dynamics Machine, which sits just outside the theater). The chiptune show is really outstanding and after you put on the 3D glasses you take a dive in a psychedelic retro futuristic 3D universe with simply the best chiptune/8bit soundtrack I ever heard in the last 10 years! Outani San, the mastermind of VORC Records, has really took the chiptune scene to the next level and BLIP FESTIVAL should really do something with him to make the US chiptune scene reach the SUBARASHII level of the Tokyo's VORC chiptuners!

If you are in Tokyo on 21th December  you can miss this show!

 

After the huge success of Vocaloid 2 "Hatsune Miku" (more than 25.000 units sold in 3 months) that stormed the Japanese music software industry, this week two new "manga" music products has been announced:
Audio Control 1 "Producer Pack" and Music Maker "Jam Band". The first one features an official collaboration with Crypton (Vocaloid 2 producer) and will be sold with an official Miku mousepad. Audio Control 1 an a high-end audio interface, with assignable buttons and a controller knob combined with advanced MIDI key commands, gives for full control of software applications (and of course can be integrated with Vocaloid 2).

"Jam Band" seems a customization of the popular Music Maker software from Magix.

Blip Festival 2007 http://www.blipfestival.org/

Today watching this Miku Chan video (control Vocaloid 2 trough the Miku Theremin seems great!) I discovered Keromin:  an eclectic electronic musical instrument in the shape of a frog puppet. Kero in its name is an onomatopoeia for song of a frog in Japanese (like in the anime Keroro Gunsho). Min is after "Theremin" by which Ithe japanese creator pays homage to the world's first electronic instrument created by Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919.
In playing the Keromin, the pitch is controlled with the angle between the thumb and other fingers which manipulate the puppet's mouth. The sounds programmed are those of instruments for orchestra and real frog songs as well as sampled human voice saying "kero-kero."


Like a Theremin, the pitch changes according to continuous movements--the opening of the puppet's mouth. It is, however, easier to play than a Theremin because the movements are converted into sounds in accordance with musical scales automatically.

And if the Miku Theremin and Keromin are not enough there is always Matryomin: the Matrioska Theremin invented by Masami Takeuchi in 1999 (via Gizmodo/Trend in Japan) and produced by Mandarin Electron (video here)....