The Tenori-ON is an innovative gadget that Yamaha calls a digital instrument for the 21st century. It’s pricey at $1,200, but this would be an awesome gift for an aspiring musician, especially if she’s into composing her own lyrics.
The Tenori-ON has a 16×16 grid of buttons with LEDs that let you compose on the fly. It’s actually kind of hard to explain the Tenori-ON, but if you watch this video of LittleBoots you’ll get it. LittleBoots is an unsigned musician that posts her work on YouTube.
I went to the School of the Arts in San Francisco, where I played music four hours a day and I wish the Tenori-ON existed back then, when I played music for four or more hours a day. It would’ve been a lot more fun than MIDI and would’ve gotten a lot more of my classmates to experiment with digital music.
You can order the Tenori-On direct from Yamaha.