Light rock!
It's a Fender Strat for nerds.
(Credit: FutureMusic)Toshio Iwai, the designer of beloved Nintendo DS music game Electroplankton, has been showing a prototype of his jaw-dropping Tenori-On instrument since 2005. Last week, Yamaha announced plans to turn this Star Trek-worthy digital sound toy into an actual shipping product, retailing with an estimated price tag of around $1,000. For most consumers, that is an insane price for a beautiful sound toy, but electronic musicians and artists are falling all over themselves for this thing. The Tenori-On is a touch screen grid of white LEDs that allows you to compose music by activating little squares that trigger built-in sounds or samples loaded off a flash memory card. It has a built-in speaker, headphone output, and MIDI connections for other music gear. You really have to see this in action to appreciate it. There's a great video of the device on YouTube and a more in-depth one at Sonicstate. For now, I'll just keep honing my touch-screen music skills on Nintendo's ElectroPlankton.
Donald Bell is CNET Reviews' senior editor for MP3 players and portable audio, and one half of the MP3 Insider blog and weekly podcast. He also likes getting his hands dirty with digital audio tools for musicians and DJs. 
