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Following success in the worlds of drum and bass and hip hop, Jason Air is now the driving force behind the world’s first band which creates music exclusively with the Yamaha Tenori-on – a female trio named The Tenorions.

The band comprises core members Nynn and Cici, who write driving techno tracks that have already become The Tenorions trademark sound. With increasing bookings for live gigs, third Tenorion Fiona joins them on stage to complete the trio. They’ve recently returned from a tour of Spain and Portugal and have further bookings coming in from around the world. Perhaps their strangest booking to date, but clearly the most high profile, was a performance on the Paul O’Grady Show earlier this year.

Jason puts the band’s initial success down to the popularity of the You Tube videos he posted throughout the Spring, and as a result they’ve garnered coverage in the NME, The Independent, and dozens of tech and music blogs.

For Nynn, Cici and Fiona, a lifetime either studying or producing music has prepared them well for life in the Tenorions. To begin with Nynn and Cici would write the tracks, taking responsibility for melody and percussion respectively, but as time has passed they’ve both seen a natural progression towards composing complete tracks in their own right, and all within the confines of the hand-held silver box.

But just what is it about this unique instrument that’s made the Tenorions and the Tenori-on such a hit with people worldwide? It’s surely no coincidence that the girls are booked to play gigs almost for the rest of this year and into the next.

“I haven't seen anything like it before,” Nynn tells us. “For us it shows a totally new way of creating music. And it's so much fun to play – it's as easy and intuitive to pick up as Nintendo, but the result is that we’re creating art.”

“It’s totally changed the way we write music, for one thing,” adds Jason Air. “It’s nothing like writing in Apple Logic. One aspect of Tenori-on that makes it such an instant tool for composing is that there are no filters or complicated plug-ins to program or convoluted menus to navigate. As a result it makes us think of the music in a more ‘musical’ way, if that makes any sense. It’s really easy to focus on the music and not get so caught up in the production side of making it. Ask any producer with a well-equipped modern studio and they’ll all tell you that it’s pretty easy to get side-tracked by the technology.”

“The great thing about composing with Tenori-on is that it’s all right there at your fingertips,” he continues. “I guess that’s the whole ethos of Tenori-on though. In Japanese it roughly translates to “in the palm”, and that’s exactly what the Tenori-on system gives you – a way to create melodies and program rhythms right there in the palm of your hand.”
yamaha.co.uk