Monome Makes Digital Music

We guess the Yamaha Tenori-On finally has a rival in the form of Monome. Monome consists of a grid of backlit keypads, and these buttons will light up when pressed to mark where a note will be played. Sounds pretty complicated to us, but we think the musically inclined population will know how to best make use of the Monome in order to compose their next piece which is easy on the ears. The Monome connects to a computer via USB, and the interaction between keys and lights will be determined by the application running on the computer. You can choose from three different models to suit your budget and needs – the 256 button, 128 button and 64 button Monomes will retail for $1,400, $800 and $450, respectively.