The idea for TENORI-ON came from discussions I had had with Toshio Iwai on the nature of new musical instruments. We had sketches of it from very early on, but right from the outset we had to think about what one could actually do musically with this “digital” layout of 16 by 16 squares. Of course we planned to include the ability to do things like create songs using steps like you find in a conventional step-based sequencer, but that in itself was nothing more than a replacement for existing products. One day I was thinking about this while in my car, it began to rain. I was watching the raindrops on the windshield and thinking about how I could connect this drop to that one and make a triangle…and then a square...and then move them all together to create a polyloop..and then it hit me. I realized that it would be really interesting to make the switches on the TENORI-ON light up and move just like the raindrops. I went straight back to work and wrote a program to do just that. The results were fantastic. Both musically beautiful and complex, I was deeply impressed with how simple the program was to use. When the simple poly-loop I created began to expand beyond what I was capable of creating myself to become a truly wonderful sound, I realized that here I had an instrument that could exceed the abilities of the artist and work by itself. I think in that moment TENORI-ON took on a life of its own as an instrument. (The Inventor of TENORI-ON:Nishibori)