In the laid-back beach town of Hamamatsu, close to Nagoya, there is a little breeding ground for musical instruments of another kind. Yamaha’s Product Design Laboratory (PDL) develops ultra-stylish and technically uber-advanced musical instruments. For PingMag, British product designer Marianne Bailey shows us her latest swell creations, a super-slim piano, the new Vocaloid 2 software interface and the recent, bizarrely fun mobile phones turned into instruments for Yamaha x au design project by KDDI. You don’t need to be artistic to be amazed by these tools… [read & see more @ PingMag]

Yamaha BODiBEAT is the world’s first music player that selects songs to match the pace of the user’s workout, it automatically syncs music selections with the steps of the user’s walk or run. A total workout tracking and personal music solution, BODiBEAT redefines the capabilities of portable music players, and makes exercising more fun than ever before. The unit also includes a heart rate monitor. BODiBEAT has a suggested retail price of $299.99. BODiBEAT comes with BODiBEAT Station, software that automatically categorizes each downloaded song by beats per minute (bpm), and a small heart rate monitor that clips gently onto the user’s ear. Designed to maximize fitness activities such as running, walking and dancing, BODiBEAT also tracks the metrics of these workouts, including distance, time, pace and heart rate. BODiBEAT includes an armband and is ergonomically designed for ease-of-use and exceptional comfort during active pursuits. BODiBEAT features 512 megabytes of skip-free internal flash memory, and offers approximately 12 hours of playback when fully charged. BODiBEAT has four main operating modes: Free, Fitness, Training and Music. In Free mode, BODiBEAT automatically matches the music to the exercise pace, selecting songs that mirror the tempo of the user’s jogging or walking speed. Fitness modes include Walk Fitness and Jog Fitness, each of which works in conjunction with the heart rate monitor to select the most appropriate music for optimal aerobic exercise at the user’s fitness level. Like a personal trainer, Training mode tells users when to speed up and slow down for ideal results, and it does so while playing their favorite music. In Music mode, BODiBEAT functions as a standard portable audio player.

The latest AU Design Project from KDDI is pushing the boundaries of what we think a mobile device should be to us. Japan is already known for putting out massive varieties of phones to cater to niche groups, so why not musicians?

The au Design Project x Yamaha does just that with a series of phones that double as musical instruments (or instruments that double as phones?). Designed by a foreign and Japanese team of young innovators, these handsets are original, creative, and (the best part) actually able to make music!
[read more @ Trends in Japan]

In 2007, the Yamaha held the exclusive UK launch exhibitions of TENORI-ON at Phonica Records London(4th Sept)and theMint Lounge Manchester(5th Sept). Following the huge TENORI-ON success in the UK, they decided to sell it worldwide and what can be a better way to celebrate to hitting the markets all over the world than the TENORI-ON World Launch Tour. Check out the dates and the featuring artists at their site and do show up in the event near you! We can’t wait to hear what Atom aka Senor Coconut will do with his TENORI-ON

posted by AudioPorn Central