Yamaha is seeing brisk interest in a new digital musical instrument that enables users to create and play music as if they are drawing pictures.

After a successful advance launch in Britain, Yamaha offered the instrument online in Japan last week at ¥121,000 ($1580) each.

It has already sold a few hundred of the new instrument, against planned sales of 1,000 in Japan for the entire first year, according to the company.

The square device, measuring 20 centimetres by 20cm, has 256 buttons in rows on one side that can be played in various modes.

To make a basic sequence, the player just pushes buttons which are assigned specific notes.

"You will be able to compose music in 20 minutes," said Yu Nishibori, one of the developers of the Tenori-on.

The light-emitting diode buttons also create visual effects such as dots, lines or more complex patterns as the machine plays music.

In the draw mode, the user freely draws a line to create music while the push mode makes pushing buttons cause a ripple effect, with surrounding buttons illuminating with gradually changing tones.

The Tenori-on - the name is coined from tenori, meaning palm-held in Japanese - has another set of 256 buttons on the backside that illuminate to any watching audience as the performer plays the music. -- AFP