Musical Beings, a startup founded by former Google and Waves Audio engineers, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Tembo — a wooden magnetic drum machine, step sequencer, and sampler designed to make music creation accessible to literally anyone.
The pitch is straightforward: Tembo looks like a board game, feels like a toy, and functions like a proper studio instrument. Users place magnetic “Beats” on a wooden grid to trigger sounds, twist physical knobs to shape them, and can record their own samples through a built-in mic. No screens, no menus, no intimidation factor.
Table of Contents
Why it matters
Electronic music gear has a well-documented accessibility problem. Step sequencers and drum machines tend to look like cockpit dashboards — powerful but alienating for beginners. Tembo takes the opposite approach with natural wood materials and a tactile, game-like interface that co-founder Ayal Rosenberg developed and tested with over 300 users, from kids to Grammy-winning musicians.
Under the friendly exterior, Tembo packs a sampler with built-in mic, MIDI out, adjustable audio effects, and a line-in for external instruments. The idea is that a complete beginner can make something in minutes, then gradually unlock deeper capabilities as they grow. “I’ve never had this much fun,” says Damian Kulash of OK Go. “It’s a serious instrument, though.”
The bigger picture
Rosenberg, who studied creative tech at NYU, built the first prototype after hearing a TEDx talk by five-time Grammy winner Victor Wooten arguing that we should learn music the way children learn to speak — by doing it, not by drilling exercises in isolation. Each Tembo is handcrafted in Musical Beings’ workshop and ships from the earliest Kickstarter batch.
Musical Beings is a consumer music hardware startup whose founders previously worked at Google, Waves Audio, Wix, and Simply.
