teenage engineering sells a choir of singing wooden dolls

Eight singers in solid beech

On 10 November 2022, teenage engineering puts a choir on sale. It consists of eight wooden dolls, each with its own voice and vocal range, sold individually at $249.¹ The complete ensemble costs $1,992.² The company introduces the singers by name and origin, among them Carlo, an Italian baritone, Miki, a Japanese tenor, and Leila, a Palestinian soprano. Each doll is "handcrafted from solid beech and individually polished with hard wax oil." Inside each figure sits a removable, rechargeable speaker module with up to four hours of performance time.³ The singers are characters first and devices second, and the product page treats them that way, with a name, a home country and a vocal range for each.³

The dolls are "made to serenade you with a repertoire of choral classics", 22 songs that run from baroque to folk. Alone, a doll sings a solo; together, in the company's words, "they perform an immersive a cappella concert."³ There are no buttons. A tap on the head starts or pauses a singer, and tilting it changes the volume.^1,2 In the company's own words, a doll "can handle a little smack to turn it off".⁴ Over Bluetooth MIDI, the ensemble can also be conducted from an OP-1 field, an OP-Z or a keyboard.⁵

An installation turned into a product

The choir is a return to the company's beginnings. The guide that comes with the dolls tells the story: "back in the autumn of 2007, four friends, sharing a workshop in a garage, were unexpectedly approached by absolut vodka", who asked them for an art installation. The result was "a machine made out of 22 wooden dolls that sang in harmony", using "a computer algorithm that selected and reinterpreted songs". The guide adds that "the dolls were inspired by wooden characters from all around the world".⁶ According to designboom, this Absolut Choir of 2007, made for the Absolut Machine series, was teenage engineering's first project.⁷ The 2022 edition is, in the guide's own description, "a scaled down, all wooden version".⁶

That origin shapes what the product communicates. A commissioned art piece for a spirits brand becomes an item in the company's own catalogue, sold through the same online shop as its synthesisers. teenage engineering tells its founding story through an object, not through a campaign, and invites buyers to own a piece of it, one singer at a time.

Instrument, toy or art piece

The company files the choir among its instruments and describes it in its page metadata as a "vocal instrument".³ The music press is less certain. MusicRadar calls it "the most baffling music tech product of the year".⁴ New Atlas expects it to be "a conversation piece at parties" and reports that some members are already sold out.⁸

The sales channels answer the question in their own way. The Cooper Hewitt museum shop sells the dolls at $249 each,⁹ and the SFMOMA museum store offers them as "CH-8" singers, such as Miki, the tenor from Japan.¹⁰ In 2025 the choir appears in a teenage engineering exhibition in New York with the Canadian design collective Bentgablenits and has a cameo in Pixar's film Elio.⁷ A product with a MIDI connection ends up next to design objects and on a cinema screen rather than in studios.

Playfulness as a brand position

The choir fits a line the company has drawn for itself. Speaking about the OP-1, cofounder, VP and software lead David Möllerstedt says: "toys are fun, but it's serious toys that you can create serious stuff with".¹¹ teenage engineering has also made pocket operators that retail from $59 to $99 and an audio and lighting collection, Frekvens, with IKEA.¹² The choir moves further than either: its musical use comes second to its presence as a figure, made with the materials and care of a design object.

Nothing else in the range needs the choir, and it competes with nothing. Its role is to keep visible a side of the brand that the model codes and aluminium of its professional products do not show. To owners of the field series, the dolls are a reminder that the same company also makes things whose only job is to sing.

Its price makes the point. Bought complete, the eight dolls cost $1,992,² almost exactly the $1,999 of the OP-1 field the company presented six months earlier.¹³ The professional instrument and the singing dolls sit at the same level in the same shop. By releasing the choir, teenage engineering defines itself less by a product category than by an attitude: a company that makes objects, some of them tools, some of them toys, all of them carrying the same name.