NAMM 2017 Wrap-Up—Wild, Wonderful, Warped, and Wet

NAMM 2017 Wrap-Up—Wild, Wonderful, Warped, and Wet

Even the rain couldn’t rain on this year’s NAMM parade

By Craig Anderton

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

Nope, can’t use that intro. It was good times. Actually, the best in years.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

Ah! Much better. It seems California decided to end its drought co-incident with NAMM…when you call for an Uber and a rowboat shows up, you know you’re in trouble.

Looking out from the balcony opposite Gibson's booth on the third floor of the convention center

In fact on the last night of the show, Dendy and I had a dinner scheduled with a client at a nearby restaurant, but the rain was so bad we decided to just go across the street to the Hilton’s restaurant (whose motto is “It may not be good, but at least it’s expensive”). Even then, there were several inches of rain flowing down the driveway to the parking garage.

Rain notwithstanding, the convention itself seemed in a collective very good mood. And again, I was reminded of the just plain niceness of the music industry. With over 106,000 people registered, the Anaheim convention could barely hold the crowds. Yet despite being the size of a decent-sized city, attendees maintained their cool and their politeness. No murders, rapes, fights, or even crazy people swearing at loud volume. (To be fair, though, there might have been some crazies, and they were just drowned out by the din of thousands of instruments all playing at once.)

A look at the storm from inside the NAMM show

Next year, the Anaheim convention center is supposed to add another 100,000 square feet, which definitely will help. In theory construction was supposed to be complete just in time for this year’s show, but maybe it’s a good thing it wasn’t…as Joe Lamond of NAMM said, “You never want to be the first trade show after a major renovation—something always doesn’t work.” Hopefully the two or three conventions ahead of us will de-bug the place before we move in for four days in 2018.

As to gear, we have plenty of videos to tell the story, but in terms of trends the ukulele surge seems to have subsided. This isn’t too surprising, given that enough ukuleles were produced in the past five years to accommodate every man, woman, and child on earth, and possibly a few other star systems too. What was surprising: the dramatic increase in modular synth manufacturers. Sure, it’s still a small part of the industry, but the growth rate is exponential.

However with the huge amount of gear, it was easy to miss the good stuff. As Dan Goldstein of Acoustica commented, “At first I didn’t think there was much new. But once I took a closer look, there were all kinds of small companies making innovative plug-ins and instruments.” That qualifies as a trend, too; the Big Companies still dominate NAMM, but we can see the seeds of the future Big Companies being sown in the booths at Hall E, and scattered throughout the convention halls.

Another trend was manufacturers finally figuring out that making cool musical tools isn’t enough; there have to be tools that get people engaged in making music on an instant gratification basis. With generations now being raised that have patience removed surgically at birth, this realization comes none too soon.

The overall feeling at NAMM was fresh. Booth colors seemed lighter, new people have come into the industry, and there’s a generational energy as those raised on computers and video games translated their love of tech into musical products. All was not entirely rosy, though. Shortly before NAMM, there was a death in the family when it was announced Keyboard magazine would be no more, with the remains folded into Electronic Musician magazine. It’s hard to see a 42-year-old institution disappear, but the only constant is indeed change. Behringer put out a press release saying this would be their last NAMM show, and I talked to software companies who felt that in this age of direct downloads, a show oriented toward signing up distributors had become fairly meaningless. However, these folks were more than offset by a whole bunch of new companies making their NAMM debut. The fact remains that “face time” is important in a fashion industry based on relationships, and there’s no better way to catch up with the state of the industry—and your friends—than at NAMM.

Alice Cooper and Aerosmith's Joe Perry jamming at the TEC Awards

And NAMM itself is on the move. They‘ve revitalized the TEC Awards, and the TEC Tracks sessions continue to build from one year to the next. The web site has never been easier to navigate, the sessions designed to help retailers draw ever-larger crowds, and the process of verifying identities when letting people in has been streamlined considerably—getting into the show was saner than ever this year.

So the bottom line is that although it was a dark and stormy night, these were the best of times. I haven’t seen the music industry this positive in years...and I wouldn’t be surprised if Winter NAMM 2018 tops this one.

______________________________________________ 

 Craig Anderton is Editorial Director of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

Header photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for NAMM

All other photos by Lee Anderton