Summer NAMM 2008

[Anderton]

I was really expecting the worst, but there's good attendance and a good vibe.

I'd love to write more but it's 2:30AM and I just finished editing five videos...they're rendering. So I need some sleep. BUT...

Korg Nanocontrollers. Little laptop-friendly control surfaces, "well under" $100...one with eight faders/knob/two switches, one with one octave of velocity keys, one with drum pads and an X-Y controller.

The Moog guitar - lives up to the hype. Imagine a polyphonic E-bow with more precision and the ability to do the reverse - suck energy out of the string if you want a more percussive sound. That's the good news. The bad news is the price - around $6.5K.

Roland's Slicer processor is quite original, and the guy demoing it is great. We'll make sure we catch the demo tomorrow.

I hear Yamaha has new stuff but not sure what, will find out tomorrow.

I'm falling asleep as a I type...g'night!

[MikeRivers]

I hear Yamaha has new stuff but not sure what, will find out tomorrow.

They have a new large analog live sound console. Very nicely laid out, and even serviceable, with panels of 8 channels that open on a hinge for service or replacement. You don't have to take the whole console apart to fix something! Hopefully this feature won't be needed, but it's nice to know it's there. Following in the footsteps of the mixers tightly integrated with Cubase and Nuendo that Yamaha/Steinberg introduced at the Winter NAMM show, Steinberg showed a two new Firewire audio interfaces, the MR816x and MR816csx, the difference being that one has a built-in effect processor and the other doesn't. It's designed to be a complete input/output/monitor for the DAW, with 8 analog mic/line I/Os, 8 ADAT I/Os, control room and headphone outputs. To go along with the audio interfaces, there's a new user interface, the CC121, with a small LCD, knobs, transport control buttons, an assignable big knob (most likely playback volume) and a single long throw fader. . Remember the Smart AV console - the large format DAW controller (no audio) with the big, sweeping bow across the top and some interesting paradigms that got you thinking about mixing in a different way? (The guy who wrote the book Mixing With Your Mind was a consultant on that project) Well, they sold a couple to people who had too much money, and now they have a new, smaller format version with many of the same ideas, but with a large touch-sensitive screen instead of a lot of hardware knobs and buttons, at a much more sensible price. Not as cheap as the Korg Nanocontrolers, but in the $10K range. I ran into Craig on the street Friday evening as he was going to the Moog guitar showcase and I was leaving (it was too loud and the player on stage at the time was too boring for me - the other band scheduled to play was supposed to be more interesting but my ear plugs were bleeding). He gave a pretty decent description of the guitar's schtick. I'm sure that in creative hands, it will do some things we've not heard from a guitar before, but mostly what I heard (and what I noodled with in their room at the show) was stuff you could hear at any Hendrix show, but without the fuss and fire. The guitar connects to a foot pedal with a multiconductor cable. The pedal powers the guitar workings, as well as allows blending the pickups and control of the Moog "ladder" filter on the output. Speaking of guitar pedals, the Pedalflex is one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" (followed closely by "I wonder if anyone really needs it") devices. It's a flexible steel cable sort of like an automobile speedometer cable that extends the knob of a stomp box up to standing height. The "user" end clamps to a mic stand, so you can adjust your effect without stooping down. The Phonitor from SPL so far gets my Technology Gone Beyond The Call of Duty award. On the surface, it's an elegant headphone amplifier, but someone who read a few AES papers on how loudspeakers work in a room decided that the thing that makes accurate mixing on headphones difficult (or impossible if you like) is that, because there's no acoustic space between the transducer and your ear, there's no blending of left and right sources. The Phonitor has a set of controls labeled Crossfeed, Speaker Angle, and Center Level which can be tweaked, assuming you have accurate headphones and ears to match, to realistically simulate the sound of speakers in the room. The idea is that you sit in front of your speakers, play some music, and dial it in with the controls while alternately listening to the speakers and phones. When you have it set up so that they sound the same, you can presumably mix with the phones and it'll transfer to speakers with no surprises. The effect was far too subtle for me to hear at the show, but like with most products of this nature, it has the endorsement of at least one famous mastering engineer. Geez but there were a lot of guitar picks - hard picks, soft picks, round picks (ever play guitar with a poker chip or a quarter?) and picks made of a special compound that they don't say what it is. A particularly interesting one from a marketing standpoint was the Guistar pick, which has the thumb print of a famous artist on it. A bit silly, but a bit practical as well. The epoxy ink used to print the image on the pick provides a textured gripping surface. Collect the whole set! Guitars are definitely in again. Peavy has a new guitar game controller, and Line 6's amplifier sales topped Fender's last year. Best Idea of the Show was the Bogdon bass made from a cardboard carton. It comes in kit form. You glue the wooden neck to the cardboard box, install the bridge and pickup (it even has a cardboard sound post!) and it's ready to play. Best yet, it even sounds pretty good. There's a three string and two string model (strings are weed whacker cord) and prices range from $79 to $114 with differences been the number of strings and how fancy the artwork on the box is (you can of course paint it any way you want). Interestingly, he's sold a lot of them in countries where basses are too expensive for many of the players. It was a surprisingly crowded show for a Friday, and I expect that Saturday will be more crowded. I suspect that this was partly because there was some ballroom space that had been used at previous Nashville shows that wasn't used in this one, and they didn't use the Arena, nor the rooms in the walkway connecting the Arena and Convention Center. Anyone who thinks Nashville isn't big enough for the NAMM show (which is why they moved away four years ago) is no longer correct.

[Howlin Mofo]

That new little Carr amp is cool as hell. I wish I could come back tomorrow, but the ball and chain is about to chain me to my ... You get the picture.

Great Show !

[scud133]

Craig does Roland's slicer = Boss slicer pedal??? The guy demoing that was pretty cool Also those mini Korg controllers were sick, perfect for the plane or bus or whatever. But where were all the DAW companies?? there were some major players that just straight up didn't show (or some that totally half assed it, like Gibson and Marshall)

[MikeRivers]

But where were all the DAW companies??

Probably at InfoComm. This was, with a few exceptions, a music store show. Steinberg was there in a little corner of the Yamaha room, right by a door, so easy to miss. Musicwriter and Notion were there, but that's about it.

there were some major players that just straight up didn't show (or some that totally half assed it, like Gibson and Marshall)

Gibson had a lot of by invitation events at their shop but Gibson is sort of like that at NAMM shows. At the January shows, they have several "dealers only" hours in their room and they don't even let Press in.

M-Audio was there, but with home pianos (I never knew they made 'em).

[felix]

Gibson was hosting their "Summer Jam" during the show - they typically do their stuff offsite at Summer NAMM, and even at Winter NAMM, their booth is "by appointment only" Gibson Summer Jam Blog I saw Chirp software from Tanager - struck me as a handy way to turn your laptop keyboard into a controller for virtual instruments: Tanager Audio Works website The Korg nano controllers were nicer and more solid than I thought they would be. The Korg guy said the nanoKEYS would not be nearly as "clacky" in the final version (the nanoKEYS at NAMM was a prototype). Cool that all three nanos side by side combined have the same footprint as a laptop. VERY cool. Anyone else notice there were no keyboards at the Alesis booth at all? I was pleased to see their 8-Channel 1 rackspace line mixer though - the MultiMix8 Line. Alesis MultiMix 8 Line The Fishman Solo amp was also very cool. Fishman Solo Amp Gator had a new laptop / keyboard controller bag (I think they're calling it the Media Pro Backpack) the cool thing about it is it's big enough to fit a variety of 25-key controllers, not just the M-Audio Oxygen 8. I was looking for a similar bag recently - most won't fit my Novation Remote SL 25. Gator Cases (you have to download the pdf flyer I think, couldn't find the bag on their site just yet. I hope next year doesn't conflict with InfoComm like this year - it really turned it into even more of a guitar show than it would have been (and I'm not a guitarist). Even as a non-guitarist, though, I thought these guitar amps were beautifully designed: Trillium Amps

[washtub_bass]

MikeRivers - thanx for the Bogdon plug. i still make em in my basement as a hobby but after participating in NAMM, i'm now a manufacturer with retailers.
well worth the time and money spent there. the box bass won one of the Best In Show awards and Victor Wooten came by and played the 3-string bass (laffed his butt off too!!!!)

[Anderton]

The video on the Bogdon turned out cool, too. It's posted in the Theater section, but you can get to it from the front page Summer NAMM coverage link.

[Gus Lozada]

M-Audio was there, but with home pianos (I never knew they made 'em).

Now you know

[Jon Hiller]

MikeRivers - thanx for the Bogdon plug. i still make em in my basement as a hobby but after participating in NAMM, i'm now a manufacturer with retailers.
well worth the time and money spent there. the box bass won one of the Best In Show awards and Victor Wooten came by and played the 3-string bass (laffed his butt off too!!!!)

I heard your bass, and frankly, it sounded really impressive, very cool.

[washtub_bass]

John Hiller and Mr. Anderton, thank you.
the box bass isnt a replacement for the real thing, its a novelty pet-rock type fun bass. But the real novelty is the tone. I have a cousin thats an acoustic engineer for Ford and another cousin thats an electronic engineer.
They took my crude proto and used their know-how to make the box bass sound pretty good. If it didnt sound good, then no one would ever pay money for it. Someone once said "surround yourself with people that are smarter than you..." but for me thats a very big circle, so i adjusted the saying "surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, and with a quirky sense of humor..."

[DiscoFreq]

No new guitar effects at all?

That JoeMeek was already at Winter NAMM.

The only "new" thing I saw in pictures of this show were the new paintings on the Belcat 500 series of pedals (the pedals were already at Frankfurt 2007, only new colors now).