Welcome to Hell (a.k.a. Los Angeles)

Every time I go to Los Angeles, I worry about my soul. It might just be a fear that I might actually start liking LA, and then I might want to live there. Or perhaps the danger is real... Are those really music industry executives with their combed back hair, dark glasses, Mercedes Benz and briefcase, or are they really minions of the evil one? Why do they all dress the same? What do they carry in the briefcases, and why do they hide their eyes behind dark glasses when they are indoors?

Anyway, this time around, the NAMM show was not in Los Angeles proper, but Anaheim. If you are from another part of the country or the state, the distinctions don't really matter and in fact it is hard to tell one part of the LA area from another. The part of the LA area know as Anaheim is basically a large flat region with nothing in it but hotels, retirement homes, Disneyland and the Anaheim convention center (sorry if you live there, but that's what it looked like to me). The good side of this was that the guards for the show were mostly elderly retirees, who lived locally and they were all super-nice. See, good always outflanks evil.

Swimming in Gear

This NAMM show was much larger than any before it that I've attended, and therefore required a much larger building, thus the use of Anaheim convention center instead of the LA convention center. The sheer size of it made it hard to even know where to begin, but all the BIG NAMES in software like Emagic, Cakewalk, MOTU, Steinberg were all clustered, in one spot, huddling together as it were for warmth in the single vast, huge, perhaps 1/2 mile long room that is the convention center. On the periphery were the now well established soft synth manufacturers like Bitheads and Native Instruments, followed by some of the smaller synth manufacturers like Waldorf and Novation. Around this core, still in one section of a room that went on for miles, were other various small businesses, all competing for a piece of the musician and audio engineers pocketbook.

The show officially opened at 10:00 AM with the "all industry marching band" a hodge-podge that managed to stay more or less on key for a few minutes. The NAMM organization was featuring its partnership with "Sesame Street" for music education, and a few hairy-suited characters like Big Bird were seen strutting about.

In the press room, reporters waited with bated breath for The Big NAMM Announcement from Mackie. Well, OK, they now own Soundscape. Wave the Union Jack. Next.

Sonar Beta Demo

Cakewalk Corp was demoing their "built from the ground up" DAW, Sonar. Sonar is cool. They've fixed most of the major bitches people have had, and removed the ones they couldn't fix (no more extract pitch / timing) according to the Cake rep I spoke to). 100% Acid compatibility, soft synths, and most importantly: live input monitoring through effects. For existing Cake customers, the upgrade ("its not an upgrade, its a whole new product") ahem, the upgrade will be under $100.

MOTU was showing their bitchin' new Performer 3 (for you Mac users out there.) Lotsa nice features, many aimed at the post production marketplace. Its almost enough to make me want to buy a Mac. Seriously.

I had to dig pretty hard to find anything new or innovative. Last year it was almost as bad, although the products were more "evolutionary".

Fortunately as I pondered what seemed on the surface to be a mostly desolate wasteland, I ran into Pete Leoni, who pointed out a real innovative product to me, Melodyne. This shit is seriously phat. At this point, its another reason to want to buy a Mac. But it will be out for the PC platform soon. The developer and his wife Hildegard, came to the show from Germany to drum up support for their product, which lets you treat audio exactly as you treat midi in a sequencer's piano roll view. You'll be hearing more about Melodyne for sure.

Soft-Pedal-ing

Petr KrKavec, president of Dsound gave me a demo of his company's VST and Direct X plugins - "Stomp'n FX Vol.1" - guitar stomp box style effects that you can control from any midi controller, or via a guitar effects pedal. I had some of the most fun of the show playing a guitar through this software (running within Nuendo, curiously enough, in the SEKD Booth) It feels like knob tweaking a synth, but with a guitar instead. Really cool stuff, will be available in direct X soon (in beta now).

Technoid with Delusions of Grandeur

Joe Paladin, president of Paladin Enterprises seemed hurt when I suggested that his product might be a little unfocused. His goal, he said was to totally take over the entire market with his something-for-everyone product Maestro 2000. It does have something for everyone. Anyone with a midi studio will appreciate the extensive controller re-mapping, with auto-learn capabilities. People who perform live will love the live performance features and composers will like the auto chord recognition in the piano roll view (a multi track view that looks like it came straight out of Cakewalk).

The weird part though is the stuff for the non-musician - a play-along chording tool for non-musicians, and a built in Kareoke system. And (which Joe claims to be his secret) to target the consumer-non-musician who wants to be able to play music for his or her friends. The non-musicians will love it, the Pro features will make the professional want it, and then Joe will have taken over.

Well, maybe he's right. I couldn't quite figure out what my problem with his strategy was. Joe alleged that it might be that I didn't want to make it easier for non-musicians to make music like musicians. Ok, maybe I'm a snob. Or perhaps his product was a little unfocused.

Listen Up Hackers!

Mackie, Fostex and Alesis are all building in TCP/IP based services and Ethernet ports on their stand alone Hard Disk Recorders. This brings up the interesting possibility that your HDR could get hacked. The new HDR2496 from Mackie features an FTP server as does Alesis new 24bit recorder. The new Fostex box, which comes bundled with a Hammerfall card, is expected to have an Ethernet port as an upgrade. So the theory is that music maker's don't want to waste time configuring a real computer, so they buy a dedicated hard disk recorder... then they have to learn how to set up and configure a firewall. All the above machines can deal with a variety of standard file types, so chances are they will all be able to talk to each other.

RAD Karma

Korg announced Karma - a sample playback engine in a delicious red case with a very sophisticated arpeggiator and midi implementation. An interesting read about what this box is probably based on is in this article. Some synths you just have to buy for the way they look.

Attack of the U87 Clones

In the basement of any NAMM show is where most of the truly innovative stuff usually is.

Next to and affiliated with JoeMeek was Studio Projects Corp. They had a set of condenser mics lined up next to a Neumann U87 and were daring anyone to say they didn't sound just like it. Well, not having any decent vocalists around meant we had to try with our own voices. Pete Leoni and I gave it a try. The cheapest one they made sounded closest to the U87 to my ears, but one would have to put them to the test in a real studio to find out if they really were as good. I know, I know. But Leoni bought one, along with a "Golden Tone" banjo, the sound of which he raved about deliriously.

Crashing the Party

There wasn't much to do after the show, so Pete and I went out lookin' for some action. The Hilton had some expensive looking people at an expensive looking bar. Next. We went over to the Marriott. I asked a young lady where the action was. She pointed down the hall, which turned out to be the Yamaha private party. We snuck in of course, and found ourselves in the middle of a full-on Tony Bennett concert, which was totally awesome. After Tony Bennett and his band blew our socks off with his class a performance, he was followed by Al Jarreau. Well, first a lady who probably is Al's girlfriend sang. Not only was she not that great, but the engineers did a terrible job of mixing her. Fortunately Al came on and blew all that away. Followed by Tower of Power, who were so loud we had to leave.

Celebrate Celebrity

Some other notable celebrities who were at the show giving demo's and minor performances were Grandmaster Flash, Meredith Brooks, and Carlos Santana. I didn't see Santana personally, but he was there.

Grandmaster Flash Chops Beats	Meredith Brooks Demos Protools

Bowing Out?

The show was so noisy and loud with thousands of instruments and demos' happening all at once, that it frequently was hard to hear. Plus, we were feeling lonely, so to remedy this situation, Pete Leoni and I took a 5 string upright bass into the men's room for a little fun on the side:

Oooh, baby!

The Return of Real Analog

Mr Analog would get a serious woody if he could have seen some of the modular synths that were on the show. One guy had even build an all TUBE based analog synth. Too much of a good thing - it sounded like shit, but what a neat idea!

A company founder showing off his modular analog system	Me and synth pioneer Bob Moog hanging out for a couple of minutes

There were at least four companies showing off modular analog gear with real patch cables. I asked Bob Moog how he felt about analog vs digital technology. He expressed annoyance with the relentless pace of technology, and pointed out how people are only now really appreciating the sound that the older analog technology has.

OTHER NEAT STUFF:

Midiman prototype touch sensitive MIDI controller	HHB TL-Audio Tube based mixing desk

And That's Not All

Well there were tons of things at the show. I've only covered a fraction of them here, and there were tons of things that I didn't see. One thing I didn't see was TC's new DSP board for running VST effects. The board was designed by DSP-Whiz Marc Lindahl, who previously brought you the Sonorus card, and helped bring the Korg Oasys and the Mackie HDR to the market.

What I didn't see was seen by other people though. Writer Barry Rudolph filled me in on a few things I missed. The one thing he really raved about was another device from TC - a physical modeling, analysis/resynthesis device for the human voice - which can process and alter it in real time. I can't wait to hear it.

My overwhelming sense at this show was of how truly immense and almost unlimited the possibilities for creative expression are, and how hard it would be to try to use all of them. The best we can hope to do until science comes up with a cure for aging is to concentrate on doing the best we can with what time we have. The tools now exist to assist us in our explorations into all kinds of unknown audio territory, and each one of us can explore our own inner space and bring back musical treasures. The tools are merely tools for us to express those things within ourselves in the world, to help us reflect the inner world and to allow other people to hear our creations and discoveries.