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 | | | | Feb28Written by:Joel Braverman
Sunday, February 28, 1999 6:00 PM  The forces of life were against my trip to the Namm show this time. Everything conspired against me, but I did make it down for one day, and I took a bunch of pictures with a borrowed Sony DV Camcorder. (Techie corner - they were digitally transferred to an AVID and the stills were extracted from there). I've provided a little information on the stuff I saw that I liked, and some links to the respective companies if the products sound interesting to you.
Down in the Basement
If anyone was hoping for as spectacular a NAMM show as last year, they were somewhat disappointed.
There were some interesting new things, but for the most part it was the same old stuff with a few little changes. The only place that truly had some major innovations was to be found in a corner of a basement of the convention center. Down there, clustered within a few booths of each other, were the softsynth manufacturers. Native Instruments, Bitheadz, and Sounds Logical were all promoting some hot new software sound generators, samplers and audio processing software.
Waves also had their high tech booth nearby. If you use a PC, the dongle is here to stay, sorry. Apparently the Radium group has really taken a chunk of profits on the only product they make that is dongle free. Other companies told me they have decided that it's no use trying to fight piracy and just accept the loss as part of life.
Other companies also consigned to the same basement hall were DAL showing their 24 bit card-D, Minnetonka software, and Frontier Designs with their new 24 bit Tango and light pipe cards.
Chapped Stick
Down in the lobby, a smarmy looking buffed dude played pretty melodies on a chapman stick, the ultimate tool for musical masturbation (it even look like that's what he's doing!), while a crowed looked on. I've taken the liberty of providing a snapshot of his musical exhibitionism.
Not to say that while wandering about during my short stay, I didn't see anything cool. The gold plated U87 was cool. The Fred Flintstone drum kit - made with skin drums - was quite cool. And speaking of drums, the high-tech kettle drums for orchestra were cool too. Why? There was no kettle! Check 'em out:
If Bill Gates was 2 feet taller...
...he would be Greg Hendershot of Cakewalk Corp. I finally met the founder of Cake Tone. He's a nice guy. He still does a little programming for them too. The newest thang from them is a room simulator plugin for creating virtual rooms. Sounds cool.
When you Get to Heaven they give you a Bass
Warrior Instruments was showing its latest line of hand made Bass guitars. JD, the owner explained to me that his life was transformed by a spiritual experience, which took him from drug addiction to Christianity and that the instruments Warrior makes are an expression of their deep religious feelings. The guitars are certainly beautiful, made from rare African and other hard woods, like Purple Heart and Zebra wood.
Steinberg and ResRocket conspire to rule the world
They have a new product that enables on-line musical collaboration via the internet. It's based on MP3 and Midi, and produces the illusion that you are working together in real time. Its the next big thing, so they tell me, and I believe them.
The Pod People
The Line 6 POD sounds damn cool for a fucking computer chip. Just don't go to sleep with one in your basement...
The Emu Party
I got an invite to the E-mu after party, at Serafine studio's, an unparalleled example of Los Angeles architectural history. I walked up and down flights of stairs, around corners down halls, up to the roof, around the roof, and finally found the party. On the way I passed all these little rooms full of people tweaking E-mu's latest gadgets. I had some interesting conversations, flirted with a few of Serafine's fine female ex-employees, ("I used to work here, I'm an actress now") found out the truth (the girl has a day job), ate some great food, catered by On Location Catering, drank some beer and stared at the utterly peculiar cloud formations in the LA sky, while discussing Art Bell with On Location's Colleen Stewart.
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