January 30, 2016 editorial: comments

I Got the Rockin’ NAMMonia

Whew, am I glad that NAMM is finally over. It’s a very important show for the industry, and it’s exciting to be there and see all the new products, but for virtually everyone involved, it’s four or more days of intense, grueling work; often sandwiched by cross-country or international travel. As a result, lots of people end up getting sick after they return from NAMM, either from the exhaustion, or from being exposed to so many people (and their germs). It’s so common for people to get sick post-NAMM that there are tongue-in-cheek names for it such as NAMMonia or NAMMitis (I recently heard a colleague refer to it as “NAMMthrax.) I had a case of it myself this week, but thankfully it wasn’t too bad, and I’m now back to normal (NAMMormal?). 

But health hazards aside, it was a good show from a product standpoint, as you’ve seen if you’ve followed our coverage over the last week. Rather than delve into specific products (which we’ve already done quite a bit over this past week, including my recent 10 Cool Products from NAMM article) I wanted to pass along a couple of general observations from the show. One is that hardware synths are all the rage. We saw introductions from Dave Smith (OB-6), Arturia (MatrixBrute), Yamaha (Montage), Korg (Minilogue), and — for the second year running — a lot of action in the modular synth/Eurorack area.

Another observation: software is getting ridiculously powerful. Melodyne 4 (the Studio version) and Waves NX were probably the two most mind-blowing examples at NAMM. It’s really quite remarkable the amount of manipulation that can be done to audio in software. 

I was also pleased that I didn’t see software introduced that was designed to replace the functions of musicians and engineers (like that automatic composition website I discussed a few weeks back). Instead, it seemed like the software introductions where designed to provide more creative control for the musician or producer. For example, the ability to edit harmonics in Melodyne 4 opens up a whole new avenue of musical control.

And speaking of software, in a couple of editorials in the weeks preceding NAMM, I’ve mentioned Software.namm, the new exhibit room that debuted at this year’s show dedicated strictly to software companies. Well, I can report that it was very cool to have a place with so many software developers clustered together. It made it easy to check out the products in a quiet environment. I look forward to more companies taking part next year. 

So that pretty much wraps up our NAMM coverage (until Summer NAMM of course), and note that in April, we’ll be covering MusikMesse, which is essentially the NAMM of Europe.

In the meantime, based on what you’ve seen and heard from NAMM (whether you attended or have just been checking out the coverage), what do you think were the coolest products introduced? If you want, give us your “top 3” or “top 5” list. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!