Music Thing: NAMM preview
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new
music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment. This week he's working NAMM for us, so stay
tuned for special Music Thing coverage:
NAMM starts today in Anaheim. It’s the music gear equivalent of CES or Macworld, where new products are launched and weeks of speculation and misinformation come to an end. Some early highlights:
A keyboard for composing
ringtones
From Chinese manufacturer CME comes the U-Key Mobiletone. The press release is far from clear, but says: "It will fill the gap of the particular hardware for composing cell phone ring, which has the market of billions of dollar... U-Key has build in high 64-polyphony high quality mobile phone sound module, and internal high fidelity speaker..." If you’ve ever worried that your music gear doesn’t sound cheap, cruddy or irritating enough, this could be for you.
Finger-mounted guitar
effects
NAMM is where every weirdo with a half-baked idea comes to show it off and risk ridicule (last year’s high/low light was the Williams Keytar). An early entrant for this years least-likely-to-succeed is the Hot Hand finger-mounted wah wah guitar effect. Ever since Jimi Hendrix, the wah pedal has been a standard bit of guitar gear. Now a startup called Source Audio has replaced the simple, cheap, effective foot pedal with a finger-mounted accelerometer. Wiggle your finger and the sound changes. Why? I don’t know.
Retro Synthesizers
If you’re not a vintage-synth obsessed geek like me, you might be surprised to learn that people still buy monophonic synthesizers. Where you can only play one note at a time. The sexiest new product at NAMM could be the DSI Mono Evolver Keyboard, a $1199 box with wooden end panels, covered in blue LEDs. Inside, it’s a digital/analog hybrid designed by Dave Smith, who designed the classic Sequential Circuits line in the ‘70s. At the other end of the coolness scale, Roland have announced the Juno G, a non-descript general-purpose keyboard designed to look like their classic ‘80s synth the Juno 6. It seems tailor made to annoy the sort of synth geeks likely to be stalking the halls of NAMM over the next few days.
NAMM starts today in Anaheim. It’s the music gear equivalent of CES or Macworld, where new products are launched and weeks of speculation and misinformation come to an end. Some early highlights:
From Chinese manufacturer CME comes the U-Key Mobiletone. The press release is far from clear, but says: "It will fill the gap of the particular hardware for composing cell phone ring, which has the market of billions of dollar... U-Key has build in high 64-polyphony high quality mobile phone sound module, and internal high fidelity speaker..." If you’ve ever worried that your music gear doesn’t sound cheap, cruddy or irritating enough, this could be for you.
NAMM is where every weirdo with a half-baked idea comes to show it off and risk ridicule (last year’s high/low light was the Williams Keytar). An early entrant for this years least-likely-to-succeed is the Hot Hand finger-mounted wah wah guitar effect. Ever since Jimi Hendrix, the wah pedal has been a standard bit of guitar gear. Now a startup called Source Audio has replaced the simple, cheap, effective foot pedal with a finger-mounted accelerometer. Wiggle your finger and the sound changes. Why? I don’t know.
If you’re not a vintage-synth obsessed geek like me, you might be surprised to learn that people still buy monophonic synthesizers. Where you can only play one note at a time. The sexiest new product at NAMM could be the DSI Mono Evolver Keyboard, a $1199 box with wooden end panels, covered in blue LEDs. Inside, it’s a digital/analog hybrid designed by Dave Smith, who designed the classic Sequential Circuits line in the ‘70s. At the other end of the coolness scale, Roland have announced the Juno G, a non-descript general-purpose keyboard designed to look like their classic ‘80s synth the Juno 6. It seems tailor made to annoy the sort of synth geeks likely to be stalking the halls of NAMM over the next few days.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
popeye @ Jan 19th 2006 5:04PM
I'll be there with the rest of the geeks...
JahDell @ Jan 19th 2006 5:04PM
Waste of money. Get xingtone and free yourself from the constraints of "THE MAN".
Nate MC @ Jan 19th 2006 5:24PM
I hope this drives the value of my Juno 6 up then.
Angelica @ Jan 19th 2006 6:19PM
My boyfriend and I will be there hopefully interviewing all the metal gods B)
Peter Kirn @ Jan 20th 2006 5:47AM
Blogging from the show floor -- anyone else here at NAMM doing the same?
If I'd really had my act together, would have tried a meetup; maybe by Austin, TX NAMM (which should be a better party than the, erm, Hilton Anaheim).
I gotta go try the finger-mounted guitar effect and Keytar, of course.
ShavenYak @ Jan 20th 2006 10:41AM
Wiggle your finger and the sound changes. Why? I dont know.
Then you're obviously not a guitar player. This is an AWESOME idea. You wear it on your right hand (unless you ARE Jimi Hendrix - he was a leftie), and your wah effect will be in sync with your picking. In addition, you're not pinned down to one spot on the stage like with a pedal - and your ankle will not be sore from playing the Shaft theme.
milkfat @ Jan 20th 2006 11:36AM
I hate blue LEDs