NAMM roundup

you guys have already discussed the NI maschine and the akai live controller. i think these were the two 'best in show' for me. i didn't get a lot of time to walk around this year, and what time i did have was divided between the moog and dave smith booths.

the dave smith mo'pho, for those who haven't heard of / tried it, is really really brilliant. especially for the price.

the moog guitar is freakin' awesome, but way too expensive for most humans. even if you have the money. just having string-section like tones you can coax from it by holding chord voicings is pretty damn cool... it was a great deal of fun.

maschine is enticing. the fact that it's a metal unit that's solid as hell is pretty great. the integration into the software seems to be cool... and it seems... SEEMS... that it might actually slice as effectively as intakt used to... but that'll have to be discovered when i get my hands on mine.

the akai controller is something that's been a LONG time coming. very very very cool.

openlabs (where i was for the bulk of the show) introduced the gen 5 stuff, which is pretty cool if you're into what they do. the BUMP MP controller and a new integrated custom version of GURU make it a pretty compelling machine. tonight's jam session with teddy riley, morris hayes, tim & bob and a few random guests was pretty awesome, i must say. a highlight of namm for a lot of people i think.

ableton wasn't showing off the max/msp functionality, or at least not when i was stopping by, but that looks pretty cool too.

spectrasonics talked about trillian and the upcoming RMX update, but i couldn't be less interested, really.

good times had by all.

i wish i had time to sleep.

c

Hey maus, is it you who reps for NI? Maschine looks great, but the software doesn't output midi (not yet...)

Imposcar 2, not exactly mindblowing, but Imposcar is a great synth that people seem to look over because its 4 years old now.

The Cubase RC is a nice idea. Shame you don't have access beyond the transport controls.

  kakapo said:

Hey maus, is it you who reps for NI? Maschine looks great, but the software doesn't output midi (not yet...)

yeah, i used to be product specialist for NI, then i was their guitar line US sales manager for a year, and then i was their US multimedia producer for a month (after which they totally axed marketing.)

so this year i was just doing video content for openlabs, who i'm hoping to start doing a good deal of marketing videos for.

i did learn the power of fxpansion's guru while on the show floor though. a version of it ships with the new gen 5 openlabs gear, and it's really genius. i've never liked pattern-based drum sequencing, but this is almost like a little mini drum DAW as a plugin... and the swing templates on it are absolutely fucking class.

c