Jet-lagged and exhausted, the Cakewalk crew is slowly recovering from a monumental Thursday through Saturday at the NAMM Show. The weather was beautiful, the show floor was packed and the Cakewalk booth was the place to be.
Each year, the National Association of Music Merchants hosts an industry-wide tradeshow at the colossal Anaheim Convention Center. If you’ve never been to the NAMM Show, it’s a musician’s paradise, with thousands of exhibitors, live product demos, impromptu jam sessions, and celebrity sightings galore.
The theme for our booth was ‘Creative Tools for Independent Minds.’ As our product line continues to grow from recording software to complete studio solutions, we encourage musicians on every level to take production into their own hands and have fun making music.
Cakewalk Artist Relations Manager, Jimmy Landry put together an all-star roster of artists who appeared and performed in our booth while demonstrating how they use our products on the road and in the studio.
One of Rolling Stone’s Top 5 Up & Coming Female Artists, Cori Yarckin, acoustically performed her hit single, Everything You Said, and recorded a vocal track in SONAR with the V-Studio 100. Cakewalk’s Brandon Ryan showed the audience how to use the VX-64 Vocal Strip to process her vocals as well as the Matrix view to creatively remix her track.
Power SONAR user and well-known composer Justin Lassen discussed his journey to Belgium to record in a 17th century castle. Justin emphasized that with SONAR 8.5’s virtual instruments, Session Drummer 3, True Pianos and the new A-PRO Keyboards there is no need for hiring a full orchestra to create full-bodied compositions.
V-Studio 100 user and International recording artist (a former Capitol Records recording artist), Javier Colon played some songs from his upcoming album while producers Jimmy Landry and Brandon Ryan demonstrated the powerful mixing capabilities in SONAR 8.5 from those tracks. Javier’s new record (due out later this year) is currently being recorded in SONAR 8.5. Steven Slate showed off his new drum kit expansion packs for Session Drummer 3 and gave tips on how to produce professional drum tracks in SONAR.
Frontman for Murder FM (Glasstone Records/Century Media), Norman Matthew, records with SONAR in his home studio and brought some of his favorite tracks for us to listen to. He discussed using SONAR to record perfect guitar and vocal tracks. Casey McPherson, lead singer for Hollywood Records artist Alpha Rev, performed and demonstrated how he uses the V-Studio 100 to support his solo acoustic shows around the country, while he waits for his record to hit the radio and stores this year.
Along with an acoustic performance of their Billboard hit single, Face Down, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus gave the crowd some exclusive insight on what it’s like to be a band who has recorded with two of rock’s most time-honored producers Howard Benson and David Bendeth. They also revealed their plans to release a collection of acoustic recordings in 2010; all produced using the V-Studio 100. To close the show, Shifty & the Big Shots brought the house down with a performance of their upcoming single, Chrome Heart, which is destined for the Billboard Charts later this year. Shifty (formerly of Crazytown), Jay Gordon (formerly of Orgy), Rick One, TC and Dez discussed their use of SONAR in the creative process.
During the show, our Technical Sales Representatives (TSRs) gave live tutorials on the new features of SONAR 8.5. Rich Curtis (East Coast Rep) and Seth Perlstein (West Coast Rep) introduced the Matrix view and Step Sequencer 2.0 in their demos while Mike Trujillo (Central Rep) brought out his guitar to show off Guitar Rig Pro. The A-PRO Series Keyboards and V-Studio 700 were used on stage throughout the performances. We video-taped these demos and hope to post them to our Youtube page in the near future.
In addition to the main stage, Intel outfitted four Experience Stations with laptops powered by the new Core i7-processors. These stations featured Cakewalk’s MA-15D studio monitors, A-PRO Series Keyboards, an audio interface and recording software. We set up a Guitar-centric station with two donated Fender Guitars, a UA-4FX and Cakewalk’s Guitar Tracks Pro recording software. SONAR Home Studio and our new mobile studio canvas (SD-50) were also on display. Cakewalk’s V-Studio line of products, the V-Studio 100 and V-Studio 700, were featured at their own Experience Stations. Many people stopped by to test out the V-Studio 100 and watch the V-Studio 700’s flying faders set to automation.
This year, we also introduced a new incentive at our booth. Those who stopped by and took the ‘Cakewalk Tour’ were entered to win great prizes. Attendees were asked to grab a passport, visit our experience stations to try out our new gear and get their passport stamped by a Cakewalk staffer as they move along. Those with four or more stamps got a cool ‘I <3 NAMM’ T-shirt and were entered to win SONAR 8.5. Congrats to Jordan Hood, Douglas Carranza, Carl Coolbaugh and Anthony Balboa who won a new DAW. Out of all those who visited the booth, one grand prize winner was awarded a V-Studio 100. Congrats to Stephan Milosevich
A special thank you goes out to the forum members who stopped by the booth to watch a few demos and talk with our TSRs. For a Cakewalk user’s perspective on the show, read Bitflipper’s thread on the Cakewalk Forum.
Visit Cakewalk’s Flickr to see all of our photos from the NAMM Show 2010 and for all our News Announcements, check out our Press page.
See you in Anaheim next year!