Day 5: Well that’s it. The NAMM show is a wrap. Today is Sunday and while it is the last day of the show, there is definitely an air about the place that says the show is finally over and foot traffic is much lighter than it has been the whole rest of the show.
At 5pm when they finally turned the lights down, you could hear a wave of exhibitors clapping and cheering. If I were to tell you it was a quick show, I would be lying. But it was definitely a good show and we were able to reach out to a lot of people with all of our products including our new USB hardware devices and of course, our baby: The SONAR V-Studio 700.
Everyone here did a wonderful, professional job this week and I know we’re all proud of what we’ve accomplished.
As I wrap this up, I look forward to touching down at home in Boston and sleeping in my own bed. Though as much as I don’t mind the 80 degree weather in January, I think it’s the nasty winters at home that really make you appreciate the nice weather when you get it. Although, we could be another 4-5 months off from weather like this at home.
C’est la vie, thanks for reading, oh and scroll down the page to see our videos from NAMM:
Enjoy!
Ian: Out
Day 4: Eek, technical difficulties! I apologize for not getting these posts up sooner; the inter-web at the hotel has been spotty at best. In fact, I tried to stream a movie from Netflix the other night and as you may know, it needs to load – which typically takes 30 seconds to a minute at home suddenly turned into two hours and change! Yikes. But that aside, please enjoy the next post.
Saturday was by far the busiest of all days here at NAMM. In our booth alone we had main-stage demos happening from stem to stern including a discussion panel on writing music for video games. It got quite epic in the booth with all of that video game music playing.
Faust and Shortee were back again with another discussion on how they do their productions using SONAR, which for me was especially exciting because I’m still using Project 5 to do all my sequencing, and then bringing it into SONAR for the mix, but I think now with SONAR’s Step Sequencer, I might have at it in SONAR exclusively.
It’s hard to wrap your around just how large this convention is. I know for me I’m pretty busy at the booth showing SONAR 8 and SONAR Home Studio to people and handing out demos to really see what’s out there. But to walk from one end of our hall to the other, especially in all that traffic takes some time. I think the Roland booth alone is at least a half km away!
Ian: Out
Day 3: Dia De Los Demos: Today was another busy day at the booth with our standard fare of demos, but also a host of artist appearances which made the booth quite an exciting place to be. We had Craig Anderton come by and demo his new Electronic Guitars expansion pack for Rapture. What was so cool about Craig’s demo, aside from having someone so knowledgeable about synthesis in general, but it was just so apparent that he loves what he does and he was clearly enjoying giving the demo.
Later on we had DJs Faust and Shortee in the booth giving a demonstration on Drum and Bass production using SONAR as well as how they integrate turntables into their music. Another great thing to have at the booth because so many people think SONAR is just for making rock music, or just for recording guitars, bass or drums, but it really does make a great host for doing electronic music and even hip hop. Shawn Clement was also here giving a demo on scoring video. Shawn is best known for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And of course after a full day of demos we had the Cakewalk Booth Party. The booth was jammed up for the last hour of the day for this invite-only event which garnered quite a bit of interest by those without a laminate making our booth a popular stop on the way out the door.
All that aside, I think everyone is really anticipating Saturday as being the biggest day of the show with a packed house as well as a packed demo schedule as well as a few discussion panels. Now time for some rest, and we’re still trying to get some video content to post for everyone and I should have pics up in a few hours after I do some quick resizing.
Until then,
Ian: Out
Day 2: And we’re finally off and running. After two long days of set-up and testing, it’s time for the big show. While I’m here in the LA area, I do want make sure I get some Big Lebowski type things in, which are including but not limited to going to a Ralph’s in a bath robe and purchasing some half and half and paying for it with a check, as well as of course eating at an In n Out burger and any other “The Dude” things I can do in my time here.
But I digress… thus far Seth, Robin, and Rich’s demos are going swimmingly with the SONAR V-Studio 700 demos receiving the most attention and attendance. We’ve been filming a lot of what’s been going on in the booth and I should be able to get some video posted tonight or tomorrow. I haven’t had too much time to really walk around and check a lot of things out, but I plan on spending some time today.
However, what I have had time to see is the Roland booth, which has quite possibly the coolest display I’ve seen at the show…well aside from the Cakewalk booth of course. Anyway, they have a 20 foot tall Boss distortion pedal, or maybe it’s an overdrive pedal…but regardless, it’s massive and you can walk right through the center of it, and you should see the size of the 9-volt battery that comes with it.
Some other big news that’s been going around the booth – we had the illustrious Craig Anderton who made an appearance with engineering legend Elliot Scheiner who has recorded a couple artists that had a hit or two, you know, just the Eagles and Steely Dan. No big deal. We also had Justin Lassen up in here for a bit which made for quite a busy day.
Until Tomorrow,
Ian: Out
Day 1: Welcome to the first of several blog posts I’ll be writing for this year’s Winter NAMM show. Most of the crew arrived yesterday after what was an interesting landing at Long Beach airport. With the winds blowing up off the mountains it was bumpy approach which at one point resulted in an unsettling 8 or 9 seconds of what I would describe as weightlessness. However, we touched down and stepped off into 80 degree sunshine, quite the change from the 15 or 16 degrees it was when I left my house in Boston earlier that morning. The balance of the NAMM crew arrived today and we’ve been hard at it putting our booth together, making everything pretty, and ultimately getting ready for the next four days.
We’re all very excited to be here at NAMM, and this being my first experience with a show this big, the only way I can describe it is like they put a Guitar Center inside the space of 2 or 3 Home Depots, it’s absolutely crazy here and everything is “ooc” or out of control, if you will.
Over the next four days we’ll be making several exciting product announcements as well as some special guests including Craig Anderton, and Drum n’ Bass phenoms Faust n’ Shortee.
Some big news that we’re announcing at NAMM:
SONAR V-Studio 700 is now shipping. To say we are excited about launching this product would be an understatement. The SONAR V-Studio represents so much work and collaboration between Cakewalk and Roland, and to watch it develop from an idea to a tangible product we can show the world is amazing.
Craig Anderton’s Electric Guitars for Rapture is going to be huge. A lot of us here use Rapture as a go to synth, especially those of us who do a lot of electronic music. To have expansions available for the synth will open up new possibilities for anyone into playing guitar or using Rapture.
The new cable-based product line will make short work of capturing audio or MIDI. Not only are these devices tiny enough to throw in your laptop bag and take with you, but they’re super-convenient. Even the MIDI interface is given new life using Roland’s exclusive MIDI clock drivers, which all but eliminate any latency.
SONAR 8.3 is also going to be available shortly, helping to make a great product even better. SONAR 8 users, be sure to download this as soon as it becomes available.
So that’s it for NAMM Day #1, I gotta get back to setting up and figuring out how things here on the left coast work – you know, things that we don’t have in Boston, like ordinal directions. Who knew that if you said “South” it would actually be relevant? Certainly not I. Back at home we measure distance and direction with Dunkin Donuts, not the points of a compass, but that’s a different story all together…
Ian: out