On Saturday May 30, 2009: Cakewalk and Edirol will show off their latest gadgets at the Roxy Arthouse in Edinburgh, Scotland at the first annual Unique Beats Festival. This all day festival – sponsored by Red Dog Music – is dedicated to promoting all forms of electronic music making and will include many spectacular live performances, audio-visual displays and workshops. Some of the industry’s biggest names will be on hand to display their cutting-edge tools for music production while live sets will be performed by some of the best electronic artists around!
Throughout the day, Cakewalk product specialists will be demonstrating the SONAR V-Studio 700 and SONAR V-Studio 100 music-making systems while Edirol will be showcasing it’s video products including the V-8 mixer and P-10 visual presenter.
Live appearances throughout the day and evening will include Europe’s budding musicians; Christ, Frog Pocket, Joe Acheson Quartet, ESPion, Morphamish and many more. There will be plenty of audio-visual treats scattered around the event. Unique Beats attendees will benefit from exclusive deals on gear from Red Dog and will be entered to win a myriad of music making equipment, including Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 Producer!
Well Day 3 came upon us quite quickly. So much has happened in the last couple of days. This was the last day of the retailer part of the show. Tomorrow is the public day, where Musikmesse is open to the public.
Remember that I mentioned our European counterparts rocked out a bit more during their product demonstrations? I found some evidence online today as I was typing this. MusicRadar shot some video on their handycam of one of their pre-demo performances in our booth. Sorry for the audio quality, but it was shot from the show floor. Edirol did some professional filming with audio from the board and we’ll get those online soon. For now, here’s a taste of ‘Rockstar’:
*Video edited on 4/8/09*
We had a second meeting with more of our new distribution partners. Brandon, Robin and I welcomed them to the Cakewalk family giving them an introduction to our product line and our marketing resources. This second group was just as enthusiastic as the first and I am very excited to have such strong representation in so many new areas of the world.
Pictured here with Greg Hendershott of Cakewalk are Kwan-Ki Min of Cosmos Corporation (Korea), David Leo of PT. Citra Intirama (Indonesia), Frank K.T. Lee of Tom Lee Music (Hong Kong), Pham Van Kim of Viet Thuong (Vietnam), Ali Sungurlu and Mehlih Aytug of Zuhal Dis Tic (Turkey), and Kittipong Techayuenyong of Theera Music (Thailand).
Later in the day, Gina Garda and I had a meeting with our new strategic marketing contact at Intel, Kimia Poursaleh. In case you missed it, Intel is currently running a big feature on Cakewalk and SONAR on their new Content Creation microsite. It was a real pleasure to finally meet Kimia in person.
As the day ended, the entire Cakewalk and Edirol crew along with some key people from Roland Japan set out for a traditional German dinner at Alt-Oberurseler Brauhaus to celebrate our successes at the show. The food and beer was amazing (maybe the beer was too amazing) but was even better, was having everyone together for a celebration. Here are a few pictures highlighting the evening’s festivities:
The taxis start to arrive and our friends gather outside the Brauhaus.
Robin, Brandon and Michael make their best attempt at a band photo.
Michael Hoover of Cakewalk and Simon Lowther of Edirol Europe.
Robin and I enjoy a couple of the Brauhaus’s finest.
Cakewalk’s Gina Garda and Roland’s Masahiro Minowa get ready to enjoy a good meal.
Despite the fact that I’m a vegetarian, I can’t miss a good photo opp.
Roland’s Managing Director Mr. Kondo gave a rousing toast. He’s flanked by Edirol Europe’s Managing Director Massimo Barbini and Cakewalk’s Founder and CEO Greg Hendershott. Phil Palmer and Dan the VJ look on.
As the night wore on, much hilarity ensued. I suppose you had to be there, but I can tell you that we got a special visit from the pretzel man!
That’s it for now, tomorrow is the BIG public day.
Day 2 of Musikmesse started out real well. I opened up the tradeshow daily to see that we had gotten a write-up on page 2 about the fact that the V-Studio console was going to be available to SONAR 8 customers as a stand alone control surface.
I think one important point that was missing from the article, and I couldn’t expect it be written there, was that this is another example of Cakewalk listening to our customers. Some SONAR 8 users told us that they have spent quite a bit of money on their I/O and that you really only need the best control surface possible for SONAR.
We listened, and with just a little bit of work on our part, we will now be able to give them what they asked for, starting this summer. I still personally feel that if anyone had the full experienceof using the entire SONAR V-Studio 700 system together with the I/O and Fantom Synth, they would rethink their decision to only buy the console, but I guess I’m biased.
I kept reading the daily and I also found this nice photo of Ben Klempel and Massimo Barbini posing with the V-Studio 100. Massimo is the Managing Director of Edirol Europe, our distributor in Europe, and a really inspiring guy… I’m gald he’s on our side.
Brandon of course, was in his usual form, knocking out the crowds with his V-Studio 700 Demos.
There’s another good video from the show online. In this video, which should play after an ad, Sonic State interviews Julian from Edirol Europe about the V-Studio 100 and the VS 700C.
Also, the video I wrote about in the blog a couple of days ago, that Craig Anderton shot is now available online at Harmony Central.
When you get to the page, click on ‘Preview Video’ to watch Craig’s pre-show coverage. Alex, Steve, Brandon and I stage a mock argument about what’s important about the V-Studio 100 at around 4:20. You might get a laugh from it.
Well, it was such a good first day of the show, i’m not really sure where to begin. I guess starting at the beginning of the day is a good place.
Things started to look good first thing in the morning when I received the Messe Show Daily, and saw that the editors had decided that SONAR V-Studio 100 was one of the hottest announcements at the show and it deserved front cover placement on day 1.
Alex Westner, Cakewalk’s Director of Product Management is pictured here with the Show Daily…
The show floor was humming with excitement. Our European Distributors Edirol Europe did a great job with the booth. And they take a more rock & roll approach to our produce demos than we usually do in the states.
They hired an amazing group to do SONAR V-Studio 100 product demonstrations that showed how a band would usually use the product. I thought their demos were a lot of fun. Chris is here explaining to the audience the benefits of having an audio interface, daw controller, digital mixer, and SD Wave recorder all in one compact device.
I imagine it looked something like this.
But the audience clearly enjoyed themselves.
Craig Anderton, came by and shot a very entertaining product video with Alex, Brandon Ryan, Steve Thomas, and myself about the SONAR V-Studio 100, I don’t want to give any spoilers, but keep an eye out on Harmony Central for the video.
MusicRadar.tv also came by to get the scoop on the V-Studio 100. They interviewed Alex and the video is already online. You can check it out below.
Not sure if you saw the announcement yesterday, but we have extended our distribution into a bunch of new markets. I got to meet some of the new distributors today and talk to them about our products and our marketing. They were really a great group of people and I think we’re mutually very enthusiastic about working together.
Greg, Brandon, and Robin are pictured here with our new friends Subhash Khandelwal of Rivera Digitec (Mumbai, India), Roy Viljoen of Paul Bothner Music (South Africa), Magdey El Bouhy of ADawliah (Saudi Arabia), George Triantafillou and Nikos Stamoulis of Venediktos Stollas (Greece), and Ron Nevo and Ilan Murad of Halilit (Israel).
Steve, Alex, and I then attended the Lesser Awards Ceremony put on by PPVMEDIEN, one of the biggest publishers of music magazines in Europe. Two years ago, Kinetic won the Lesser Award for Das Bestes Groove Tool and SONAR 8 was nominated for an award this year. We didn’t win but it is always an honor to be nominated and we had a good time at the event.
One change for the Award Ceremony was that the Surf Rock band was replaced this year by the Justin Nova Band. I liked what I heard and expect good things from this group.
Well, quite a bit for day wouldn’t you say? I’m looking forward to see what tomorrow brings…
Signing off,
Carl Jacobson & Alex Westner (pictured and filmed above)
On Saturday May 30, 2009: Cakewalk and Edirol will show off their latest gadgets at the Roxy Arthouse in Edinburgh, Scotland at the first annual Unique Beats Festival. This all day festival – sponsored by Red Dog Music – is dedicated to promoting all forms of electronic music making and will include many spectacular live performances, audio-visual displays and workshops. Some of the industry’s biggest names will be on hand to display their cutting-edge tools for music production while live sets will be performed by some of the best electronic artists around!
