Tuesday 29 January 2013

Good Morning Namm!


I got a pass for NAMM via Tara and Analog Suicide. NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants annual fair. Its basically a giant music store the size of a small city. Here are some pics Maf took:


Do you remember that awesome sofa I posted about before?

And here is something that caught my eye:

There were some very cool synth products being announced at this years show; The Korg mini-cheap-and-plastiky-but-authentic-sounding MS20. The Moog small-but-perfectly-formed-and-really-rather-awesome-sounding Slim Fatty. But most amazing perhaps of the whole show was the Buchla electric-music-box-remake-that-nobody-thought-would-ever-happen-but-it-has Music Easel. There were two demo versions on the Buchla booth, and one of them was working pretty much as it should. I had a good long go on it, and it sounded really amazing, as you would expect from an all-analog remake of the 1973 classic synth

It was really amazing wandering round the show and seeing some of my heroes from the synth world - all of them still making products. I had a long chat with Tom Oberheim, who told me he is remaking his mini-sequencer but with memory storage for use with his SEM reissue modules. I saw Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits / co-inventor of MIDI), Michelle Moog, Don Buchla and lots of other legendary geeks. The Moog Foundation booth is right next to the Lowrey Organ booth - so they get a constant 1970s soundtrack, which I thought was quite awesome:



Thanks so much Tara and Maf for getting me in, and hi Stephi too

1 comment:

  1. Necro-comment, admittedly, but I haven't checked in for a while and I'm catching up...

    Burning question: what was the Swarmatron like? I love the idea and sound, but I've never seen/played one. Was it fun/inspiring to play?

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