| I attended the 2025 NAMM Show on Saturday,January 25. It was the only day I could attend, and I walked 5.5 miles at the show despite recovering from a back ache! I usually get free tickets from some company or dealer, but this year I purchased a ticket from NAMM online. I qualified to attend because of my position as Caltech Organist and my work with Caltech's music program. Here is a photo of my badge. The "buyer" designation comes from the fact that I have some influence on Caltech's music equipment purchases. It also provides a good signal to NAMM exhibitors that they should treat me well and answer all my questions. |
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| It was only a few days ago when I was glued to my TV screen watching the US Presidential Inauguration - not because I wanted to hear Donald Trump, but because I wanted to hear all the great US military bands. One of the thing sI miss being retired from JPL was spending many enjoyable evenings in Washington DC listing to concerts by the Marine, Navy, Army, and Air Force bands. These are among the finest bands anywhere and the concerts are free! I was please to nice several of these bands using NAMM as a tool for recruiting. Here is the booth for the Marine Band - "The President's Own." |
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| Other entities also need to recruit musicians. Here is the booth for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. I told them my band cruise days are pretty much over. I have done a lot of cruises during my career - but I never worked directly for the cruise companies. By the way, they had a wheel to spin for bling and I hit the jackpot. I have a bagful of Royal Caribbean merch. |
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| This was my favorite new item at NAMM! These guitars and violins do not play. They are plush toys! They come in two sizes; "toy" and "pillow". If you buy a guitar, you probably also want to my the plush amplifier! |
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| This is another of these weird and wonderful innovations usually located in the convention center's basement exhibit room. Jack-IT makes a wide assortment of dummy electric plugs that you can insert n your electronic equipment to simply stop dust from accumulating. It sounds trivial, but I have been at many gigs where this dust has caused a piece of equipment to be set aside completely because of the resulting audio noise. In fact, this happened to my bass player just the day after NAMM at a gig! Perhaps that club should buy some of these things... |
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| NAMM always has some brand new musical instruments. Here is one called the "Dog Paw." This is a completely programmable array of buttons. Each button can be assigned to a musical note (to create various scales) or set of notes (to create chords.) The buttons are large enough to be useful in actual performance. |
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| And here is another new instrument: the "Bike Harp" by Lethelium. It looks like a motorcycle wheel, but consists of two octaves of strings than can be plucked or hit with drum sticks. The metal ups around the outer rims are actually individual resonators for these strings. It certainly looks cool and it delivers a very nice sound. |
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| The Boutique Guitar booth was back this year with more weird and wonderful guitar designs. Since I do not play guitar, I can only comment on the great aesthetic designs! |
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| There are always a ton f electric pianos at NAMM - and there were again this year. Some stand out. This is an example of an Oura piano by Donner from the Netherlands. I played one of these for a while and it is fine instrument. More importantly, the design is definitely Dutch. It uses fine light-toned woods and simply aesthetic lines. It even folds up into a beautiful box that looks good by itself. |
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| I did not spend a lot of time looking at drums this year - but i loved these drum kit designed from Aquarian. There are compact drum sets that fold up into even more compact form factors for transport and storage. If I had one of these, perhaps my drum set would actually go to gigs rather than staying assembled in my studio. |
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| Here is another new instrument: the Otamatone. Sure, it looks like a cute eight-not-shaped monster, but it also makes music. There is a long portamento slider bar on its stem and is a continuous MIDI controller. You can even squeeze the mouth to make it open! |
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| Here is a Saxophone MIDI controller from Odisei Music. Unlike most woodwind MIDI controllers, this one is very compact yet it still has the keys in the right place. The sales person at this booth warned me that my hands would be close together and close to the mouthpiece. I assured him that it would simply feel like my sopronino sax - and it did. They are targeting this as a practice instrument, though it has a MIDI output for controlling synthesizers. They are also beta-testing a clarinet model. |
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| Sometimes it is the company name that attracts my attention. This company is called "Eternal Research." I am sure they meant it as a positive thing, but all I could think about were all those grad students that never could finish their degrees! Basically, this company makes modular synthesizer components. Their new product this year is this triangular sensor module. It detects and electromagnetic fields (they called them EMFs and told me the "F" stood for "frequency" which it does not...) The module turns these fields into control signals to influence other synthesizers. Even a cell phone can be used to make experimental music! |
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| Again, the company name drew me in at this booth. After waiting about five minutes to talk to the salesman, I explained I was a mathematician and I wanted to know how there were using Fourier analysis in their audio mixing product. He explained that "Fourier" is just the company name and they did no Fourier analysis. This was probably the most disappointing stop on my tour. |
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| I discovered the Moog Foundation and the 2023 NAMM. My connection with Robert Moog (other than meeting him at the NAMM Show many years ago) is that my father's first cousin was Herbert Deutsch. Uncle Herb collaborated with Bob Moog on the first keyboard synthesizers. Being at this booth is sort of like being with family. Although they do not make this synthesizer pillow, it was definitely a cool thing I had never seen before. |
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| Just to show that Bob Moog is no longer alone in the foundation business, I came across a booth for the Alan R. Pearlman Foundation. Although most of you have probably heard of Bob Moog, Alan Pearlman is less well-known but still a major innovator in the world of music synthesizers. His initials formed the name of the ARP Synthesizer company. When my father wanted us to become smart about synthesizers - back in the 70s - we purchased an ARP 2600 and I learned all about it. I played that 2600 at many gigs with my jazz quartet. Karen and I even visited the ARP factory once and met Alan. The woman in this photo is Alan's daughter, Dina. The both had many working ARP synths, including a 2600. It was a lot of fun. |
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| Although there are many easier ways to replace me as a trumpet player, you can now do it my getting one of these player trumpets from QRS! QRS Music Technologies (yes, their company name uses the plural) offers player trumpets controllable from pianos (or, I suppose, player pianos.) This device was being demonstrated in a crowded hallway, so I cannot attest to the quality of the trumpet sound - but I am sure its lips never get tired! |
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| This is not a playable instrument - but it is indeed a giant guitar built out of normal sized guitars. |
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| The biggest change in the music industry in 2024 for me was the announcement that Finale was no longer going to be supported. Finale was one of the mainstays of the music publishing software industry. More importantly, it was the software I have been using for decades for all my composing and arranging. I literally have tens of thousands of pieces defined in Finale on my computers. What was I going to do with all of this, and how was I going to keep writing music in the future? FinaleMusic reached a deal with Steinberg (a division of Yamaha) to let us crossgrade (yes, that's evidentially a word) to Dorico, one of Finale's competitors. I executed the cross grade and have been working in Dorico for several months now. It is excellent software. I exported all my old Finale files in "MusicXML" which Dorico can import. There were a few problems with this process. When I (and other Finale users) reported these to Dorico's software forum, they were quickly fixed! Dorico even came out with an upgrade that mode music input more like Finale! I discovered a small demo area within Yamaha's NAMM booth for Dorico. They had one of the Dorico online teachers there to answer questions. When one person expressed anxiety at converting all his Finale files, I was able to chime in and relate my own experience. |
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| We will end this 2025 NAMM tour in the "Piano Gallery." In past years this hall has been full of pianos, piano companies, and even concert organs. It has really thinned out in 2025! Perhaps pianos aren't as big (in sales) as they used to be? Sauter always has a nice display - but this year they tried to draw people in by bragging about how old they are! Despite this, the pianos they displayed are very modern and stylish - and they play very well too. I could not resit playing one of these "Optimal Pianos." Though perhaps not truly optimal, they were good. |
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