A Barking Dog

I was all set to check in at the Holiday Inn Express, or so I thought. Due to circumstances beyond my control (they screwed up) I traded my HI Express room with free high speed Internet and breakfast for a Days Inn and Suites that was really a low budget weekly on the doorstep of Little Saigon that was lucky to have electricity or even phone service. In other words, some place I might have stayed during my “formative years” about a quarter century ago. When I came home from my first real tour in the early 80s I did a stint in the weekly rental scene in the shadow of the convention center, none of which exist anymore. I grew up in the area surrounding the Anaheim Convention Center and it’s quite a different place these days. They say you can’t go home again and that’s true. The people living in those houses now have no idea who you are and would probably have you arrested for trespassing.

I got into doing sound because all my friends at the time were playing instruments in punk rock bands while we weren’t skating at the likes of Skatopia, The Big O, Del Mar Skate Ranch or The Marina Del Rey Skatepark, among many others. I couldn’t play an instrument at that time except for french horn from my years in school band, so I became the sound guy. While french horn is a fine instrument there’s not much of a call for them in a rock band. Initially in the band at Van Horn Elementry there were about 15 drummers, a few violins, some clairnets and trumpets. They only needed at most four percussionists, two of which played snare. This was pre Stomp and Blueman Group so they didn’t see the need to have a bunch of people beating on things as the primary instrument of the band. Too bad, we would have been way ahead of our time. They threw all of our names into a hat and picked four for the percussion section. The rest of us had to pick other instruments and by the time they got to me it was french horn or cello. Had things gone the other way, I could have easily been a musician, or worse yet, a drummer. I rounded out my playing background with two semesters worth of piano at the Recording Arts program at Golden West College. Personally I would have rather played a B3 as Highway Star doesn’t have the same impact when played on a piano but the point of learning was to be able to read charts (check) know chord progression (check) and be able to name the notes we were hearing (not so check) though I could name the frequency.

A wise NAMM attendee will try to get in and out before the weekend. It’s difficult to do as it’s one big ass show. To see everything and do follow ups will take the entire four days. Even though it’s billed as “Trade Only” many that operate on the fringes seem to be lurking and this is particularly true over the weekend. Most of those “in the know” start to leave by the weekend and by mid day Sunday most have bugged out basically staying through the Saturday night parties. Sunday then becomes what I call “guitar players and their girlfriend day” though that’s not so accurate these days as there are a significant amount of women in the MI biz or in bands much more so than at other industry shows like NSCA or AES. Sunday is a a zoo. Those in the booths are tired from working all day and partying ’til the wee hours and many attendees are getting in with borrowed badges or guest passes. That’s not to say the weekend traffic is all bad. The culture of rock provides for a pleasurable veiwing experience.

I’ve been threatening to start playing bass for a while and the Tascam line of CD trainers just might be the thing to push me toward doing it. It’s a CD player you plug your cans or molds into as well as your axe, put your favorite learning CD or CD of a tune you’re trying to learn. The box has got effects, a tuner, a control footswitch and the best part is that you can slow the parts down and not have the pitch affected. Street price between US$130 and US$150. This and a cheap P-Bass is going to get me started playing some bass.

M-Audio (formerly Midiman) had a bunch to show. I’m a fan of both the small, low budget computer speakers/monitors and the USB/MIDI controller keyboards . They also have a complete line of USB mic preamps and a variety of devices to get audio in and out of your computer. I’m currently trying to decide weather to get the 4s or the DX4 monitors for my Final Cut/Garageband system. They basically look like the same product except for thee balanced input on the DX4. I hadn’t heard until then that Avid bought M Audio last fall when I was out of the country. That explains the lack of Apple product in that booth and the lack of M Audio product in the Apple booth. Apparently Avid is still pissed at Apple for both Final Cut and Logic as they see that cutting into their sales. I have it on good authority that there are Microsoft engineers working directly with ProTools engineers to supplant the Macintosh as the primary platform for ProTools and have been working on it for a few years now. My experience with PT, or Alsihad as Eric Serafin likes to call it is pretty limited but I can see that using it in Windows isn’t quite as clean as it could be. In fact, there wasn’t a Mac to be seen at all in any of the Digi booths. There were Dell and Intel logos displayed prominently in some parts of the display.

Apple Computer was an exhibitor I didn’t expect to see at the show. They had a large booth appointed with the latest and greatest Cinema displays and dual G5s. They were there primarily to promote Logic and Garageband though I stopped by hoping to get a peak at the reported “Asteroid”, the firewire audio interface rumored as a companion to Garageband. It’s reported to be a low cost two channel interface with mic (xlr no less) and line inputs, and possibly an SP/DIF output to be specifically marketed for use with Garageband though useable with any Core Audio compatable software including Soundtrack, Logic, Final Cut and others. It sounds a great deal like Miglia’s Harmony Audio and Apple is going to great lengths to protect leaks surrounding the product going as far so to sue rumor sites under the guise of leaking so called trade secrets. Rumored to be about US$150 retail it’s at a good price point. No one in the Apple booth would confirm much less comment on the rumored piece and one person seemed somewhat uncomfortable at my even mentioning it.

The demo for the recently released upgrade to Garageband I thought was good. I’ve been a Garageband fan since I got my last Mac late in the summer when my aging Powerbook bit the dust on tour. I’ve been using it to do loops for my video projects and like the ease of use and ability to get pro quality loops out of what is basically a consumer audio package. The new version, bundled with new Macs or available as part of the iLife suite offers the ability to record live to eight tracks as well as manipulate the tempo and pitch of each track. The new version will also auto notate, creating charts on the fly. an M-Audio MobilePre USB and Garageband will give MBox and Protools LE a run for the money, and then some for most songwriters and garage studio types.

That was my NAMM in a nutshell. I didn’t go to any of the evening functions, it was a quick in and out, the shortest NAMM I’ve done in several years. It was fun, but it’s good to be home.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Winter NAMM 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.