I’m afforded access to the show — which is trade only and not open to the general public — through the auspices of my day job, and I usually spend all four days of the show in the company of sales people and editors explaining to clients, prospective clients and instrument product managers the benefits of marketing musical instruments to buyers through the internet. This year, however, though I received a badge through work, I was not on the clock, and I was only there for two days, which, though I felt a bit of a rush to get through it all (it’s a big show), was nice because I’m usually ready to start killing people half way through the third day.

Since I was in it for strictly personal reasons this year, I spent my time hunting for stuff that I’m personally interested in: bass gear, effects pedals, drum machines and analog synths, and, to a lesser extent, software. I was hoping to have my mind blown by some of the new stuff at the show and that didn’t really happen, but through all the random silliness and standard faire, I did find a few things that I’d like to add to my collection of noise making devices…

MTD Kingston P-Style Bass. I noticed a show-wide design trend in most of the new basses on display: Body types are sleeker, thinner and narrower, lots of 5- and 6-, even 7- and 8-string basses, with lots of tone shaping options (i.e. a lotta knobs) — just a general move away from what constitutes the classic design and construction aesthetic. I’m all for progress and evolution, and to be fair, some of these new basses play really nicely, but personally, I just can’t get down with them. Call me a traditionalist, but I like four strings (in standard tuning), one or two pickups and one or two knobs. Simple. Which is why I sorta fell in love with a MTD Precision-style bass (top of the rack in the photo) that I saw at the booth of retail distributor Dana B. Good. The tobacco sunburst body, central humbucking pickup configuration and basic controls (volume / tone) is exactly what I like. Because this particular model was on display at the DBG distributor booth and not at the MTD booth, I assume this is one of Mike Tobias’ Korean-made models, but I don’t care. The action and intonation were spot-on, and Mike’s really high-end hand-made stuff isn’t my cup of tea anyway (too many strings, exotic woods, tone controls I don’t need / want, etc.). I’d like to spend a little more time test driving this bass, but I’m already considering picking one up.

Dwarfcraft Devices. One of the coolest manufacturers and displays of gear I encountered this year was downstairs in Hall E, the “Freak Hall” area of NAMM where the bootstrapping indie companies, mad scientists, left-of-center luthiers, and Chinese bulk manufacturers show off their wares. Colin (Ovipositor singer / guitarist) alerted me to the presence of Dwarfcraft Devices (via a post they made to the Electrical forums), and I made a point of checking them out. What I found was two guys, a bass and a guitar, a Fender Bassman amp, and a folding card table full of interesting effects pedals sporting cool art, nonstandard interfaces (like joysticks), and, most importantly, awesome sounds. We talked for a few minutes, I explained a little about my seemingly eternal struggle for the “right” distortion pedal, and they let come behind the table and plug the bass they had into a pedal called the Eau Claire Thunder. I was totally blown away. In fact, I’ve been obsessing on the pedal since I left Anaheim, and bought one the other day. I’ll try to post a full report on the device when I get it and can run my own bass through it into my own rig, but just to give you an idea of what it sounds like (awesomely fucked up), check out the demo on YouTube.

Some Other Effects Pedals. As far as effects go, I generally tried to avoid the usual suspects — Electro-Harmonix, Boss, etc. — in favor of more boutique manufacturers, or stuff I thought was weird / cool / extra special. The Z. Vex booth, for example, had a ton of really cool looking pedals on display (pictured), nothing I was personally interested in, but Zachary Vex was hunched over his work bench throughout the show, where he announced a new direction for this pedal shop: open source. He’s going to start selling the schematics with every pedal, and he introduced a pedal kit that allows tinkerers to get into and fiddle with his designs to come up with their own mods on these unique effects (which has been happening for years without his official consent, so…). And though they’re not a boutique manufacturer (they are, however, independent in every sense of the term), I was also pretty impressed by a new pedal that Tech21 will be releasing in May 2010, the Red Ripper: a distortion pedal with a built-in envelope-style filter that controls the amount distortion based on attack, and a low-pass filter to cut the annoying buzz that can accompany bass distortion in the higher register, especially in use with an amp that has a horn. Cool concept, nice execution, good dirty sounds, clean bypass — pretty much everything you want out of a distortion pedal, with a little something extra.

Teenage Engineering OP-1. Easily the most fun toy I played with at this year’s NAMM show, this little rectangular device is a sampler, looper, synth, drum machine and more, all housed in the frame of a digital four-track recorder. It’s got a mic, a line-in and a USB port, so there are a variety of ways to get samples in to it, and once they’re there, a variety of ways to manipulate the samples: change tempo and pitch, apply a number of effects, etc. Once everything sounds the way you want it to, simply hit the record button to capture loops one track at a time, bounce multiple tracks down to a single track and keep building — pretty much how an analog four-track works. I really had fun with this thing, and I’m going to have a hard time staying away from it once it’s released sometime closer to summer 2010. The guy at the booth told me the price point was going to be somewhere between $500 and $1000, and I think that if they can keep it closer to $500, it’s sure to be a hit.

Dave Smith Instruments. I love Dave, and — full disclosure here — my good friend Joanne and her awesome husband Andrew work at Dave Smith Instruments, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m inclined to say nice things about their stuff (I can be a real asshole like that). However, as an owner of an original MoPho synth, which I love, I’m always interested in what’s next from Dave’s shop, and I’m never disappointed. This time, it was the Tetra synth, which was released a few months ago, but which I had not had the chance to get up-close and personal with; and the MoPho keyboard (pictured), which was unveiled at the show and has since caused quite a stir among synth nerds. The Tetra is a lot like the original Mopho — all analog, hand-made, and housed in a similarly sized small box with similar controls — but rather than a single voice (“MoPho” comes from “monophonic”) the Tetra has four voices. I played one hooked up to a Akai MPK25 MIDI controller keyboard, and it was everything I expected: Dope. The MoPho keyboard, as the name suggests, is a MoPho in keyboard form, with more dedicated controls, nicely weighted reactive keyboard interface, and a generally work-friendly control surface. Added bonus: chain up the Tetra and the MoPho keyboard as a controller and command a total of five synth voices. Polychained multitimbral madness! Synth-nerd-tastic!

There was a ton of other stuff at the show I was mildly interested in, slightly enamored by, or found downright stupid or ridiculous, so I took a bunch of photos…see if you can tell which is what (you can click over to the gallery on Flickr to see them in all their full-sized NAMM glory):

If you’re in San Francisco at the end of February and you’re interested online media, social networking and the general media shift from print / television / radio to online, you should check out Reality Digital’s Social Media Building Blocks 2009 conference.

Making things even more interesting, I’ll be speaking about “Challenges & Opportunities in Launching a Social Media Project.” It’s a pretty loose concept, and before you ask, no, I do not professionally bill myself as just a social media expert, though I certainly do have a good amount of personal and professional experience in that realm. I’m a journalist and editor by trade / education, with solid business development experience, 10 years deep in the game, and have been working for the last four years as the West Coast online project manager for a NYC-based media company. So my bit will be focused on the challenges, opportunities an successes I’ve experienced in helping to move what is largely a print media outfit into the internet age.

So far it’s looking like I’ll be painting in broad brush strokes about some high-altitude generalities, and making some finer points about some issues specific to integrating a “warehouse” backend media solution for several properties across several sectors, in both business-to-business and consumer media — my current bread-and-butter gig.

Really, it’ll be thrilling. And afterward, me and my homeboy Benny from Limelight Networks are gonna ghostride the whip in the Omni hotel parking garage.*

*Okay, probably not…but I’ll see what we can put together in terms of post-conference fun.

I’ve been avoiding this blog — most things online, really, except Twitter ’cause it’s too damn easy — since I got back from the NAMM show last weekend. It’s such a maximum saturation of sound and technology and booze and rich food and loud personalities and non-stop business… I always need time to decompress once it’s over.

At this point, however, I’ve gone through all my photos, fulfilled my NAMM-related day job duties, and effectively gotten over the feeling of sensory overload.

Since I spent the whole time I was there firing off Twitter posts about the experience and photos from the showroom floor, I’m not all that inclined to rehash it all through some novel-lenth blog post. It suffices to say that it was everything I expected — washed out rock stars who now earn livings as gear endorsers; the worst fashion sense ever; the same damn guitar riff / keyboard run / bass tapping / techno mixing emanating from every booth on the show floor, played by throngs unimaginative musicians from all over the world; lots of non-stop running around and business wheeling-and-dealing; and lots of booze.

But it’s not all bad. I witnessed marathon performances three days in a row from Dr. Lonnie Smith at the Hammond organ booth, which was conveniently located just down the aisle from my company’s booth. I played a lot of instruments I would otherwise never touch, like a seven-thousand-dollar ukulele; and I even bought a new musical toy after a few shots of tequila, some playtime with the thing, and a good deal offer. I always see a handful of people whom I only ever get to see at this show — some friends, and some business associates who I actually genuinely like as people and would hang out with outside of work. I had a great meal, and drinks and cigars around an outdoor fire pit, with with some good people at a posh spot on the hill overlooking the OC. I slept in a company-funded hotel room with a California King bed all to myself and a bathroom sink full of ice, beer, water and coffee.

Despite the grumbling I may do about the things I don’t like about NAMM, and despite the fact that I’m pretty much done buying large pieces of musical equipment, I’m always glad that I went.

Besides, what it’s really all about is gear porn:

For anyone who cares, I’m in Anaheim, CA for the next few days at the mullet festival known as the NAMM show, the big musical instruments and pro-audio show, representing my day job. I’ll probably have some shit to talk here when I get back, but in the meantime, you can follow my NAMM adventures via Twitter.

Apparently Axl Rose’s management people are pissed about this clip being online, but there’s nothing all that juicy or scandalous here — Brain’s just talking about playing and recording the drums. I’ve seen the footage from that session that EQTV did not run, and believe me, there are plenty of embarassing tales of prima-donna-tude, excessive expendatures, and generally over-the-top rock star bullshit that will never see the light of day. Whatever. Axl sucks, so does his record.

In the same Billboard, I spotted a piece about Japanese public broadcast network NHK indefinitely banning five singers from appearing on any of the network’s radio and television stations because they played golf with and performed at the birthday party of a known Japanese organized crime boss. Billboard Biz reports that the five singers’ management representatives have confirmed the performances and the banning. I guess it has something to do with the fact that it’s the Japanese public broadcasting network, which, if it’s anything like PBS/NPR in the US, can get away with pretending to operate with some level of morality, but seriously… Since when does morality have any place in the music and broadcast industries? VH1 reality series, MTV, Fox TV, major music industry, capitalism — if morality was a factor, none of those things would even exist…

I think it bears noting that Remix magazine will be closing its proverbial doors at the end of the year. The electronic- and urban-flavored production and performance magazine’s last issue will be January 2009, but the magazine’s parent company, Penton Publishing, will continue producing the popular Remix Hotel event series. I’m not sure how Penton thinks it can continue the Remix Hotel events without the magazine. The Remix print product provides the Hotel events with validity and relevance, and promotes the brand between events; the two properties are integral parts of the same entity. I predict the Remix Hotel won’t last past the third quarter of 2009. Remix was among the competition of EQ magazine, which is owned by the company I work for, and while I like EQ a lot, I am bummed to see Remix go. I’m not sure when the official announcement is going to be made, but I got a forwarded e-mail from the editor about the closure yesterday. This economy is a bitch…

Finally, with deference to the title of this post, here’s a link to one of my favorite podcasts: KCRW’s The Business.

NERD

It all started on Friday at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show at Moscone Center in downtown SF. It’s the nerdiest audio nerdfest I’ve ever been too, and it goes down in SF every other year (alternates between the Bay and NYC). I have to be there for work, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get certain degree of personal satisfaction out of it. I record bullshit at my modest home studio (Maxin’ & Relaxin’ Studios, Oakland CA), and play in a three-piece rock band, so audio geek shit is kinda interesting to me…at least, in a much as it relates to what I’m doing.

After running through all the dope boutique outboard studio gear, new microphones, and niche software plug-ins, I found myself short of interest. This took all of five hours. Not that there wasn’t some excitement afoot — DigiDesign’s ProTools 8 and Cakewalk’s Sonar 8 were released with much fanfare, but since I use neither in my studio, those demos were of cursory interest to me. Still, it’s not like I was there against my will.

I had plenty of opportunity to get my nerd on, and the Universal Audio both alone made the whole day a worthwhile venture. The top-notch pro-audio manufacturer was showcasing all kinds of crazy-awesome stuff: new UAD-2 cards, which I’m told they can’t make fast enough to keep up with demand (and I believe it, I have a UAD-1, and I freakin’ LOVE it); the 710 Twin-Finity tube and solid state preamp and DI; the LA610 MKII channel strip; and the Moog Multimode Filter plug-in for the UAD-1 card (I know where my next $200 in nerd-related expenditure is going).

I looked at — and at times tried (and invariably failed) to find the rational to invest in — a lot of other cool stuff too, like Eventide‘s digitalModFactor effects pedal, which, among other things, allows users to update it by downloading new software from the internet; Radial Engineering‘s Phazer Box and new Phazer Bank; Line 6‘s Pod Farm amp and effect modeling software; and handheld field recorders — the Marantz PMD60, and the Sony PCM series handheld devices, which are both pretty cool (Marantz wins; the Sony doesn’t record to MP3).

ART HOUSE MUSIC

Since I spent the day looking at all the shit people use to make music sound good, I figured I’d go to a show and watch some people actually play good music. After AES, I headed over to Less Respect $tudios, drank beer, watched Olberman and listened to G-Pek play with his new Serato set-up for a few hours while a crew gathered. Eventually we made our way to 111 Minna to catch the homies TopR and Grand Invincible. It was starting to rain, but that didn’t keep people from hitting the spot; it was already kinda jumping off when we got there at about 10:30, and it just got more and more poppin’ as the evening dragged on. SF’s own Melina Jones set it off, and she kinda killed it. Grand Invincible — DJ Eons and Sacred Hoop’s Luke Sick — laid down the smokey golden era jams and TopR is still pissed at the world, and really good at explaining why. Good rap show.

Bonus: Half of the art currently on the walls at 111 Minna — which is primarily an art gallery, for those of you who aren’t knowin’ — is by Henry Lewis, the painter and tattooer who has been working on my left arm sleeve. It’s been a while since I’ve seen his painting, and it’s better than ever. Check it out this month at 111 Minna.

NERD, PART 2: UNDERGROUND SOUND

Saturday afternoon, slightly hung over from the night before and tired as hell from having to get up at the crack of dawn and get on a day-job-related conference call, Colin and I hit Mr. Toad‘s in SF, where we met mastering engineer Ben Adrian to sit down and master the new Ovipositor record, Oakland Minor. The subterranean mastering suite is dope, a simple setup with a single mastering station, a small couch, muted moveable sound walls and carpet, and two huge, really great sounding Dunlavy SC-IV monitors.

I know the record isn’t ever going to sound as good as it did coming out of those Dunlavys, but it sounds pretty good in my living room, in my car, and coming out of the puny computer speakers in my office, too, so I know Ben did a good job. We’ll be working pretty hard to sound that good when we play live again in December at the Hemlock.

I downloaded and installed iTunes 8 for my PC and my MacBook, and it’s fine — it’s still got the same clean interface, still organizes and plays my music, and still syncs with my iPod, so it’s everything I really need it to be.

Most of the new and modified features are of little interest to me, but the Genius Sidebar option is a little freaky. In addition to making “smart” playlists of similar music, it sends users’ information to the iTunes store so it can more specifically target marketing efforts based on an individual’s listening habits. I’m not down with sharing my usage data with big companies. I know, plenty of big companies have plenty of information on me already, and more to the point, I have a Last FM account, which is public and essentially generates the same kind of data, so I shouldn’t really complain. But I’ve come to terms with how easy it is to access people’s personal information in the internet era; and my Last FM shit isn’t tied to a global marketing machine (yet — it is, after all, owned by Yahoo) and I control what info gets published to Last FM’s machine.

Ultimately, the payoff for trading my personal info for musical suggestions isn’t worth it. I’m always interested in the kinds of technology and services that offer music (or books or clothing) based on existing usage or previous purchasing data, but I’m rarely impressed by their results. Suggestions made by these kinds of interfaces are almost always totally not of interest to me (the science behind it just isn’t intuitive enough to handle the job; I’d rather use Pandora, anyway). And frankly I’m also starting to get really sick of being marketed to ALL THE TIME.

Which brings me to my only other real iTunes 8 gripe: those little iTunes Store direct-link arrow buttons next to the data in each of the fields of an iTunes playlist. Used to be a little option in the General Preferences panel to turn those off, and now the store has to be disabled entirely in the Parental Control Preferences panel for those links to go away (which, incidentally, also disables the Genius Sidebar). That sucks. Every single aspect of listening to music does not have to be about buying more music.

I’m happy to have the store enabled, and I use it sometimes, but those damn arrows have to go. I’m simply not interested in being reminded every time I look at iTunes that I can instantly buy more music from that artist, album or genre. Not to mention the skewed logic in having those links next to existing music, specifically in the Name and Album columns — I already own those songs and albums, why would I buy ‘em again?

Luckily, this issue has been raised in the iTunes forums. Not that I expect Apple to do anything about it — seriously though, how much trouble would it be to reintroduce that option to the General Preferences panel? — but you’ll see in that thread that there are work-arounds to get rid of the arrows in both Mac and PC formats, though they involve some code-monkeying. Which also kinda sucks, but it gets the job done.

This past Thursday was technically my first day back on the job after the birth of my daughter a couple weeks ago, but instead of going back to my office, I, along with my esteemed colleague Matt Harper of EQ magazine, attended the Bandwidth Conference, held this year at the University Club in SF. The conference’s motto is “Music – Technology – Cocktails” and it’s billed as a somewhat exclusive and friendly coming together of people at the apex of technology and music and everything that goes along with that intersection of hipster media — talent and A&R, media, revenue generation and general business, marketing, technological advances, etc.

Networking, brain-trusting…you get the picture.

The two-day conference started at noon on Thursday with a round table discussion open to all attendees, a chance for people to tell their “rock ‘n’ roll stories.” The discussion was moderated by David Katznelson, a music biz / A&R vet from the Birdman Recording Group, who told a good one about working with guitarist John Frusciante while in between stints with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (you know, while he was all wacked out on drugs). I was considering telling a story I’ve got about hanging out and drinking with Lemmy from Motorhead, but instead, I used the receipt of a text message as an excuse to take my leave of the conversation, head to the bar and begin fulfilling the third element of the conference motto.

The first official panel was called “Bellwethers,” moderated by Larry Weintraub, CEO of Fanscape. He interviewed four teenagers about how they acquire, listen to, and share music. It was all pretty unenlightening — kids get new music tips from sites like Pitchfork, iMeem and MySpace, as well as from their friends; some buy music (mostly from iTunes), a few still buy CDs, and some just don’t ever pay for it; and they share it via mix CD / playlist, peer-to-peer networks, via e-mail/FTP, or by word-of-mouth; so tell me something I don’t know — so I headed back to bar.

Thursday’s most interesting panel was called “Year Zero.” Featuring Susan Bonds, CEO, and Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer, of 42 Entertainment, the hour was all about their company’s campaign for the Nine In Nails album Year Zero, and their presentation detailed a pretty ingenious strategy of targeted story-telling that tied the band and their fans, through a series of clues, to a futuristic tale of near-apocalyptic Big Brother-type conspiracy. They called it an “alternate reality,” I call it a very smart, fiction-meets-reality promotional campaign. Either way, I was impressed by the whole thing, and I learned a lot from it.

Other panels I attended had titles like “Crystal Ball Panel” (telling the future of the digital music industry…as if), “Word Of Mouse” (all about social media marketing; moderated by Scott Perry of the New Music Tip Sheet), “Free, or Not To Free” (with IODA‘s Kevin Arnold — no, not that Kevin Arnold, this Kevin Arnold — and MOG‘s David Hyman; all about the delicate business and finance side of streaming and downloading music), and “360 Degrees of Speculation” (all about the fabled 360 Deal, with a couple of lawyers, a bigtime touring exec, and a guy from Pollstar). Some of ‘em were interesting, some informative, and some just killed time.

The “Conversation with Sub-Pop‘s Jonathan Poneman” was among the most enjoyable elements of the conference. Interviewed by Wired‘s Nancy Miller, Poneman is articulate and affable, intelligent, funny and humble; and Miller’s line of questioning was well-informed and conversational.

The panel titled “The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth” was all about the ugly realities of running an independent record label. Not too useful to me on a professional level (running a record label is not my business, nor do I want it to be), but it confirmed some things that I already knew about the music business in general, clued me into some cool, nonstandard business models (Ipecac), and reminded me that some of the indie label guys are still in it for the love of the music (Absolutely Kosher).

The best panel on Friday, and possibly the best of the whole event (and not just because I opted for sobriety on Friday), was titled “Master of Their Domain.” It was moderated by Jay Gilbert, formerly of Starbucks Entertainment and Universal Music, and featured panelists Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin Media (and former head of Yahoo Music); Sharkey Laguana, owner of Bandago (and former member of Creeper Lagoon); Lucy Kozak, Marketing Exec. at CAA; and Philip Antoniades, President of Nimbit. The essence of the conversation: Record labels — essentially middle-men between artists and fans — are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Advancement in internet and other technologies, as well as increased accessibility to those technologies, are enabling artists to stay directly connected to their fan bases and their business. Large endorsement deals, commercial licensing, fanbase development — these important brand-building paths are no longer gated by record labels, and freedom of access to those once closed channels is resulting in a growing middle class of musicians, with the fasted growing sector of the music business now being marketing, and business and artist management. Or so they say. And I believe ‘em.

Ultimately, it was an okay way to spend two days in the city under the guise of work.

I just bought my ticket for the Bandwidth Conference in San Francisco. It’s a two-day event dedicated to, as the event’s motto states, “Music. Technology. Cocktails.” — three things I’m pretty much immersed in all the time in both my personal and professional lives.

Definitely looking forward to this one.