The 2015 NAMM show was this weekend. For those of you who have never been. It’s the convention of music manufacturers, where companies introduce their newest instruments, software, improvements etc..
For musicians it’s the biggest toy store on earth.
I have been attending almost every year since I was a young adult in Germany. It is usually closed to the public, so you have to be invited, be registered by a company or sneak in, which gets harder every year. In the old days there was one day for the public, but not anymore. I guess too many people figured out how to get in anyways to turn the event into a zoo. And a Zoo it still is. 100’s of musician dressed as if they were ready to go on stage along with their groupies are crowding the isles. In between are business men trying to take orders and closing deals. There are lines of people cueing up to shake hands of well known musicians signing autographs at a booth of whatever company they are endorsing. All of a sudden a procession of body guards is clearing the way. It’s Stevie Wonder. I wave to him, but he doesn’t see me. :0)
The show is setup in several halls at the Anaheim convention center. One hall is mostly for software, one is mostly for recording equipment, one for guitars and basses and one is for drums and percussion. Unless you are a drummer you probably want to avoid this one. It is the nuttiest and loudest. Imagine 100 drummers banging on things to their own beat at the same time. Around the convention center there are now a lot of stages and bands perform to showcase their talents. Most of them are unknown. It’s not a paying gig. But there are also concerts sponsored by companies that feature world class musicians.
Nils and Reinhold Bogner
NAMM changed over the years, but mainly I think that my expectations changed.
Where I used to go just out of curiosity and to maybe catch a performance, I now go for business relations and to be up on the latest developments. I rate the show by the “WOW factor” and the “Accomplishment factor”.
The “WOW factor” scale rises when there are some truly exciting new items to see. I remember the day Melodyne was introduced, a software that let’s you manipulate audio recordings in radical new ways. 
We can now change a single note within a chord in an audio file without affecting the other notes around it, effectively fixing a bad chord or changing it from minor to major for instance. Before that, you could have paid me to hold a lecture why this is not possible, but those mad German scientists did it. Don’t ask me how, but audio editing was forever changed. – WOW!
The “accomplishment factor” comes into play when I can secure an endorsement (free gear) or a memo loan (free gear, which I eventually have to give back) from a manufacturer. Also (re)- establishing personal relationships with others from the industry.
On those scales, this years show did quite well. I am excited about the new upcoming Omnisphere 2 synth, which is one of my favorite tools. It got a major overhaul. Also Bogner has two new guitar amps, that I now need to have. The Goldfinger with one of the best clean tones I have ever heard and the Alma which is just soooo small and portable, while still sounding amazing.
I am starting my Christmas wish list early.
Then I had some face time with Tim Godwin from Taylor guitars. I have a Taylor acoustic guitar and love it. He agreed to let me use one of their guitars for the recording on my upcoming acoustic album. More tonal variety -great.
I also met several of my peers and talked shop and updated contact infos. I was happy to run into Ndugu Chancellor, who I had not seen in years.
Nils and Ndugu Chancellor at NAMM 2015