I spent all day Friday at the show and that's all I needed this year.
Wow, being an arranger guy and store I was really disappointed but not surprised. There was one "surprise" which I will explain soon.
I started out at Yamaha and this year the arranger keyboards have been combined with acoustic piano and clavinova products and away from the combo products. Against a wall was a Tyros3 a few PSRs including the new PSRE423 and along side were two new YPG640s, one in the light wood color and one in a dark wood color. I played one and hoped to see an improvement in styles to be more like the PSR910 but no luck. There were a couple of new features and buttons labeled differently but in general I don't think there is much new here.
What did get my attention was being invited into a back room area and shown two new models to be probably officially released at the Frankfurt show in a couple of months.
What they were were 76 semi wheighted and 88 semi weighted versions of the popular NP30 light weight digital pianos. Both models run on batteries or AC power, have built in speakers, had the arranger features of the YPG635 keyboards, include a USB thumb drive connecting, weighed almost nothing, were black in color and are very narrow and easy to carry around. I noticed a pitchbend wheel but I don't remember if there was also a modulation wheel. I wanted to play them but both had low batteries and couldn't be tried without hearing distortion from the weak battery power. I don't know price but my guess is that they will be reasonably priced.
Next I headed over to Roland and all I can say is in a little space sat 1 Prelude, 1 GW8 and 1 E09 keyboard. That's it........
I went over to Korg next and honestly I couldn't find an arranger except for a PA588 in a corner at the end of the booth. I'm sure there must have been a PA2XPRO, PA800, PA500 and PA50SD somewhere but I didn't see them. I did see my friend Malcolm who heads the arranger division and asked if there was anything new.......even software upgrades and he answered "no". So I then walked by the space where Generalmusic and Ketron was for years and reflected on all the years there was so much to see and be excited about.........and got really sad!
I finished off my day at Casio's booth. In the past years, there were always a couple of employees sitting around not doing much at Casio. This year.....what a difference. I met at their front disk with my sales rep and immediately spotted my old friends from Yamaha Jim Presely and Mike Martin. The booth was closed off at this late hour in the afternoon because Casio had invited their dealers to a buffet with cold beers, soft drinks, Sushi, and a variety of hot dishes.......a great way to end the day with a cold beer. I was pleased to meet Richard Leiter from Keyboard Magazine who was also invited to attend. Richard had written the Casio Privia PX-330 review in the October issue. He was at Casio to see the new Celviano models Casio was showing for the first time and a new PX-830. The Celvianos are versions of the popular Privia PX130 and PX330 but housed in cabinets that look like acoustic pianos for the home. They range from $899.00 to $1399.00 with 3 models to choose from. All come with benches and have powerful speaker systems included in their cabinets. There was also a new PX-830 which has an elegant flat black or high gloss wooden cabinet but is more portable in size than the Celviano models.
I mentioned to my friends at Casio to have a look at the posts here at the Synthzone to get a sense of what your needs and desires for the future would be and I think they will be reading them in the days to come.
The show floor was jammed! but mostly with guests hunting for autographs and to listen to the performances at the different booths. Guitar companies like Fender, Taylor, Godin, Gibson and all the small custom shop companies were really busy with new models of guitars, amps and PA's being introduced.
Korg introduced a new hand held digital recorder with unlimited multi track recording. I guess the only limitation is how big the memory card is. Samson had some new USB microphones and wireless mics that were very cool.
The hit at this years shows has to be the big growth in the Ukulele market. Almost every guitar company now was showing Ukulele models and my favorite company, Kala Brand Ukulele's booth was jammed! A few years ago nobody was stopping to check out Ukuleles. The popularity amongst High School, College and adults in the Ukulele has been helped by increased internet UTube videos and support in learning through the internet and through artists such as Jake Johnson, etc.
So that's my this years NAMM show experience. I'm back at the store and I don't plan to go back on Sunday.
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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com
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