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Article from Electronics & Music Maker, August 1986 |
Fairs are great for demonstrating technology, but do they do enough to further the cause of music?
To most intents and purposes, America's version of the music trade fair is no different from any other. Long gangways crowded with besuited dealers and their wives/girlfriends/daughters, a general cacophony of sound as the musicians inside soundproof booths do battle with those outside, and an abysmally low standard of in-show catering.
But the NAMM show, which takes place twice a year and which had its summer Expo in Chicago's McCormick Place in June, is subtly different from both the Frankfurt Musikmesse and our own British Music Fair. For a start, there's a bigger emphasis on dealer education (the public get minimal access to NAMM), with seminars on how modern music technology works and, more importantly, how it could work for the dealers by bringing in new custom.
This year's Frankfurt show had plenty of that, but unique to NAMM is an entirely different kind of seminar — the kind aimed at increasing sales, and nothing more. Here the emphasis is very much on getting cardboard boxes out the door and money out of punters' pockets: in the two such lectures I attended, music wasn't mentioned once.
As it happens, music didn't appear to be too high on people's list of priorities in the main body of the exhibition, either. The product demonstrations were often just that — tightly-scheduled demos of products, not musical instruments. The way some of the demonstrators and sales people were carrying on, they might as well have been selling washing machines.
Honourable exceptions to this rule included many of the software manufacturers, and two enterprising drummers — Alex Acuna and John Robinson — on the Yamaha stand. That duo succeeded in showing the huge potential of MIDI percussion control (using the new electronic drum system and a pair of TX816 racks, no less) whilst driving out the most compelling series of musical compositions, all of them original and hastily prepared, this writer has ever heard at a trade fair. As people emerged from the demo, you could hear them mutter not 'that piece of gear was amazing', but 'that was good music'. The appreciation of the music came first, and it made the appreciation of the technology all the greater.
Fortunately, last year's British Music Fair had a much higher level of instrument demonstration, with plenty of concerts, impromptu jam sessions, and punter participation. The result was a vastly increased awareness of what modern musical equipment is capable of doing, not just in terms of cardboard boxes sold, but for the work today's musicians are engaged in.
There's no reason to believe this year's BMF will disappoint in this respect. In fact, with the number of 'name' musicians likely to appear, it should be better than what went on 12 months ago.
What still worries me slightly about all such musical instrument fairs — BMF included — is the extent to which they further the cause of the technological snobs. You hear them at every major event, mouthing off about New Product X beating the pants off all the competition, and how no self-respecting musician/engineer/producer will now be able to make music without New Product Y.
If you come across New Products X or Y at the BMF, ask someone on the stand how and why they are so instantly desirable. Then, when you've played around with the instruments for yourself, collected all the leaflets, and survived the train journey back home, ask yourself if those machines could be beneficial to your music, or whether some lesser, unsung device could be of more use.
I believe it was Roland who, some time ago, first drew attention to the fact that a new FX pedal could make just as big a difference to somebody's music as a new synthesiser.
And in this very issue, Vince Clarke, as seasoned an electronic music campaigner as any, records his continued amazement at the degree to which musicians sending him demos seem to be 'blinded by science'. They all think their music will improve immeasurably once the deal is struck and the Fairlight is in the living-room, but they couldn't be more wrong.
Money spent on new gear doesn't translate into a proportional increase in talent, just as the number of units sold by a dealer doesn't indicate the service they're providing, long-term, to the musical community as a whole.
Enjoy the show. I know I will.
Editorial by Dan Goldstein
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