Published
Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 15:25
- RA's Jordan Rothlein spent a few days in Frankfurt surveying the sights and sounds at Europe's annual music technology showcase.
The year in music tech kicks off each January in Anaheim, California, with the NAMM Show. A few months later, the industry descends on the far less tropical climes of Frankfurt for its European counterpart, MusikMesse. From the hodgepodge of tuba hawkers, karaoke conglomerates and guitar shredders, to the synth and production gear companies whose kit drives your favorite electronic productions, the gang's all here, and they've got a horde of new knobs for you to twiddle.
Where NAMM throws the whole of the music-manufacturing world into just a few cacophonous, football-field-sized halls, MusikMesse is more compartmentalized, with clusters of related firms set up in a handful of slightly smaller halls spread out over the Frankfurt Messe campus. So even though there's just as much to see, it doesn't overwhelm in quite the same way as its US equivalent. Most of the gear of interest to electronic producers was in a relatively intimate hall (as far as these things go) called "remix," and the name fit the general theme of the exhibitions surprisingly well: for the most part, what constituted "new" were reworks of existing models and formulas. Which isn't to say there weren't a few notable rollouts and show-stealers.
Korg, who for whatever reason had set up camp in the middle of the drum kit exhibition, scored the reveal of the show in their new Volca line. When word of the mini-synths leaked just before MusikMesse opened, they seemed too good to be true: where had these three pint-sized, old-school, and (mostly) analog techno machines been all our lives? Not surprisingly, there was quite a crowd surrounding the demo units. When I finally got my hands on them, I was thoroughly impressed with how they sounded, especially the punchy Volca Beats drum machine. All three feature MIDI in, but they also use the proprietary (and adorably vintage) sync system borrowed from Korg's MonoTribe analog ribbon synth to encourage teaming them up. The units' tiny footprints makes them enticing alternatives to the older, bulkier and pricier machines they're quite obviously indebted to, but that means they've had to fit a lot of functionality into a tiny space. I didn't find them extremely easy to program, but I had a pack of synth nerds crowding around me waiting for their turn—not exactly ideal conditions for sinking your teeth into some of the more intriguing synths in a minute. They're set to drop in July and cost about $150 each.
The Volca series spoke to a general trend in gear right now: hardware synths are in, and smaller is better. Waldorf recently stepped into the fray with a new monophonic unit called the Rocket. With just a single oscillator, it's a touch limited, but the sounds I was able to squeeze out of it were impressively warm and nuanced. And its all-analog filter sounds absolutely wonderful. I spent about ten minutes wailing on one, and I was able shape sounds it's hard to imagine came out of such a small box. It's available now for around $330, though the rep I spoke with told me they've been having a hard time keeping them in stock.
Novation's Bass Station II, their update of the early-'90s classic, sports a two-octave keyboard and a bevvy of knobs, but it's still plenty compact. At $500, it's a considerably cheaper (though slightly less elegant) alternative to Moog's Sub Phatty, which made a big splash at NAMM this year. Its all-analog architecture and 303-baiting "acid filter" should make it a highly alluring option when it hits stores this summer. For a company best known these days for its Ableton controller (the latest version of which was also vying for attention at the show), Novation stands to reassert itself in the synth game.
They didn't exactly fit with prevailing trends, but Nord had a big showing this year with two new synths. The Nord Lead 4 updates one of the more versatile synth brands on the market, and as ever, it's a pleasure to play. It's neither small nor analog, but you get the sense it could pull off what any of the more specific and vintage-inspired units are built for. Presets may not be very hip right now, but when paired with the synth's plentiful modulation options, they make for solid starting-points as you carve out original sounds. And the Nord Drum 2 stands to be a very different sort of drum synth from its sequencing-oriented peers, with a pad add-on encouraging users to actually beat out their own drum lines. Both are set to hit stores this June.
MusikMesse also proved beyond all reasonable doubt that modular synths are back. There were plenty of new Doepfer and Buchla units to get your hands on, and Germany's Synthesizer Magazin had a booth showing off a number of vintage units. Jomox, whose drum machines and synths have garnered the Berlin-based company a cult following, used the show as a chance to enter the fray. Given the company's nerd cache, it's a no-brainer. Their modular versions of the ModBase 09 and Mod.Brain 11—bass drum and pitched drum synths, respectively—bring CV and a Eurorack form-factor to a pair of their highly regarded tabletop units. They're inherently niche products, but the niche is obviously expanding.
Speaking of niches, a couple of high-end speaker manufacturers came to Musikmesse looking to expand theirs. Genelec introduced a new line of monitors called the M series. The company describes their application as "music creation," so these are ostensibly geared toward consumers more than their thoroughly pro 8000 series. Far more interesting, though, is the line's emphasis on sustainable manufacturing: enclosed in an environmentally friendly wood composite, fitted with high-efficiency amps and employing an energy-sipping standby mode, they confront head-on an aspect of hardware you rarely see mentioned on a press release. Adam Audio, whose monitors already give you quite a lot of bang for your buck, also rolled out a new line of less expensive speakers under the F name. Coming in two sizes and a subwoofer, Adam have focused solely on bringing their prized sound to a lower price-point. And as much as one can carry out a listening test amidst the din of a musical instrument convention, I thought they sounded just as good as their much-loved AX7s.