Straight from Chicago, by computer mail, Freff bungs in his report about 1984's major American instrument show. Next month the pictures!

Well, there's another NAMM come and gone; and me, I'm sitting here lightheaded, footsore, and desperately in need of certain new pieces of gear I didn't even know existed a few days ago. Typical, that. The first two are artifacts of the show's physical size and setting. In covering NAMM you walk for miles and miles and miles through the labyrinth of exhibitors that spring up to fill Chicago's McCormick Place, and all the while you don't eat very much because (A) the food there is ludicrously expensive, and (B) you're too busy looking for neat stuff, and lastly (C) your mouth is wide open from the neat stuff you've found, anyway, so the food would just sort of dribble out. That's the reason for the desperate "new gear" hunger – only the most cynical of musicians could have walked those halls unmoved by the glories stacked on all sides.

Oh, there was cheese, no doubt about it. Like the extremely cheap imported guitar that was a weak imitation of the Roland GR-707, minus all electronics other than those normally found in cheap electric guitars. And the one or two "unique and innovative" synthesizers proudly displayed by their inventors, middle-aged engineering types who had locked themselves in their labs back in 1967 and not noticed anything that had happened in the field since. And the fellow selling fur coats (not to mention fur clip-on ties)... but by and large the show was characterised by the kind of technological razzle-dazzle that saw Roland releasing THIRTY new products.

To make it all a little easier to follow. I'll break the show down into some basic categories. What follows is more than just what was there. It's also where things appear to be going.

ELECTRONIC KEYBOARDS

The biggest buzzes at the show were, in escalating price order, the Oberheim Xpander, the Emulator II, and the Kurzweil 250.

The Xpander bids fair to be the ultimate add-on to anybody's existing system, since it can be controlled by both MIDI and CV/Gate signals, is multi-timbral, and sounds great. The comparison is not totally exact, but you could conveniently imagine the Xpander to be six ARP 2600s all linked together and made convenient by the wonders of microprocessors – it's that general idea of trying to make everything in the system totally patchable. And when everything in the system consists of 90 VCAs, 31 LFOs, 30 EGs, 12 VCOs, 6 15-mode VCFs, 18 tracking generators, 24 ramp generators, 3 zones, 162 modulation sources, 282 modulation destinations, and 120 modulation busses... well, it's just heaven for the synth-programming fanatic, isn't it? (It doesn't have its own keyboard yet, though Oberheim say a remote will be available before the end of the year. In the meantime you can just control it with the synth you already have.) See p80 for OTT review.

The Emulator II from E-Mu Systems, is a a killer which won't walk the streets until later this fall; the first steady shipment of production units is due out in September. It does what the old Emulator did – sample sounds and allow you to play them back. But while it will sell for about the same as the old unit did, the E-II is about eight times the instrument, with seventeen seconds of sound storage (a bit up from two, I'd say) that you can spread around the keyboard however you want, as well as improved bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio, MIDI, filters and LFOs and such for sound modification, and elaborate multi-track sequencer, and even SMPTE time code. Price will largely depend on disk drive and memory options.

The folks at Kurzweil continued to wow the crowds with their Kurzweil 250 demo... and this time, I'm pleased to say, they were production models doing the wowing, not prototypes connected to extensive outside computer gear. Of course, running them through $5000 worth of Lexicon digital reverb didn't hurt, but the credit really belongs to the machine. It's got a huge keyboard with wonderful responsiveness, and it just plain sounds great. As well it should, for $10,750. And with its voice RAM packs selling for $850. And with sampling as an $2500 OPTION not a standard. A great machine, but not for the feint of heart, wallet, or bicep – if you buy a Kurzweil 250, buy yourself a roadie at the same time. Or wait (like me) for the data technologies involved to come down in price. Which they will.

It was easy to spot the Big New Trend Of The Show, at least as far as synths went, and that's the separating of sound source and sound controller. Roland, Korg and Yamaha were all showing remote keyboards (good for the flash guitarist lurking inside every keyboardist) and the first two also had stand-alone synth modules. Yamaha didn't, but it won't be long before the "DX-in-a-box" pops up; they admitted as much, but wouldn't say when.

And then, of course, there was...

THE FABULOUS MIDI

MIDI. MIDI everything. Got a Rhodes or Yamaha/Kawai/whatever electric grand? You can buy a MIDI interface for it from the Forte Company, with or without velocity sensitivity, so that you can play your MIDI-equipped gear from your piano. Got a flute or sax or other (monophonic) source? There's a Canadian company making a box called the Pitchrider that will extract pitch and duration information from what you play and drive... well, you know. There was even a booth where a fellow was showing a prototype VOICE-to-MIDI converter, for the singer who wants to get in the act.

Wiring for stageshows is going to get very weird, you know?

Virtually every synth in sight had MIDI or was just about to. Ditto every electronic drum kit, and even Yamaha's new digital drum machine. It's creating new companies overnight, in both the hardware and software fields. Prize for the hardware side unquestionably belongs to J. L. Cooper Electronics, which pre-existed MIDI but has exploded since, with a line of 12 different MIDI-specific products for virtually every interface need. Software kudos go to Kevin Laubach and Jim Miller for what they're doing under license to Yamaha. Kevin created an Apple program called DX-PRO that makes editing and organizing sounds on the DX-7 a breeze. (Forget $90 RAM packs – this program comes with nearly 800 programs stored on a single floppy disc.) And Jim Miller's Personal Composer for the IBM PC and any MIDI instrument – but of course especially the DX7 – is nothing more nor less than a music-processor, capable of taking what you play and converting it to musical notation, or taking the music notation you write and driving MIDI-instruments with that (including cues for program changes – and such)... and it has a 32-track MIDI recorder/mixer built-in. This is the Rolls-Royce of MIDI software. It'll cost you $1200 plus whatever it takes to snag a 256K PC, and it will be out in the fall (it could go out now, but Yamaha has decided to wait until it is fully converted to machine language, thus upgrading its speed and freeing more computer memory for making music).

ELECTRONIC DRUMS

Remember the tough time Simmons had selling its first units? Ancient history. They're still in the lead, with a new programming pad and a new black cymbal-shaped electronic cymbal (the old white plastic one looked neat, but broke too often under the battery of demon drummers). But following right behind are a horde of companies from Europe, Japan, and the States. Tama's new set looks particularly promising. For the rest, go by your ears.

Something a bit different, and REALLY wonderful, are the E-Drums from E-Mu Systems. Each one is a little box with CV ins and out, pitch and amplitude sensitivity, volume and decay controls, and room for a RAM pack containing either one or two digitally sampled sounds. Dig that; anything that can be sampled can be played, with both pitch and volume dynamics, whether the original source had them or not. Drummers interested in orchestral effects could add a couple of these to their kit very easily. Drummers interested in going hog wild could throw out their whole kit and just use E-Drums. They're that versatile.

SOUND SUPPLIERS

In the past you created your own sounds or begged, borrowed and stole what you could. Now there are several companies coming up to supply existing instruments with a wider arrangement of sounds. The two most visible at the show were Digidrums and Musicdata, both California-based.

Digidrums opened for business at the January NAMM show, with several alternate sound sets for the Drumulator. They've rather expanded since then. Now they offer 15 sets for the Drumulator, and 35 individual sounds for the Sequential Circuits Drumtraks. Coming soon, they say, are alternate sounds for the Oberheim and Linn drum machines.

Musicdata is the newer company, but has a wider scope. Their first catalogue offers over thirty different volumes of synth presets and drum machine patterns, for just about every major machine on the market. The credentials of the suppliers are nothing to be ashamed of, either – for prices ranging from $25 to $40 you can have sounds and rhythms from the likes of Jeff Baxter, Ray Manzarek, Carmine Appice, Danny Siewall, Clark Spangler and Craig Anderton.

GUITARS AND AMPS

There's not a lot new that can be done with guitars, so the question becomes how inexpensive can it get and still let the company stay in business? Fender was doing great business with its Squier Strats, the Ibanez Roadstar series was excellent... all very good guitars for very low prices. But I, for one, am tired of the heavy metal flash that is sweeping the rest of the field. I am bored with guitars that have as many vicious projections as a Swiss Army knife. I am sick of colours like Bloodspatter, Army Fatiques and Fluorescent Pink.

So with great pleasure I now mention MY favourites at the show, all of them champions of good taste, playability, beautiful appearance and GREAT sound – virtually everything at the G&L booth (can Leo Fender do anything wrong?); the Warwick basses from West Germany, Steinberger variations in rosewood and black maple with gorgeous gold fittings: and the acoustics at the Taylor booth.

In amps there were three worth real mention, from Dean Markley, Seymour Duncan, and Gallien-Krueger. The Dean Markley 80DR is a solid-state/tube hybrid, and gives you both sounds as you require. The Seymour Duncan Convertible is just that – it comes with space for different plug-in modules, depending on what sound you want at any given moment (now if only the whole thing was designed with a microprocessor, so you could switch electronically at a button's press!)... and the Gallien-Krueger "audition" series, which were probably the best of a new kind of amp with built-in effects, something that we're seeing as a response, I think, to the Rockman-surge of the last two years.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Well, feet are sore and space is short, so here's the best of the rest.

MOST USEFUL PRODUCT: the SMPL System, from Synchronous Technologies. A SMPTE time code generator/reader, multi-track tape machine controller with multiple autolocate points and computer-controlled punch-in/punch-outs for UNDER $1000? Whoa! And it works, too. If you've got even home four-track capacity, and you make your own tapes – for your band, for record demos, for whatever – this is the kind of thing that you'll use for five minutes and wonder how you ever lived without it.

BEST NEW RACK MOUNTED GEAR: definitely it's from the land of digital reverbs, with the head-to-head competition between Lexicon's PCM 60 and MXR's 01a. Both sound really good and run in the $1600 (American price) retail range, but I think I like the MXR a bit more for its greater range of effects, programmability, and the fact that it will have a remote control unit (list $200) available in about two months.

BEST GIMMICK: you're an electronic drummer? Your best friend is? Then get yourself (or him/her) the Rapisarda Star ELECTRONIC DRUMSTICK... a perfectly good, reasonable, useable, durable drumstick that happens to have a transparent plastic tip and a built-in red LED. Turn the screws at the end of the drumsticks and zap, you've got bright red light trails printing their way onto everyone in the audience's retinas. Fun stuff, from Rapisarda Star, at 2650 Myrtle Avenue, (Contact Details). Definitely be-the-first-one-on-your-block stuff.

...and there was more. Of course. There's ALWAYS more to NAMM than your feet can stand up to. Cheers!