NEW YEAR NEW GEAR

The annual NAMM show has always been a very big deal for us here at MusicTech. Not only does the show allow us to get out of our office and see the industry face-to-face, but we also have the chance to get hands-on with a mountain of new music technology products, get some sneak previews of the next twelve months of releases and also see how the latest technological innovations are being applied to the next generation of music-making gear. In this feature we’ve compiled just some of the hundreds of new items that caught our eye at the show; these are the new products that made us go weak at the knees and look like they’re going to signifcantly change the way we make music—or just be a hell of a lot of fun to make some noise with!

In terms of overall trends, there were quite a few patterns we noticed this year. Even more products contained integrated machine learning; smart plug-ins that auto-detect variations in frequency such as Oeksound’s Soothe2 are increasingly commonplace, while the sound personalisation abilities of Sonarworks’ SoundID app actively learns how to sculpt your music listening experience. A.I. is the new norm folks, and it’s only going to increase in prominence (and intelligence) over the next decade.

There’s also greater choice of those all-in-one devices that don’t need any kind of computer to be maximised. The Akai MPC One contains everything it needs quite literally in-the-physical-box, while Sequential’s Pro 3 synth not only looks and sounds superb, but contains an on-board sequencer and MIDI/CV out to control additional hardware. Hardware control functionality is shared by Arturia’s Keystep Pro and Novation’s Launchpad Pro Mk3, high-spec performance-aiding devices that make controlling your rig a doddle. On the software front, Universal Audio’s Luna recording system gives Apollo and Arrow users an incredible amount of flexibility, while Waves OVox sounded to us like the ultimate vocal manipulation suite. Let’s take a detailed look…

SYNTHS

1 KORG WAVESTATE

Korg was first out of the blocks with its big NAMM news. The Wavestate is a 37-key, 64-voice, four-layer digital synth that is intended as a contemporary succesor to the classic Wavestation from 1990, with which it shares the old-school joystick. Wavestate utilises a new version of Wave Sequencing called Wave Sequencing 2.0, allowing each paramater to have