The folks who got to the Annaheim Convention Center for opening were treated to an appearance by the USC Marching band.

I won’t touch on EVERYTHING I saw nor duplicate some of the posts I have planned for tomorrow, so I’ll hit some of the more “special interest” things I saw today.

INuvo Instrumental Instruments ran across a company called Nuvo Instrumentals that builds simplified woodwind instruments from a plastic-like material. They are colourful, durable and … waterproof. Obviously they are aimed at kids and early music education, but they sound and act very closely to the real thing. Their focus is on clarinet and flute instruments and they’ve added more “junior” varieties to their product line. The clarinet uses a synthetic reed that sounds surprisingly like a traditional wooden reed.

My francophone cohort, Marc-Andre Seguin, was able to finally catch a demo of the Casio XW-DJ1. We both saw the XW-PD1 on Thursday and I reported it here. Here’s the video that he shot this afternoon:

The Moog booth is always a big draw – especially these days as retro synthesis is making a massive resurgance. Moog has a foot on both sides of the camp and has two Moog modular synths back-to-back in the middle of their booth. They had chain stantions around them all week, but today, there were two mad scientists at work on the walls of electronics and wires … either dueling or dueting:

In addition to all that, there were more artist sightings, stops in the Zildjian, Behringer, Arturia, Korg, Akai, Alesis, M-Audio, Blue, Audio-Technica, Laney, Shure and Ernie Ball booths.

More tomorrow when we wrap up Best Buy’s coverage of NAMM – brought to you in conjunction with Casio.

Dave Chick
I'm a film / TV composer based in Vancouver BC. Music has always been part of my life, but my first career was in the technology industry as a consultant and project manager. I helped to build and open the Experience Music Project – a rock and roll museum in Seattle. I hold a Bachelor of Music from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration degree from McMaster University. I also hold a diploma in Audio Engineering from the University of Washington and I’m a graduate of Hummie Mann’s acclaimed Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program.