Musikmesse anyone?

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

If anyone here, of course you must know the Messe -- it is a crazy place. although it seemed much smaller than the last time I was there, t was still quite overwhelming.

It always makes me wonder how the synth blogs seem to get such a good overview of cool new gear on the first day.

I guess the only way to get an overview is to ask everyone and their mother if they noticed anything unusual..;)

The first thing is: the new Korg gear is a bit expensive (they are looking at a suggested retail price of 240 EUR for the Monotribe, I suppose that means 199 EUR street, and I think about the same for the wave drum), but it's really awesome. The wavedrum is plastic, but the piezo is a wonderful addition (although the cable is too short -- you can't put it on your foot when the drum is on the table), but heavy enough that it feels plenty real when you bang it in a Messe soundscape.

the Monotribe is really cool. Metal enclosure, a bit big, but sturdy, nice knobs, buttons and switches and cool sound. I can see how people liken it to the 303.

MFB have some good stuff, but a bit flimsy, compared to the monotribe. if you can compare it at all. It's very different, and very interesting. 

Schneiders Büro (the superbooth) had some really nice looking boutique hardware for every purpose you can imagine. The nicest stuff I saw was from a company that made sync hardware. Sample-accurate midi and DIN sync -- in 2011. Incredible. 
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I asked around for recommendations and the hardware that received the most "look there"'s was Schmidt's 8-voice analog synth:

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More news: Waldorf is coming out with a new vocoder called "Lector" and the epiano "Zarenbourg" is finally shipping (and sounds/feels really nice!)
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Kemper digital has moved to hall 4 ( just a few aisles down from Marshall) to promote their "profiling" amp, which is a sophisto-modeling amp, as far as I understand it.

Maybe this all isn't so roving -- but I had a great time at the Messe, met some very awesome people and learned about some new, great products. Looking forward to get my hands on a few of those in the coming days....


Kai

PS: Howard Scarr just posted this to facebook: 
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2011/04/07/messe11-mother-of-god-its-the-schmidt-poly/







On 07.04.2011, at 13:40, ibi sum wrote:

> Have a look at the new MFB stuff, the Indamixx booth, the Korg booth,
> and of course the modular synth zone .. I'd love to get a roving
> report from you on all of that stuff!