This year’s Winter NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) finished just over a week ago and there were so many great new/old products being launched that it’s taken us a while to catch up.
Of most interest to retro-futurists like ourselves, there’s been a whole series of reissues of classic synths following Korg’s reissue of the MS20 last year.
Korg remain at the forefront of this activity with a reissue of another classic, the Arp Odyssey, with help from the designer of the original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdxZlxYkUU
Tom Oberheim is bringing back his 1975 Two Voice as the Two Voice Pro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Qla20kAlI
and Dave Smith (inventor of the first programmable poly-synth, the Prophet 5, and also the co-inventor of MIDI) has been given back the Sequential name by Yamaha and has used the occasion to launch a follow-up to the Prophet 5, the Prophet 6:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m65rAfsjllw
Not to be out-done, Moog have done the unthinkable and relaunched three of their enormous modulars, the System 15, 35 and 55 – and here’s none other than Suzanne Ciani taking a ’55 for a run:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnC9pu65pa0
Hardware sequencers also seem to enjoying a renaissance, including two particularly extraordinary specimens: firstly the KOMA Elektronik Komplex Sequencer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-esuvA_W9U8
Don Buchla, pioneer of the more abstract “West Coast” approach to synth design is still going strong and this year introduced his own eye-boggling rotary sequencer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7IVvYWT69g
(in case you’re wondering, no we don’t actually get to hear it in that video but it certainly looks pretty)
One of the most exciting announcements was at the all-too-rarely explored “affordable” end of the spectrum in the form of three new calculator-style music machines, namely Teenage Engineering’s new Pocket Operator series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGCT6dAfrNk
Roger Linn (the other co-inventor of MIDI) has come up with a whole new way to interact with your instrument using a new interface, the, er, “LinnStrument” (we particularly like the very weedy sound Roger uses to demonstrate his new invention):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLh6G1aLuzo
