NAMM Report: Sunday and final wrap up

NAMM2019 wrapped u p with 114,000 people, 7000 products at over 2000 booths and a lot of tired but mostly happy people.

Patrick O’Heffernan.  Host, Music FridayLive!,

Sundays at NAMM start late  – or early, depending on your point of view.  As the clock struck midnight, Sunday concerts began on the hotel stages with  Gene Navarro, Goodnight Sunrise and Russ Parish.  After a break for sleep, things cranked up again at 8 am for the Best in Show Awards Breakfast, where products that caught the prize panel’s eye were honored in the categories Best Add-Ons, Gotta Stock it, Companies to Watch and Best in Show company.

The vendor booths fired up at 9 am with demonstrations led sonically by the Incredible Drum Corps Snare try-out, plus demos of new guitars, DJ controllers, mixers and microphones.  Outside, Earth Harp installation artist William Close was playing from a platform in front of ACCNorth with his instrument’s strings stretched up to the roof of the main Convention building. The ethereal sounds floated through the plazas and into the din of the technology booths, calming, rather than adding to the cacophony.

Inside the building and the adjacent hotels were lectures on The Future of Music, a Derek Small interview by CJ Vanston, and a history of The Defining Moments in the Synth Revolution by Don Lewis. And to make sure everyone was up and running after a very late night,  Rock and Roll Industries was handing out giant cups of Coffin Coffee to promote their magazine. The company music.iLuv which builds The Augmented Reality Social Musical Platform had people lining up to record and share music videos and get live feedback with the firm’s polyphonic pitch detection technology.

The day and the convention finished on a high note with an All-Industry Guitar Circle, an electric violin concert by Pauline Henric and Laurent Bernadac playing pop and rock songs on the 3Dvarius, world’s first 3D-printed electric violin,  and a very popular lecture on How to Monetize Your Music in Film and TV by Chandra Lynn in the Idea Center.  Across from the Media Center, a crowd gathered at the NAMM Museum stage for their last chance to hear the String Revolution. And finally,  Happy Hour kicked off at the Pioneer Stage in the Arena Plaza at 4 pm and kept people happy and talking until the official close at 5 pm.

Over the four days of NAMM, 115, 301 people came through the doors, visiting booths and stages of over 2000 exhibiting member companies representing 7000 brands.  The show was a landmark for Yamaha, which added a new booth for technology as well as pianos and demo events, and for Gibson, which opened an off-the-charts popular double sized room and stage celebrating its comeback from bankruptcy. Many new products were launched, especially in music technology in the ACC North Hall, built by the Convention Center to accommodate NAMM’s growth. New technologies were introduced, like the Dexibell S9 keyboard, and dozens of upgrades and tweaks to existing products.  Innovation was celebrated by NAMM’s TEC Awards, which recognized Peter Frampton with the Les Paul Innovation Awards. Other stars who attended NAMM were, Ed Sheeran, Stevie Wonder, Nita Strauss, Terri Nunn,  Chuckberry, Lisa Loeb,  Foreigner, Mindi Abair, Slash, and Gina Chavez. Now, NAMM moves to Nashville for Summer NAMM in July and returns to Anaheim next January.