WINTER NAMM SHOW 2014

As of 6PM PST the Winter NAMM 2014 convention is over.  And the good news is... its only like 360 more days until NAMM 2015!

... Ok, maybe thats not the only good news.  There were quite a lot of great products brought to the tables this year.  I can't discuss every last one in detail but I can discuss a few that peaked my interest.

First, I have to mention Fender.  This year is a big birthday for the Stratocaster -- 60 YEARS MAN!  60 years of grooving, funking, skanking and shredding, from artists like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Dick Dale (you know the song from Pulp Fiction and those old Dominoes commercials...), The Edge, John Frusciante, David Gilmore, Buddy (Guy and Holly), two of the four Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Yngwie Malmstein, John Mayer, Pete Townshend, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ronnie Wood... you know what, if you're a guitar geek like me, you can go look up the list yourself.

Anyway, big birthday for The Strat so, as you can imagine, Fender put on a big show with a lot of vintage reissues, artist issue models and the like.  They also brought some of their vintage reissue amps to the show.  A bit pricey for an unemployed college student drowning in debt, but lovely all the same.

There were also updated versions of Avid's Sibelius 7 (v.7.5) and PreSonus' Studio One (v.2.6.2) shown at this year's NAMM.  I am not as familiar with either as I wish I was but from what I've read StudioOne  has added support for additional software add-ons and Sibelius introduces new display and navigation functions, improved distribution and integration with iPad applications as well as improved rhythmic and expressive capability.  Again, I don't know either of these programs too well so I am positive that I am not doing them justice (hence, not choosing these as highlights).

Now... onward:

Universal Audio brought their usual rack-o-fun this year while pedaling the new Apollo Twin DUO now with Thunderbolt connectivity to speed up the ridiculously good digital conversion of anything you crank through their two beautifully-sounding preamps.  The DUO also sports built-in processing and an astounding 118 dB dynamic range.

Hello, my name is Jordan and this is my blog.  I am a student at The Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, IL.  I am currently studying Audio Production and Engineering, and will hopefully find work as a recording and mixing engineer.  I am currently exploring career paths in music recording, sound for film, and I have recently become interested in sound and music in video games.

In this blog I will be posting about items that peak my interest.  Mainly, I will focus on topics dealing with music and sound, audio technology, software, instruments, recording equipments and hardware, but I will also post about recording, mixing, mastering and possibly distribution.  In addition to these topics, I will post about my other media interests such as film, television, video games and possibly these ancient relics of the past called "books".  I may even throw in an article about the name of my blog (see hint above).

The purpose of this blog is to share information on the aforementioned topics and to open a dialogue on each in order to discuss ideas, concepts and share cool stuff with like-minded people.  I hope that you enjoy reading these posts and I encourage you to be engaging with any and all discussions on this blog.  But if you Troll me I will find you and  please be considerate of other people's ideas and points of view.