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Musikmesse 2012 – Clavia Nord Electro 4D

It is that time of year again where new products get announced. For us Europeans, we have the Musikmesse show held at Frankfurt. One such company who have been delighting us with their bright red products is Clavia. They launched the Nord Electro 10 years ago and have just announced the release of the new model called the Electro 4D.

This is a lightweight 7kg, 61-note keyboard that has that lovely semi-weighted waterfall key action also has excellent organ drawbars found on the very popular Nord C2D. They have updated the click modelling, added a brand new delay effect, given it a new rotary speaker simulation with a new drive feature and made it compatible with the fantastic Nord Sound Libraries collection

The Nord Electro 4D also supports Long Release which is suitable for legato playing and selectable String Resonance. To assist the handling of programs, there are four Program Banks and four Live Locations and the USB port now doubles as an USB-MIDI interface.

It should be shipping in May and cost is 1699 Euros – Can’t wait to hear it.

Musikmesse in Frankfurt is the biggest music equipment trade fair in Europe. This year you can attend the show from the 21st March until the 24th March. Winter Namm did not seem long ago, but we are now just about a week and a half away to Musikmesse – how time flys in the music world or should I say “the musik world”.

As usual,I will be reporting on items of interest, so if you haven’t already, please bookmark my site. I hope to share with you – useful information, pictures and videos of the latest products hopefully from the giants like, Yamaha, Korg and Roland and many more. Depending on what you are looking out for or wishing for, if you are like me, you probably find that after some shows you are a bit disappointed and on other shows you are so pleased that you want to get your hands on the new kit as soon as possible.You can’t please all the people all of the time but I always find something I like, so it is worthwhile. I am still hoping for a big update to the Korg Kronos and something for the Roland Fantom G. Did someone mention flying pigs?

Here is a fun You Tube Clip of some of those must-have items shown at this years great show at the NAMM 2012 event in Anaheim, California. This show always brings together industry professionals from around the world to see the latest musical products. It includes amongst other items :- The Dunlop Fuzz Face, Boss GT100 pedal board, Custome Guitars, Blue USB Microphone, Aphex HeadPod 4 high output headphone amplifier, Mojave MA-301 FET microphone, Apogee USB microphone, Arturia Minibrute, Moog Minitaur, Moog Taurus 3 pedalboard, Rhizome Groove Machine, Line 6 Stagescape M20d Mixer, Alesis Vortex Keytar and Casio XW-G1 Synth.

I tell you what, you have the new music products and I’ll have the “other” items – sounds good to me.

Here is something special I seemed to have missed from the NAMM 2012 show – the announcement of Access Virus Ti O/S 5 which is going to bring us some great new filters. This Synth just grows and grows and gets better all of the time. Have a look at this:-

Namm 2012 and it is amazing how many small items sound so huge. Korg have a couple of updated items with so much more but they have become very small – The Korg Kaossilator 2 which is a palm-size phrase synthesizer and the Korg Mini Kaoss Pad 2 a great little effects processor. I think this You Tube Clip says it all. Have a blast with these:-

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Namm 2012 and a great looking product to tempt you away from your existing Pad Controller – The KMI QuNeo 3D Multi-Touch Pad Controller which adds the power of touch recognition in other dimensions. It has 27 Pads, sliders and rotary sensors are pressure, velocity, and location sensitive. Even the 17 switches respond to how hard you press. It has a fantastic lumination scheme combining variably diffusive elastomers with 251 multi-color LEDs to give you immediate visual feedback that is responsive and very informative. It is a true experience of light, feel and sound.

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Namm 2012 and Nord has launched the brand new streamlined and portable hammer-action 88-note digital piano – The Nord Piano 2 HA 88. Those great guys at Sound on Sound have recorded some footage with Nord at Namm:-

With extensive additional feature sets that bring the hardware bang up to date with competitive rival plug-ins and a player’s piano feel and new controls making it all the more authentic, it covers all your bases.

Perhaps the most important addition is one of sympathetic strings, or Acoustic Resonance as it’s called here, which replicates the sounds of strings other than the ones you’re playing very gently reverberating in the background – it’s the piano ‘jangle’ that occurs when you hit an acoustic instrument’s keys hard with the sustain on, and its inclusion here can only make for a more authentic playing experience.
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Namm 2012 and Roland Cakewalk have announced the realease of SONAR X1d update to be available in February 2012. All registered SONAR X1 customers can download the free SONAR X1d update at Cakewalk.com.

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Namm 2012 and here is another great little product for Live Mixing where you can Mix on the Fly – Mackie DL1608 16-Channel Digital Live Sound Mixer with iPad Control. Mackie have also made this very funny video to show its potential:-

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Well I am sure you are no stranger to the Korg SV-1 piano. At Namm 2012 they have presented a limited edition reversing the black and white keys. Don’t forget if you need some extra sounds for your SV-1 at an extreamely reasonable price – just go here:- http://www.tonylongmusic.co.uk/korg-sv1-sound-pack/