Wednesday, 21 March 2012

1st day of Musikmesse 2012

Hot on the heels of NAMM 2012 earlier in the year, the Frankfurt Musikmesse has now opened and will be running until the end of the week on 24th March. After taking a look at some of the press, there’s lots of decent coverage at the event at all the usual places. In particular, there are a few really interesting developments and announcements going on and I wanted to write about them so here we go.



More analogue goodness

First up is another analogue synth called Magma from boutique manufacturer Eowave. It’s a nice additive synth with four waveforms, mixer and LFO and a built in 16-step sequencer and is designed to deliver excellent bass sounds. The sequencer will help for making loops that you can tweak on the fly (think TB-303)

My main concern is that for the features and price (599 € excl. VAT) they are competing in the same market as the Moog Minitaur and Arturia Minibrute, so the Magma is going to have to weather some direct comparisons as a result. My personal favourite so far in this class is the Minibrute but I will have to listen to some more demos before I make up my mind.

More coverage and video at Sonic State:

Propellerhead

I’ve been a big fan of Propellerhead’s Rebirth, which was granted a new lease of life on iOS, and their latest announcement is a new jamming app called Figure, which is based on their Reason clone. Like Korg’s Kaossilator and similar other apps, this should be perfect for playing with on the bus / tube to work.

If that weren’t enough, the cheap $1 price for the app will surely tempt potential users into buying it. I suspect that the low barrier to entry will create a halo effect for users to go on and buy Reason or Reason Essentials as well. Good on Propellerhead for trying this out and I cannot wait until it hits Apple’s stores to have a play.

A few more details are over at Sonic State:

New Nord Electro keyboard

Any new offering from Clavia is a good thing and this one certainly looks amazing.


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