National Association of Music Merchants
Anaheim, Ca, 2005
by Shannon Kennedy
Going to NAMM
I went to the NAMM show this year on Friday, Saturday and Sunday up in
Anaheim. It was a great experience. Since the event was so big, in the three
days I was there I didn't see everything that there was to see.
The first day that I went, Friday, I had brought my soprano sax to try out
mouthpieces and the lady at the door made this huge deal about it and got in
my face. I wasn't too happy because I know it was because I looked younger
than all the old veteran musicians walking in. I ended up getting in and
walking around without a problem after one of my friends talked to her and
got an exhibitor to walk in with me.
Inside NAMM
To start there were a lot of lame imitation instruments that you could buy for
less than a hundred dollars - like a purple plastic clarinet or a sax that the
keys don't work on; pretty much just instruments that would make a nice
lamp or wall ornament. There were more of these stands than anything else
which I thought was lame.
There were also all the big name companies such as Selmer, Yamaha,
Keilworth, etc. Yamaha had its own building which was pretty cool and I
lusted over their wood flute which was there - I went and played it at least
once all three days that I was there. I did a lot of flute playing at the show. I
tried everything from Muramatsu, Yamaha, Pearl, Selmer, and Gemeinhardt
and most likely more that I can't remember right now. Pearl also had wood
flute headjoints that I wanted to try because I have been looking to get a
wood headjoint for my flute, but they didn't fit into their own flutes so I
didn't get a good feel for how they worked. I was pretty disappointed. I also
tried out some of the Gemeinhardt flutes. My first flute was a student
Gemeinhardt and I still believe that they have the best student flute - the
2SP. When I was at their stand they had a curved headjoint for the flute as
well for smaller beginners which I thought was cool and didn't remember them
having when I started up.
I tried out all the saxes on display at the Unison booth - well all their tenors
and sopranos. I still think that I like my black lacquer Unison soprano better
than any of the other sopranos and I still don't like the sound of curved
sopranos. It is just too honky for me. Trying out the tenors - I loved their
new Legend satin silver tenor. It had a nice dark, smooth sound when I
played it and I totally was ready to trade my custom Unison tenor for it. My
friend Greg Vail tried out both the gold lacquer and silver lacquer Legends and
he liked the gold lacquer better - just a difference in people and their horns -
it goes to show you that no two people are meant for the exact same setup!
There was some pretty trippy artsy stuff at the show. There was one stand
that had hand painted custom saxes that cost a million dollars to buy one
and probably sounded like crap because of the layer of paint over the lacquer
and were intended for display anyway. I can't really say how they sounded
though because the vendors wouldn't let anyone touch them.
I hung out with my friend Rheuben for some time at the show. I went with
him when he bought a new line of recorders he is going to sell and tried some
of them out. I'm not much of a recorder player but they did have a zebra
wood (I think it was) alto recorder that I had a little bit of fun with. I was
afraid to try the bass recorder because it was so big.
Before I went to NAMM, I had my heart set on this Beechler mouthpiece for
my soprano and I tried a few mouthpieces at the show and although I was
looking at the silver mouthpiece initially, I fell in love with the gold Beechler
mouthpiece. Judy, "the Beechler lady" was really sweet and I spent a lot of
time talking to her.
Some of the cool hang at the show: I got to hang out with Mike Smith, Frank
Sinatra Jr.'s alto sax player, Dan Higgins, and I saw Mindi Abair there. Plus I
got to hang out with my friend Greg and see him play everything and get his
output on different stuff compared to mine. Overall - we like totally different
sax stuff and similar flute stuff.
The NAMM show was a lot of fun - can't wait til next year!
