Gear-mas comes but once a year. But with swirling doom and gloom, just how is the world of making musical instruments? We sent Nadia Says, along with Burak Yerebakan, Portrait XO, Franck Martin, and Mehdi Hassine to find out, at the mighty NAMM show in Anaheim — and the indie Buchla & Friends in LA, too. Here’s the show viewed through artists and makers alike, one portrait at a time.
Burak Yerebakan kicks this off with a whirlwind video of Buchla & Friends:
Nadia Says put together this report with CDM.
Photos:
Nadia Says (all NAMM videos and BnF pics), www.instagram.com/yourmomsberlin/, www.linkedin.com/in/nadiasays/
Mehdi Hassine (all NAMM pictures), www.instagram.com/mehdihassine/ [one more NAMM photo round-up coming, too!]
Franck Martin, www.peachymango.org/
Portrait XO, www.instagram.com/portraitxo/
Photos and video:
Burak Yerebakan, www.burakyerebakan.com
www.instagram.com/wakefulmusic/
Nadia Says
[Pictured above — with Franck Martin.]
What was up with NAMM this year, apart from being three days instead of four? The same as usual — an assault on the brain, eyes, and ears, a continuous cacophony of whatever brand plays the loudest.
But it’s great to bump into that one person you met at a concert five years ago, that ex-colleague, ex-student — that’s the magic of NAMM. You also talk with brand reps from the same industry from a very different walk of life — small towns, the Bible belt, who still radiate passion for their craft. Talk to at least two strangers if you go.
Highlights: the AlphaTheta / Pioneer space was pumping and as full as every year, as was the d&b Audiotechnik demo room. (Thank you, D&B, for the coffee!) Eternal Research had the cutest goth booth.
Eventide and its Music Mouse brought an air of nostalgia, but the rooms where I wanted to hang out the most were Roland and inMusic. inMusic was a place to be: hello, new MPC and Rane controller. Roland had great, colorful product displays, awesome hands-on stations with cool gear, and a spirit of reaching out and empowering musicians.
Here’s more, with insights from NAMM and Buchla & Friends.
Suzanne Ciani live performance
Benn Jordan
Musician, technologist, researcher
https://www.instagram.com/bennjordan/
I’m finding people who want to volunteer for my research: they look at a painting that’s supposedly haunted, then listen to a recording that’s supposedly haunted, and fill out a short survey.
Buchla & Friends is special because a lot of smaller boutique manufacturers are not able to showcase at NAMM. I was able to rent a room and booth to conduct research for a nonprofit.
TamiX
Musician, https://www.instagram.com/t_a_m_i_x/
“All the audience, they are experts about modular, so you have to concentrate about how you sound, how you are performing, because they know even better than you – LOL. So you have to do it right, and that gives you a lot of pressure, but you can turn the pressure into a positive incentive to do your best.”
Lu Coy
Musician, https://www.instagram.com/lu_isms/
I came to this booth just because I was drawn to the flyer, and it said, dial a number to hear an extinct sound. So I came to this phone, I dialed the number, it rang, and then the sound of an Antarctic blue whale, that can no longer be found on the planet, played to me. It was a very emotional experience; it was the only time I’ve been moved emotionally at any kind of music tech convention.
Mark “Blakkat” Bell
You know him from collabs with Doc Martin, DJ Sneak, Chaka Khan, Eric D. Clark, Felix da Housecat… https://www.instagram.com/markbell_sound/
The Teenage Engineering TX6 has definitely caught my eye — I mean, it’s the size of a packet of cigarettes. And it’s very reasonable as well… Yeah, I definitely want this.
Carolin Keilbach
Schneidersladen, ALEX4 Distribution https://www.instagram.com/carolinkeilbach/
I’m here for Doepfer — we have this new sequencer, mini analog sequencer, the Doepfer A-155-2. It’s a hands-on sequencer with 8 steps, and it’s really fun to use it.
Portrait XO
“I just had a play with Soma’s new instrument, Flux. And what’s incredible about it is the level of expressivity — the different kinds of textures and effects you can get, with their own special sound engine. And it was a lot easier to play than I expected!”
[Korg Berlin’s Phase 8:] “I love how simple and small it looks, with amazing textures and tones you can get out of it — how you can place objects onto it to hear the different tones, like metal screws and rocks.”
Photo: Franck Martin.
[Buchla & Friends:] “It’s great that we are currently in this warehouse, in the middle of downtown LA. There’s something very uplifting about this kind of event happening right now. I love smaller events like this, where it’s a bit cozier.”
Jed
Community organiser and musician
“I just got back from spending a month in Palestine back in December. I was over there doing some protective presence and human shield work with some various different groups, including Muslims, Christian Palestinians, and rabbis as well.
I do feel that I was much safer, actually, in Palestine than I was in Israel a lot of the time. The people of Palestine are amazing. It is horrible what is happening in Gaza, and hearing people’s stories and how they’re being treated, and witnessing the treatment with my own eyes – an absolute atrocity on this planet… We all need to be doing a little something more for it.
I’m here today because I absolutely love synthesizers and drum machines, and I find it to be my refuge, a way to help me find peace when I’m not working and running my soup kitchen here in downtown LA.”
Daniel Crook
Musician, https://www.instagram.com/crook_music/
https://www.instagram.com/kingboy.la/
I write as Kingboy [solo] and as Crook with Burak Yerebakan. Out of everything today, I’m a big fan of Teenage Engineering, a couple of the other independent and unreleased synthesizers, some still in beta testing, and then, obviously the Moog. The Moog is something I’m very comfortable with — it’s one of the first instruments that introduced me to synthesis when I was young.”
Trovarsi
Musician and educator
https://www.instagram.com/trovarsiofficial/
“Here we are at Novation — my highlight is the Launch Control XL, because it can control your entire setup, whether it’s hardware or modular or a DAW.”
“And here is my collaboration module with Weston Precision Audio called Trivium. It’s everything you need to create a fantastic modular voice. Just add a VCO, and you’re good to go. It has two envelopes, a filter, a VCA, and a ton of modulation opportunities.”
About B&F, this event is not only to show the gear, but for the community; it brings everyone together who are into making music, that wants to make music, get inspired, and just love to have fun with gear.
Skyler King, Prism Circuits
https://www.instagram.com/prismcircuits
“I run a company called Prism Circuits, and we’re here at Buchla & Friends 2026 showing our vintage Serge Systems.
If you’re not familiar with Serge, this is the vintage 1973 Paperface era that’s been out of production for over 50 years.
I’ve always been in love with it, so it was my task to bring it back to life and make it available again to people. It comes fully assembled, or you can build it as DIY as well. And we’re still using Paperface panels just exactly the way it was back in 1973, but just a little bit slightly more updated.
And Buchla & Friends, this is my favorite event of the year, mainly because I’m local, but also just to hang out. Like all these people are our friends, and just showing people the product — you can get your hands on it, touch it, play it, hear it. You can’t go wrong!”
Jake, Ryk Modular
https://www.instagram.com/ryk_modular
“We’re here today with all our modules. The newest one is Time Slice — we’re very proud of it after two years of work. We’re super excited to show it off, and I think people here are too!”
Patrick, Noise Engineering
https://www.instagram.com/noiseeng/
“We are here to show our new module that was just released a couple days ago, the Multi Repetitor. It’s something that has been highly anticipated, because it takes some of our older rhythm modules, like Zularic and Numeric Repetitor, and puts them into a new module with some extra functionality with Euclidean rhythms and accents, setting your own clock, and a lot of CV options as well. So, we’re really excited to be showing off the new Repetitor and a lot of the newer modules we’ve released over the past couple of years, with the Granulita Versio, and the Confundo Funkidos. Those have been very popular, and we’re just happy to give people a chance to get their hands on them and play them, and see how they can use them in their own patches.”
Ed. Check our coverage of Multi Repetitor:
Romain Jovion, Embodme
https://www.instagram.com/embodme/
“Erae is an organic instrument that you can play as a musician and as a controller, so it’s really endless. It’s a surface on which you can do everything. As an artist, I used to play using drum pattern stuff, and I was a bit frustrated by the fact it wasn’t expressive, like I wanted it to be. And then I discovered and joined Embodme, and I was like, wow, it’s so crazy we can play with pressure, you can use drumsticks, you can be a DJ, you can be everything you want!”
Justin Sullivan, Bitwig
https://www.instagram.com/bitwig/
“Bitwig Studio integrates really well with modular synthesizers, with outboard effects and instruments, but it’s software that you can use to create music totally within your computer. Oh, and we are very excited to present our first piece of hardware. It’s really, really cool, and we’ve gotten an excellent reception — the Connect 412. People really dig the modular integration.”
Christian Alsing, Elektron
https://www.instagram.com/weareelektron/
[on Buchla & Friends] “Everyone will probably say the same thing… it’s much better here to meet the community. I’m meeting a small audience that is the right audience, instead of being at NAMM, talking to a million people, and there is only one out of 100 who knows who Elektron is. Here, you can interact and get ideas, get feedback on the products, and every voice here is important to us.”
Stu, Rane DJ
https://www.instagram.com/ranedj
“This is the Rane System One, the world’s first fully standalone DJ unit with motorized platters — nobody has released anything like it before. It has a couple of features that have not been seen on a DJ controller before, such as Omnisource, which allows you to use any source of music on any one of the decks — anything from a hard drive to Serato to one of the streaming services right here. And you can use this as a Serato controller, but also fully standalone.”
Stu (again), Akai Pro
https://www.instagram.com/akai_pro
[MPC XL]: This is the most powerful, most robust flagship MPC, it has more CPU, more memory and more function, interactive, tactical knobs and buttons for, basically, anything you need to do is right at your fingertips.
Eventide and Music Mouse with Laurie Spiegel
https://www.instagram.com/eventideaudio
Eventide: “[Music Mouse] is designed to allow anybody with any amount of experience to create musical phrases. The new version of Music Mouse is actually going to come with a bunch of DX7-style presets created by Laurie herself, to give you some kind of classic FM synth times.”
Ed.: See our story on this development, though I only just found out about these presets — fab!
Ableton
https://www.instagram.com/ableton
“Ableton came to Buchla & Friends because we want to communicate more with the local communities, and we find that the synthesizer users and electronic producers, and everybody who comes to this kind of event, would benefit from understanding that we have a space in Pasadena, and also to let them know about how amazing our new product Move is for the last year it’s been out.”
Ollie Thomas, PMC Speakers
https://www.instagram.com/pmcspeakers
We are now 35 years old. We thought we would throw all of our new technologies and everything we’d learn in the last 35 years into a new range of products. So, everything is new — we’ve got very sophisticated catered DSPs in the three-way control apps that you can see over there. That amp drives all of the new models.
Kevin, HEDD Audio
https://www.instagram.com/heddaudio
“Klaus Heinz was responsible for the [1970s innovation] Air Motion Transformer and started Adam Audio in 1999. HEDD audio has taken the technology to a totally different level.”
Ed.: NAMM saw the introduction of a major new monitor, the TYPE 20 A-CORE — see what our friends at Gearspace had to say about it.
Paul McCabe, Roland Future Design Lab
https://www.instagram.com/rolandglobal/ https://articles.roland.com/a-look-inside-roland-future-design-lab/ (written by PK for Roland)
https://eu.surveymonkey.com/r/project_lydia
“If we build proofs of concept that aren’t finished products, to see public opinion, is there a risk that a competitor might seize on that idea and steal our thunder? The answer to that is yes, of course, that risk exists. But in our view, the benefit of seeking the voice of the artist and making decisions, fully reflecting the opinions of the people who are going to be using this technology, outweighs any risk from the competitors.”
Andrew Scheps, appearing at Neumann
Recording and mix engineer, producer
https://www.instagram.com/ascheps/
“I’ve been coming to NAMM since 1986. And so for me, at the present moment, it’s almost like a safe space; it’s about music and people I know, and it feels like I’m actually getting away for a few days.”
Eternal Research, Demon Box
https://www.instagram.com/eternalresearchmusic/
The Demon Box is named after a concept from research back in the 1600s. They would basically say that anything they didn’t really understand but could harness was like a demon. They didn’t really understand how electricity worked; they didn’t really understand why certain chemical processes reacted the way they did. And so it was sort of just like a demon of ignorance, right? So the Demon Box is about recognizing how little you know and how much you can bring out of everything that’s around you.
Nbor
Musician and co-organiser of Buchla & Friends
https://www.instagram.com/nborus/
I would say one of the great things at Buchla & Friends is that it’s really more community-focused. So you have everyone in one room. Most of the sound you hear when you’re walking through, it’s just the conversations that people are having. And then if they want to get into the sound, they put on the headphones, and then they can get into it there.
The other reason it’s great is that all your companies are really on an even level. No one has more than three tables. Most people have one table, whether they’re as big as Arturia or as small as an indepedent module maker; they’re all kind of showing it at the same level. So you get a little bit more equality and less hype going that way.
