Hello all,
I wanted to share just a little bit about my experience at Winter NAMM 2020. Just in case you don't know what NAMM is, it stands for National Association for Music Merchants. They hold a winter show (in Anaheim California) and a summer show (in Nashville Tennessee). Almost all the music companies and their owners and/or representatives and endorsing artists are there. If you are a music-lover, you want to plan to go to this event.
Booths: Just about any kind of instrument, accessory, software, speaker, in-ear monitors, etc was there. Here are just some of the booths in which I tested out equipment:
1. Westone in-ear monitors (live band demo)
2. EV speakers (live band demo)
3. Cordial Cables (Andrew Gouche demo)
4. Gruv Gear (Justin Raines demo)
5. MTD basses (met Michael Tobias)
6. F bass
7. Sadowski
8. Elixir strings (saw my girl Tiffbass)
9. Ibanez
10. Zildjian
11. Sabian
12. Peavey
13. Nord keyboards
14. Markbass
15. Aguilar
15. Exotic bass (met Ernest Tibbs)
16. Yamaha
and many many more (too many to name them all of course)
Since it was my first time, I wanted to spend most of the day at the show but there was plenty of other events. Disney was right across the street. I went to visit Hollywood and the beach in LA.
Thursday night, I went to a bass solo competition. Friday night I went to the Yamaha concert (featuring Sinbad, Avery Sunshine, Earth Wind & Fire, etc). Nathan East was on bass and Ted Campbell on drums.
I met many people in the music realm and got to play a lot of instruments and shake hands with a lot of company owners. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me, but the last thing I want to touch on is that you shouldn't think it's crazy expensive. Planning trips is one of my hobbies and just to give you and idea:
1. My round trip flight was $150 (BWI to LAX)
2. My hotel was $67 per night (I could have gotten it for way lower than that, but I wanted something nice
3. My rental car was $10 per day
Now, I'm not advocating procrastination, but because a lot of us are deterred by thinking if we didn't plan it way in advanced, it's going to be too expensive. I got to LA on 1/15. I made the decision that I was going to NAMM the first week in January. In two weeks, I planned the whole thing, built my website, and designed my business cards.
I really want more of the people in my circle to go. There are a FEW things that I know to do better next time (a couple of gotchas). If you're down, hit me up!!! I'm going to put a whole NAMM crew together. Let's go!!!