Special Report: Musikmesse 2007
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Inspiring Artists

Musikmesse is to musicians what a toy store is to kids. You learn about tons of new creative tools and have a chance to play around with most of the shiny objects right then and there. But what makes the show really special is seeing how other people get creative with this technology. Some of the booth demonstrations are truly spectacular. Here are my three favorite endorsers for this year.

David “Fingerrs” Haynes

There are drummers, there are drum machines, there are human beat boxes—and then there's David Haynes. Although David is a "real" drummer too, he's made a name for himself by taking live drum-machine playing to a new level. Hammering away at a battered (no pun intended) Alesis HR-16, he demoed Toontrack's EZdrummer set of products. Check out this 3MB MP4 movie:

To see more of David Haynes's groovebox wizardry, visit his YouTube page.

Don Lewis

Most of us associate vocoders with Kraftwerk'ish electronica or hip hop tracks. Don Lewis, however, uses the Roland VP-550 keyboard vocoder for playing gospel songs. Using a two-microphone setup—one for singing into the VP-550, and one for his unprocessed voice—he's both soloist and backing choir at the same time, and his performances are an amazing demonstration of two things: the musical expressivity of a technical thing like the Roland keyboard and the beauty of the human voice.

The joy of playing music: Don Lewis performing at the Roland booth.

Have a look at this YouTube video of Don performing the gospel classic "Swing Low" on the VP-550.

Rico Loop

Rico Loop is a wizard with the Roland RC-50 Loop Station. The self-proclaimed "one-man jam" plays bass, guitar, melodica, harp, glass bottle, and human beat-box, and he can sing, too.

Stacking all these instruments into complex arrangements, he records backing loops into the RC-50, improvises over these loops, and even creates a cappella arrangements with himself.

Rico Loop (right) and Gundy Keller jamming away. Away. Away.

To really appreciate his art, you have to see Rico live. His schedule is listed on his website. But the second-best option is to view his YouTube videos. (Three artists, three YouTube sites. Must be a pattern here....)

Coda

Messe, yet again, was an overwhelming, inspiring, exhausting, and ultimately enjoyable experience. I'm already looking forward to 2008. Until then, there's ample time to discuss which products, techniques, or artists caught your interest. Comments are open, so please feel free to join in the discussion! You can find more photos and personal commentary in my Musikmesse 2007 set on Flickr.

Jochen Wolters is a telco engineer who enjoys sharing his passion for technology by writing about it. His favorite topics include the Apple Macintosh, user interface design, and just about any kind of creative software.

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