NAMM 2018 Highlights

Every January, the entire musical instruments industry — manufacturers, dealers, artists, fans and the merely curious — convenes in Anaheim, California for the annual NAMM^® (National Association of Music Merchants) show. It’s quite an event. A wide assortment of music-related products and technologies are put on display, orders are placed for the coming year, autographs are gathered, and concerts and parties run long into the night.

If you weren’t able to make it to this year’s extravaganza, here are some of the hottest new offerings from Yamaha.

Clavinova CSP

The Clavinova CSP-150 and CSP-170 digital pianos are the world’s first musical instruments to use game-like elements that allow you to instantly play your favorite songs along with the original artists, without any fear of failure or boring practice. Simply use a smart tablet running the free Yamaha Smart Pianist app to analyze the chord structure of any song in your music library and produce a piano score. Then connect it to your CSP, which teaches you how to play the song via interactive Stream Lights — a ladder of four cascading LED lights above each key that illuminate in rhythmic sync with the song’s tempo. Learning’s never been so much fun!

FG TransAcoustic Guitars

Making their debut at NAMM were two FG TransAcoustic guitars — the FG-TA dreadnought and its concert-size counterpart, the FS-TA. These groundbreaking instruments combine the durability and affordability of the best-selling FG and FS series guitars with award-winning Yamaha TransAcoustic technology that utilizes a vibrating metal “actuator” hidden inside the guitar to create authentic reverb and chorus effects — all without the need for any external amplification or effects.

EAD10

Ideal for rehearsal, recording and performance, the EAD10 allows drummers to easily record and enhance their playing using a combination microphone/trigger sensor that mounts on the bass drum, along with a central “head” module. The microphone effectively captures and reproduces the natural, dynamic sound of an entire acoustic kit, and the module allows you to add effects such as flanging, phasing and a variety of different reverbs. The EAD10 even comes with a free Rec’n’Share iOS app that enables you to record your drums on top of your favorite music, while at the same time capturing a video of your performance that can be shared on YouTube™ and other social media platforms.

Genos

Genos is the most powerful Digital Workstation keyboard ever offered by Yamaha — the perfect songwriting and performance companion. With nearly 2 gigabytes of stunningly realistic sounds and accompaniment Styles, Genos is essentially an entire orchestra in a box! It offers a multitude of advanced features such as enhanced DSP effects, extensive real-time control and a large 9″ color touchscreen, along with Articulation Element Modeling (AEM) technology, which automatically chooses the correct articulation (that is, the way an instrument sounds depending on how it is played) according to your keyboard technique.

Venova

Also on display at NAMM was the Venova YVS-100, a compact and lightweight “casual wind instrument” that’s perfect for taking to the beach, on a camping trip, to a barbecue — virtually anywhere. Affordable, easy to learn and fun to play, Venova uses advanced technology to combine the sound of a saxophone with a simple fingering similar to recorders, offering extraordinary expressivity (including the ability to bend notes) and a full chromatic two octave range.

New Revstar Finishes

Guitarists love the look of their guitars, and Yamaha unveiled seven bold new colors for the Revstar line of solid-body electrics, including Black, Ice Blue, Vintage Japanese Denim, Maya Gold, Vintage White, Snake Eyes Green and Shop Black. All Revstar guitars have been designed with painstaking attention to detail and include hand-wound pickups and materials that perfectly match each instrument’s character.

Alexa Integration with MusicCast and Disklavier

The Yamaha exhibit area also featured ongoing demonstrations of the ultimate in smart home integration: Amazon Alexa with the Yamaha Disklavier ENSPIRE™ reproducing piano and MusicCast Multiroom Audio System. This combination of advanced technologies makes it possible for the piano to play beyond the four walls of a single room to any room in the home — or even outside — all controlled by spoken commands.

See you at next year’s NAMM — and remember, if you can’t make the show in person, you can always catch the highlights here!

Click here for 2019 NAMM highlights.

For more information about these and other great Yamaha music products, click here.