When I’m not writing columns and hanging out on the Internet, I actually make my living in music, usually by recording bands from this area. But that wasn’t always the case. In the 60s, I played guitar in several bands (mostly rhythm), did session work and I was a record producer. In the 60’s, 70s and late 80s, I designed a lot of stuff for musical instrument manufacturers, ranging from loudspeakers to guitars and amplifiers. Next month, I’m going back to that world - I’m going to the Los Angeles NAMM Show.

There are two shows that happen every year that are important to you as a musician -NAMM and the AES show. NAMM (National Association of Musical Merchants) is a trade show for musical instrument manufacturers and music dealers. That’s where they trot out the new guitars, basses, keyboards and amplifiers for the year. The other important show is the AES (Audio Engineering Society), which is a trade show for studio equipment manufacturers, engineers and producers.

These shows are important because manufacturers use these shows to test the waters to see if a product generates enough interest to warrant putting it into production and to introduce their new product lines. So the show serves as a testing ground as well as a preview of what’s going to be in the stores next year. My son Alex went to the AES show this year. Some very interesting things happened. Two separate trends are becoming very obvious - tubes are coming back, and digital is becoming more important - and cheaper.

More and more manufacturers in the recording industry are moving toward tube gear, as far as Equalizers, PreAmps and Compressors. It’s a way of warming up the slightly cold sound of low-end digital equipment in some of the cheaper studios.

Microphones always take center stage at AES, with new tube (and large diaphragm) mics from the US and China (and a flock of other countries). A lot of new ribbon mics were introduced there, bringing back a popular sound from the 50s and 60s.

The other big news is more digital consoles - ranging from a few thousand dollars all the way up to $1.2 million. Full automation, total recall and moving faders are gonna be there in abundance, but the larger studios in L.A., New York and Nashville will get first call on those goodies.

At the same time, people are pushing up the limits on digital recording equipment, from the CD standard of 44.1 kHz/16 bits to a new possible BluRay DVD standard of 96 kHz/24 bits. Even when you eventually go back down to the current standard for your final mix to CD, the sound will be noticeably improved over today’s sound.

There’s also more interest in recording albums in 5.1 surround sound complete with subwoofers, which should be a controversial topic for the next few years. It will be possible to put someone right into the middle of the band with instruments coming from the front, sides and even from behind the listener. Whether this is a good thing or not is still to be seen, but the technology is in place to do it.

So what does this mean for you - a musician in the Dallas Fort Worth area? Well, it means that many studios will soon have some exciting new options to make your band sound better than ever. You’ll be able to get an album cut that can rival some of the best things out there in terms of quality and technical excellence. Some of the new stuff isn’t cheap (Indian Trail has added about $10,000 worth of new stuff because of shows).

One other thing came out of these shows. A bunch of engineers sat around and noticed that a lot of studios are going out of business, because record companies are spending less on albums these days. You may have noticed how many “boxed sets” are now coming out by older artists. It’s a way for record companies to sell more albums, without spending a lot of money on promoting new artists.

Record companies are getting more and more interested in signing artists with finished albums. This means that the stakes have gone way up - you just can’t send in a rough demo anymore and hope to compete with finished, mastered albums that some groups are producing on their own. Any thing you send in to a record company nowadays better be good. Damn good.

Well, we’ll be off to NAMM in January 2009, and I’ll report on what’s new in February. (Harvey Gerst), ITR Studios, http://ITRstudio. com