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Welcome to the 2024 edition of the NAMM Oddities.

It was once again one of those years again where I got back from NAMM and had to dive into a big job, alongside all of the other smaller audio and web jobs that are always happening. This year it was a major revamp for the EBow website. Back in the late 2000s, I built a custom content management system that drove the entire site. At that time there were only a couple of screen sizes to worry about and the iPhone was still just a faint tickle in Steve Jobs' nether regions. The new site got reorganized with a good deal of custom JavaScript for handling media files. If you've got an EBow; or are interested in them, I suggest you check out ebow.com because there is a substantial amount of instructional material there all available for free.

-Barry

A brief history of the NAMM Oddities…

After attending the Winter NAMM show for a number of years, I'd noticed that the exhibitors seem to fall into two categories: the established company showing its new (and sometimes vaporous) products and the independent start-up company looking to be noticed by distributors, music stores, potential investors and the music press.

It seemed that every year I spent more of my NAMM time checking out the various small companies that got stashed in some dark corner of the show. Many of the products from these companies were never seen by the average visitor, sometimes because they only appealed to a small market, or because most people simply couldn't figure out what the hell they were supposed to do.

That isn't to say that these products are ill-conceived or poorly executed. It's just that sometimes they're, well, a little odd. This situation made me think that there ought to be a place for people to come to marvel and wonder at all of these products. Thus, the NAMM Oddities were born.