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Welcome to the 2015 edition of the NAMM Oddities… finally.

I have obliterated all previous records of publishing the Oddities late… but it's still 2015 so I'm not so late as to have missed 2015 entirely. There is a reason.

This year I had some significant changes in my life (that I won't go into here) and was in a position that didn't tie me to any particular physical location. Since the vast majority of the work I do is for remote clients I decided that I would go rōnin and become a wandering audio engineer/web developer.

As you might imagine, it's taken me some time to adapt to my new lifestyle and acheive a balance between paying gigs and travel, and until I did, projects like the Oddities got put on the backburner. But now they're done and I hereby make a solemn pledge to never be this late again.

-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.