One year later, same city, different location. Music ALIVE 2010 hosted at the Hilton in Rotterdam by Media Satellite.
The location was very nice and well set up. At the entrance everyone got an Ableton goodie bag, with the obligatory promo pamflets, keychords, other goodies, but also a Dance Tunes voucher to download two tracks for free. Which is always nice of course!
Next to some manufacturers who attended last year as well, Rode, Ikon, Ableton and IK Multimedia, there were some new media present. Soundcloud for example. Soundcloud is an upcoming platform for people to share their music and discuss their music in a simple and easy manner.
This whole day was a day of meeting people that shared the same interests, attending workshops, meeting artists and experiencing new products. The event started at 12 o’clock on a very snowy sunday, which was a bit scary, but that didn’t keep the visitors away. With 450 visitors the event was close to a full house. Coen Molenaar and band kicked off the event with a fantastice performance which gave Music ALIVE a banging start!
AKAI
They were present with the APC40 giving some cool demos. However they didn’t bring the APC20 which was slightly disappointing as the little brother of the APC40 was recently introduced at the Winter NAMM.
LEMUR
They were present with their high-end touch screen controllers. No product news, even when we kept on asking about it. Well just a little news was that the Lemur will get integration with Ableton Live. This way they want to focus a bit more on live performances with the Lemur (and Live). Watching the demo I saw in flash that the screen showed ‘transport buttons’ and ‘4 decks’… Maybe something for NI Traktor? Allthough I tried to go deeper on that the poor guy, giving the demo, clearly had trouble NOT talking about that. His face obviously said: “I can’t talk about this!”
IK Multimedia
Official news came from IK as they were showing their new updated AmpliTube 3 guitar software. Product specialist Matthias Zalepa showed us AmpliTube 3, very interesting and cool software for the guitar and bass players. Allthough, I don’t see them walking up on to the stage with a laptop, but then again… maybe they will!
Propellerhead
Simon Grey gave a live performance on how a professional song was being built live on stage with Reason and Record. In his own enthousiastic manner he got the crowd excited about Record from Propellerhead.
And more…
Like I mentioned before there were a lot of demos during the day, but one of the demos I really enjoyed was the Max For Live demo by Dankmar Klein. Being active for Ableton as product and education specialist, he showed us some insights and possiblities of this interesting software.
During the whole day there were several live performances from artists and great bands. But there was one act that was quite amazing. Crowded Beats is a one man drum’n’bass act. His concept is performing live drum’n’bass, mixing new technology with real instruments that are controlled live on stage. This approach of creating and playing music is supported by a custom-built acoustic drumkit with controllers and laptop using Ableton Live 8. Again, … I really enjoyed his performance!
The final event of the day was a masterclass from dutch remix legend Ben Liebrand. He explained how he uses Ableton Live for his remixes and mashups. It was a stunning masterclass about remixing, producing and loads of inside Tip and Tricks how to use Ableton Live. Next to Ben his son Sacha made a special guest appearance and gave a ‘hands on’ presentation of a house track he produced. He gave a detailed step-by-step explanation of how he had setup and used Ableton Live for this track. Thanks to Ben the event lasted an hour later then planned, but it was well worth it!
Final note
Seven o’clock was the end of a very succesful event. Of all the people we spoke the overal conscensus was that they all loved the event and were hoping that this will get another editon in 2011. And as far as we can tell, … yes lets meet again next year!
Marc van den Hurk
We want to thank Jan van der Gaag and Renier Vreugde (Media Satellite)