K-Bow and StringPort at NAMM

At Keith McMillen Instruments we recently debuted our two flagship products at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, CA. We were proud to share a booth with Synful Orchestra, one of the most powerful software synths we know of. The K-Bow, the world’s first stageworthy, wireless, sensor bow for string instruments, and the StringPort, a polyphonic string to USB 2 converter with spectral analysis and synthesizer control, were both on display at our booth with the accompanying software.

We were lucky to have friend, outstanding electronic music composer, and violinist Marielle Jakobsons with us to show off the powerful sonic control the K-Bow provides. Here she is showing off the system to Morton Subotnick. We are excited to think about what peices such as Axolotl would be like with realtime gestural control from the instrument; all of the Subotnick ghost peices are landmarks of eletronic/string composition.

We also had the StringPort on display, and many guitar and other string players dropped by to see how our analysis can control synthesis directly from the instrument. The days of exclusively event based control are over, as are the days of Keyboardists having all the fun; not to mention having to by a hold new instrument to use polyphonic control (cough…DarkFire). Craig Anderton came over to check out our stuff and Keith was around to walk him through the software.

We also had some more friends drop by the booth.

Matt Moldover and Naut Humon.

Don Buchla checking out Synful Orchestra.

Marielle Jakobsons, Wally Scharold, and Bill Wolter.

Here are Miller Puckette and David Zicarelli, two of the fathers of Max/MSP, a visual programming language dear to our hearts; together in one frame.

All in all it was a great show. It was topped off on Saturday night by a set with Richard Devine and Dream Theater Keyboardist Jordan Rudess.

Thanks to everyone that came by! We hope to see you all again next year…