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Novation's Nocturn offers powerful MIDI control at a low, low price.

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Elsewhere, we were delighted to lay our hands on the eagerly awaited (ie, long overdue) Arturia Origin Keyboard synth. This sizey number sports a cool flip up, laptop style control surface and screen but - major disappointment - was only at the show in static prototype form.

Likewise Dave Smith Instruments LinnDrum II. It looks gorgeous, its lights flashed and its pads and buttons depressed and turned, but unfortunately Mister Innards was sadly absent. Dave Smith was on hand to apologise, though, and to hint that Frankfurt's MusikMesse in March might be a good place to see it in action. Good job his Prophet '08 rack was up and running and sounding fabulous then.

On the softer side, the world of virtual synths was more than ably supported by Spectrasonics' Omnisphere, which achieved the holy grail of managing to sound unlike anything else at the show by delicately morphing real acoustic sounds to form unidentifiable new tones. These can quickly be made to do anything from polite twinkling to taking the top of your head clean off.

Likewise EastWest's Forbidden Planet, which we fully expect will provide the soundtrack to every sci-fi/horror movie of 2009. A perfect partner to its similarly Bruckheimer-friendly SD2 percussion plug-in we reckon.

Native Instruments Kore Player might not be the brand new übersynth we now routinely expect from the Berlin powerhouse, but the fact that it's giving it away free instantly makes us like it. And - speaking of bargains - the Novation Nocturn controller, laden with the Automap power of its costly SL keyboards, is your irresistible route into tactile software control for just £69.

We could talk about seeing Stevie Wonder on the Rhodes stand or the length of the queue to see Slash, but we'll save that for another time. Instead we'd better get our finger out and finish off our bulging NAMM report for Future Music's new issue - on sale in the UK on February 15.

Daniel Griffiths
Editor, Future Music

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