Take a look at the stomps, pickups, and accessories that filled the halls of Musikmesse.
Want some of the power of Boss’s multi-effect pedalboards in a small package? Check out the GT-001, which debuted at Musikmesse 2014. It boasts an XLR input for connecting a mic, and excels at simultaneous guitar and vocal processing.
Musikmesse isn’t what it used to be, show veterans say. Attendance is far from peak. There are fewer full exhibition halls. High participation costs (and the ability to announce and publicize products digitally) have prompted numerous companies to bypass the once-essential event.
But you know what? Messe is still huge.
NAMM’s European equivalent, held each year in Frankfurt, Germany, is substantially larger than its Anaheim counterpart. Far louder, too: As at NAMM, “sound police” armed with decibel meters patrol the floor, but they’re slackers. Messe is deafening.
But, hey, what’s a little tinnitus when you get to spend four days ogling so many cool new music products? From March 12th through 16th we roamed the vast halls, marveling at superbly crafted boutique instruments, solid working-player tools, and some remarkable budget-gear bargains.
The show highlights? For North American players like us, it’s probably the chance to fondle the phenomenal creations of small-production European shops whose instruments tend to be scarce in the States. The phrase “Old World craftsmanship” may be a cliché, but Messe schools you on how it became one. You can hardly turn around without being dumbstruck by a ravishing instrument that blends the engineering chops of Stuttgart or Turin with the design elegance of Milan or Barcelona.
But our report isn’t just some glamour-gear buyers’ guide for investment bankers and lottery winners indulging in a European grand tour. Quality work and compelling style were equally evident in mid-priced gear for working stiffs and in some remarkable entry-level bargains.
It’s hard to summarize such a vast event with a simple tag—but if pressed, I’d go with “retro fun.” Per usual, vintage-inspired designs reigned supreme. But we saw more manufactures playing with vintage aesthetics, recombining old-school elements in winning new ways. By and large, manufacturers seem to be having fun. We certainly were—and it’s not just the beer and schnitzel talking!
Experience the pinnacle of Taylor playing comfort and tone with the Builder’s Edition 514ce, 514ce Kona Burst, and 524ce. These models feature solid Shamel ash back and sides, uniquely voiced V-Class bracing, Gotoh 510 tuners, ES2 electronics, and a Deluxe Hardshell Case.
The Builder’s Edition 514ce, 514ce Kona Burst and 524ce join our acclaimed Builder’s Edition Collection, giving you more ways to experience the pinnacle of Taylor playing comfort and tone.
Each model boasts a gloss-finish cutaway Grand Auditorium body with solid Shamel ash back and sides, an artfully applied Kona burst on the back, sides and neck, uniquely voiced V-Class interior bracing, Gotoh 510 antique chrome tuners, ES2 electronics, and a Deluxe Hardshell Case.
Refined, comfort-enhancing features include a beveled armrest and cutaway, chamfered body edges and a smoothly contoured Curve Wing bridge. Italian acrylic “Compass” inlays and a vibrant firestripe pickguard add tasteful aesthetic accents.
Responsibly sourced from cities in Southern California, Shamel ash is given a second life as a tonewood in our premium-class guitars. It yields a focused, fundamental-strong voice with midrange power and balance comparable to Honduran mahogany.
Models:
- Builder's Edition 514ce - $3,399 - Featuring a natural Sitka spruce top paired with solid Shamel ash back and sides, the Builder’s Edition 514ce delivers warmth, depth and musical versatility for any style or genre.
- Builder's Edition 514ce Kona Burst - $3,499 - Showcasing a vintage aesthetic flair, this solid Shamel ash/Sitka spruce model features a Tobacco Kona burst top.
- Builder's Edition 524ce - $3,499 - This model pairs solid Shamel ash back and sides with a mahogany top—also featuring a Tobacco Kona burst—that adds a bit of natural compression to help create incredible tonal balance across the frequency spectrum.
For more information, please visit taylorguitars.com.
AI, which generated this image in seconds, can obviously do amazing things. But can it actually replace human creativity?
Technology has always disrupted the music biz, but we’ve never seen anything like this.
AI has me deeply thinking: Is guitar (or any instrument) still valid? Are musicians still valid? I don’t think the answer is as obvious as I’d like it to be.
As a professional musician, I’ve spent the vast majority of my days immersed in the tones of tube amps, the resistance of steel strings under my fingers, and the endless pursuit of musical expression. Each day, I strive to tap into the Source, channel something new into the world (however small), and share it. Yet, lately, a new presence has entered the room—artificial intelligence. It is an interloper unlike any I’ve ever encountered. If you’re thinking that AI is something off in the “not-too-distant future,” you’re exponentially wrong. So, this month I’m going to ask that we sit and meditate on this technology, and hopefully gain some insight into how we are just beginning to use it.
AI: Friend or Foe?
In the last 12 months, I’ve heard quite a bit of AI-generated music. Algorithms can now “compose,” “perform” (with vocals of your choosing), and “produce” entire songs in minutes, with prompts as flippant as, “Write a song about__in the style of__.” AI never misses a note and can mimic the finer details of almost any genre with unnerving precision. For those who are merely curious about music, or those easily distracted by novelty, this might seem exciting … a shortcut to creating “professional” sounding music without years of practice. But for those of us who are deeply passionate about music, it raises some profound existential questions.
When you play an instrument, you engage in something deeply human. Each musician carries their life experiences into their playing. The pain of heartbreak, the joy of new beginnings, or the struggle to find a voice in an increasingly noisy and artificial online world dominated by algorithms. Sweat, tears, and callouses develop from your efforts and repetition. Your mistakes can lead to new creative vistas and shape the evolution of your style.
Emotions shape the music we create. While an algorithm can only infer and assign a “value” to the vast variety of our experience, it is ruthlessly proficient at analyzing and recording the entire corpus of human existence, and further, cataloging every known human behavioral action and response in mere fractions of a second.
Pardon the Disruption
Technology has always disrupted the music industry. The invention of musical notation provided unprecedented access to compositions. The advent of records allowed performances of music to be captured and shared. When radio brought music into every home, there was fear that no one would buy records. Television added visual spectacle, sparking fears that it would kill live performance. MIDI revolutionized music production but raised concerns about replacing human players. The internet, paired with the MP3 format, democratized music distribution, shattered traditional revenue models, and shifted power from labels to artists. Each of these innovations was met with resistance and uncertainty, but ultimately, they expanded the ways music could be created, shared, and experienced.
Every revolution in art and technology forces us to rediscover what is uniquely human about creativity. To me, though, this is different. AI isn’t a tool that requires a significant amount of human input in order to work. It’s already analyzed the minutia of all of humanity’s greatest creations—from the most esoteric to the ubiquitous, and it is wholly capable of creating entire works of art that are as commercially competitive as anything you’ve ever heard. This will force us to recalibrate our definition of art and push us to dig deeper into our personal truths.
“In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?”
Advantage: Humans
What if we don’t want to, though? In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?
Of course, the answer is still emphatically “Yes!” But caveat emptor. I believe that the value of the tool depends entirely on the way in which it is used—and this one in particular is a very, very powerful tool. We all need to read the manual and handle with care.
AI cannot replicate the experience of creating music in the moment. It cannot capture the energy of a living room jam session with friends or the adrenaline of playing a less-than-perfect set in front of a crowd who cheers because they feel your passion. It cannot replace the personal journey you take each time you push through frustration to master a riff that once seemed impossible. So, my fellow musicians, I say this: Your music is valid. Your guitar is valid. What you create with your hands and heart will always stand apart from what an algorithm can generate.
Our audience, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. And that’s the subject for next month’s Dojo. Until then, namaste.
Joni Mitchell’s rich, colorful altered-tuning chord voicings have set her work apart in its own musical universe, where the rest of us guitarists either scratch our heads in wonder or have to do dissertation-level research to unpack just how she gets her sound.
Joni Mitchell’s rich, colorful altered-tuning chord voicings have set her work apart in its own musical universe, where the rest of us guitarists either scratch our heads in wonder or have to do dissertation-level research to unpack just how she gets her sound. Dawes guitarist and songwriter Taylor Goldsmith gained firsthand experience with Mitchell’s songs when he joined her on stage—just check out 2022’s “Joni Jam” from the Newport Folk Festival, which also included Brandi Carlile, Blake Mills, Jon Batiste, and others.
Goldsmith joins us on this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast. Together, we talk about Mitchell’s chord voicings and progressions, her tunings, what it’s like to share a stage with her, and Goldsmith wonders: Was Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” a nod to the songwriter’s 1971 album?
When we wrap up our conversation, we cover a new release of energetic, forward-leaning guitar cumbia by Los Pirañas and an album of Bach Partitas for Telecaster by guitarist Noel Johnston.
This episode is sponsored by L.R. Baggs.
The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah, meticulously recreated from his own pedal, offers fixed-wah tones with a custom inductor for a unique sound.
The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah taps into the vibrant, melodic character of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most gifted songwriters. Few guitar players have been able to combine a keen musical instinct with a profound grasp of how to bring a composition together like Mick Ronson. Laden with expressive resonance, his arrangements layered deliberately chosen tones and textures to build exquisite melodies and powerful riffs. The Cry Baby Wah, set in a fixed position to serve as a filter, was key to the tone-shaping vision that Ronson used to transform the face of popular music through his work with David Bowie and many others as both an artist and a producer.
We wanted to make that incredible Cry Baby Wah sound available to all players, and legendary producer Bob Rock—a friend and collaborator of Ronson’s—was there to help. He generously loaned us Ronson’s own Cry Baby Wah pedal, an early Italian-made model whose vintage components imbue it with a truly singular sound. Ronson recorded many tracks with this pedal, and Rock would go on to use it when recording numerous other artists. With matched specs, tightened tolerances, and a custom inductor, our engineers have recreated this truly special sound.
“You place the wah, and leave it there, and that's the tone,” Rock says. “It's all over every record he ever made, and I’ve used it on every record since I got it. Dunlop’s engineers spent the time and sent me the prototypes, and we nailed that sound.”
Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah highlights:
- Tailor-made for Ronson’s signature fixed-wah tones• Carefully spec’d from his own wah pedal
- Custom inductor replicates higher frequency response and subtler peak
- Fast initial sweep with Instant reactivity
- Distinctive EQ curve from period-accurate components
- Special finish inspired by Ronson’s monumental work
The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah is available now at $249.99 street from your favorite retailer.
For more information, please visit jimdunlop.com.