In the first week of April, the Fairgrounds in Frankfurt am Main saw yet another edition of the Musikmesse trade show, which has been held there for nearly 40 years. En.beatit.tv was there for the seventh time, so we like to think we have some kind of a comparative scale. It is safe to say that, from the point of view of what is of the greatest importance to us (i. e. drums), there was practically nothing to report from Frankfurt. It is really hard to call what we found there a proper drum hall. All there was was a combined effort of the renowned classical instruments maker Bergerault, four cymbal manufacturers out of Turkey (Amedia, Bosphorus, Istanbul Mehmet, Turkish) along with their endorsees, a few booths occupied by small companies as well as Chinese manufacturers of all kinds of equipment. The ‘drum hall’ has been shared with brass instruments for a few years now anyway, and this year also with bass gear makers (what a sight NOT to see…). The competitors of the four cymbal companies were nowhere to be found, and as far as drum companies or snare builders it was even worse. It is not our ambition to analyze the reasons for the situation not to point fingers at anybody – it is merely a statement of fact. It may be a temporary situation or the opposite – perhaps it is time to end the event in the form we have known so far (especially given there is more and more talk of the Music Park show to be held in Leipzig, Germany later this year).
A very interesting exception from this year’s dulness was a very modest stand set up by the TrigMic company. It is a very nifty idea, which is based on laser tracking technology. This means that a laser beam is interrupted by a beater, which is registered by the module. The device in turn plays back a given sound. The module communicates with any mixing desk and has a bluetooth connection, which allows the user to download his or her original sounds to the internal memory. See and listen for yourselves…
“Greetings from Musikmesse Frankfurt 2019! My name is Elijah Mudrenov. I am presenting the product of my company, TrigMic. It’s a laser bass drum trigger, which is based on an exclusive technology of stroke laser tracking. Here, everyone can try how it works and what it sounds like. This trigger system allows professional applications to pick up bass drum sounds both in studio and live. This triggering system is based on a laser beam tracking the travel of the beater. The internal sound module recognizes a stroke and plays back the sound from the internal memory. An OUTPUT connector makes the module compatible with a mixing desk via a microphone cable. All TrigMic devices are equipped with a bluetooth feature, which allows to upload customized sounds into their internal memories and use them in practice.”
