- At the heart of Roland’s evolving NAMM booth is the company’s Pro AV gear.
- Each year’s booth is unique—including LED screens, extensive lighting trusses, and PTZ cameras.
- The opportunity to reach people beyond Anaheim Convention Center is always a consideration.
No event in the MI trade sphere holds the level of prestige of NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants. It’s everything all at once. NAMM is a place for retailers to share their latest innovations, a sales hub. Above all, it’s a bustling community of musicians, businesspeople, and fans that sprouts annually for roughly a week. Behind the scenes, however, the preparation necessary in putting together a company’s NAMM booth can take the better part of a year. This is especially the case when the company in question is Roland. Indeed, Roland has an innate desire to surpass expectations, whether of its users, music listeners, or convention attendees.
The Hybrid Heart
At the heart of Roland’s evolving NAMM booth is the company’s Pro A/V gear. Each year, Roland’s team spends months planning for a tactical booth build that maximizes space and showcases its latest technology. In recent years, products like the V-600HUD and V-1200HD Multi-Format Video Switchers have both played central roles in the A/V presentation process.
Of course, the world of delivery is considerably different these days. Still, Roland is no stranger to change. In fact, the company welcomes it. Even before the industry’s shift to hybrid events due to the pandemic, Roland sought to engage attendees no matter where they were.
An Ever-Evolving Approach
“We don’t like to give our customers the same experience every single year,” says Vice President of Marketing, Chris Halon. “We like to give them something new, innovative, and to always be leading.”
It’s an ever-evolving approach, the results of which can resemble a dynamic club atmosphere as much as a trade show booth. While each year’s booth layout is a unique animal, elements over the past few years include LED screens, extensive lighting trusses, and PTZ cameras. For content dissemination, Roland is similarly open to experimenting, alternating between YouTube and Facebook Live to broadcast streaming segments.
Even before the industry’s shift to hybrid events due to the pandemic, Roland sought to engage attendees no matter where they were.
No Limits on Attendance
No matter the medium, the opportunity to reach people beyond the confines of the Anaheim Convention Center is always a consideration. “At a trade show, you’re limited to the one hundred and fifty thousand people that are there,” says Halon. “But the magic is, how do we reach 30 million people that can’t come to the show.”
Director of Global Marketing Production, Christian Delfino offers his thoughts on achieving that immersive experience for viewers who aren’t onsite. “With hybrid events, you’re trying to create enough coverage so that somebody who’s not in attendance can get a vibe of what’s going on,” Delfino reveals. “If you were to only have a single camera angle, the online audience won’t get a sense of what the in-person audience is feeling.”
Showcasing Products and the Team
Other considerations make the NAMM environment challenging for Pro A/V. “A trade show booth is designed primarily to showcase products, so you’re working in a space that is not ideal for camera placements.”
The Roland team achieves its NAMM content creation goals through extensive planning, lightning-fast execution, and the reliability of its robust line of Pro A/V gear. “The whole booth is a demonstration of the capabilities of our products,” Delfino explains. “We place the Pro A/V section close to the front of house so people can see we’re using our own audio mixer and video switchers and see how they’re all working.”
A Switcher Speaks
Lead Technician Steven Hadrych has seen plenty of NAMM shows, both a co-owner of Indy Consulting and Productions and a former Roland employee. He excitedly recalls the last iteration of the morphing Roland stage show. “I’m getting flashbacks to our last NAMM in 2020. That stage setup was definitely a very exciting challenge to take,” he explains. “Not only was that a multicamera shoot, but there were onstage visuals from the bands, and we were incorporating a new switcher, the V-600UHD.”
Like the stage show, the Pro A/V gear gets updated from year to year to best serve the entire presentation. New features can lead to new possibilities. “We use the 4K region of interest feature on that switcher. And we just ran a program out into one of the inputs on the V-1200HD. So, there was an extra camera source.”
Hadrych explains how Roland also utilizes separate teams to create individualized content for streaming and in-person audiences, respectively. “In 2019, I was switching with the V-1200HD going to the LED,” Hadrych explains. “Then we had a second V-1200HDR controller for the same switcher set up in the control room solely for the streaming side.”
A video producer/switcher like can also have kind of an improvisational experience with gear, listening to music, watching lighting cues.
Capturing the NAMMbience
As always, the audience experience remains central to hybrid event planning. “We put cameras onstage so that they could sit right next to Billy Cobham playing drums and see what it feels like to be a musician on stage,” Halon says.
Capturing the ambience of a bustling live room for livestreaming and content capture is another feat requiring double approaches. “Front of house has mics onstage using the M-5000 and that’s being mixed for the people in attendance,” Delfino shares. “Then a second mix is created so you can hear the audience, the crowd, clapping, and things like that. Just to give a little air.”
Reliability and trust are both key reasons Roland relies on its A/V products in the field.
A Brave New World
So, has the pivoting of the world to streaming surprised any of these A/V veterans?
“If you were to tell me before the pandemic, that we would be in a streaming world, I don’t think I would have believed it,” Hadrych admits. “After the first two months, we realized we were here for a bit, and all these creatives just started to pop up.”
Part of the NAMM experience is flexibility and Halon praises the ability of A/V specialists like Hadrych to flow with the moment. “Bringing in our video gear and bringing in talent like Steven, magic happens. A video producer/switcher like a Steven can also have kind of an improvisational experience with our gear, listening to music, watching lighting cues.”
Delfino agrees that the Roland team’s knack for navigating the mutable conditions of the hybrid events world mirrors the demands of the A/V job. “You’re looking for lots of camera positions as well as keeping your eye on the wide shot and what’s happening on stage,” he explains. “‘OK, looks like the keyboard player is doing something. We should switch to that.’ It is an art.”
Trusting the Brand
Intrinsically related to the quality of Roland gear is its legendary durability, essential in the fast-moving, rough-and-tumble world of events like NAMM. “If you look at the way connectors are mounted on Roland video products, they’re built for this kind of repeated setup and teardown scenario,” Delfino explains.
“We’re an audio company, so when we put an audio jack on something, it’s going to sound pristine,” Halon adds.
Delfino confirms that reliability and trust are both key reasons Roland relies on its A/V products in the field. “We wouldn’t risk our whole NAMM using our own equipment if we didn’t think we could count on it.”
