So, it's that time of the year again. Time to get ready to put up with unusually warm weather and hoards of families driving their station wagons into Disneyland. Time to remember not to have my leatherman in the pocket of my jeans when I go through airport security. It's a time to remember just how difficult it is to get anywhere in Los Angeles without a car.

That being said, I am once again thrilled to be covering NAMM with the Gearwire crew. Jaime, Owen, Gretchen and I are getting ready to provide the internet community with a Gearwire look at the 2009 Winter NAMM convention. J. Irving Giles will be back at the Gearwire bunker taking care of operations.

The problem with NAMM, in general, is that most of the companies are extremely secretive pre-conference as to the new products they are unveiling. Despite the secrecy of many companies, we do know of a few new products that look very promising.

Cubase 5 seems to be the worst kept secret of the conference, with rumors flying all over the net as to what exactly the new version will feature. With Sonar 8 making it's appearance last month in a trial version, it would make sense for Steinberg to step up to the plate and offer their users comparable updates. Of course, all we know at this point in time is that there is a press conference scheduled for the first day of the conference.

Akai's sturdy and reliable MPK49 is going to be shrunk down in size to the MPK25. Not only will this make it more portable for live gigs, but it will also save you money on a controller.

Also in the realm of big things coming in small packages is the new Microkorg XL. Now, granted, I have seen videos of it in action all over the internet. The guy who does synth demos wearing stutter shades did a really quirky, yet informative demo of the synth in action. I think it will interesting to see if it really holds up to the hype.

While speaking of hype, it has been a while since we have heard anything from the Native Instruments camp. Reaktor has long been in a class of it's own in the world of synthesis, but rumors of the release of version 6 have many synth geeks pining for a first look.

In the matter of synths, anyone who loves running their sound of their voice through a Microkorg might want to check out the Electro-Harmonix booth. EHX will be showing off their new Voice Box. The Voice Box is a harmonizer that also works as a vocoder.

The advantage to this over a Microkorg is that any signal can serve as the carrier. A guitar can modulate the voice of a singer, instead of using a synth. This allows for a variety of possibilities not possible with most contemporary keyboards with vocoders.

While there are sure to be a number of mind-blowing products at the Anaheim Convention center, many of them have yet to be released. Be assured, however, that we will be posting new announcements as soon as we sign in to the conference. We will be working throughout the conference to deliver press announcements and easy to access, high-quality video for your enjoyment. Plus, this time we brought Owen, so I won't be butchering any Led Zeppelin for you. I'm a keyboard player, after all.