today was one of those days where i basically did not leave our conference room for longer than three minutes. my workmates chris brewer from meinl usa, udo, and stefan sat down on a table and discussed all of the new product ideas for next year. tomorrow we'll do the same thing brainstorming and deciding about our future marketing focus. all of that is essentially determing our course for at least the next year. i am feeling somehow mentally tired after so long and intense meeting marathons like that, but i know for sure that only good stuff is going to come from it.

now i will enjoy a nice dinner and a few drinks. i have a feeling that chris and i will probably just keep on talking about business issues. oh well, that's how we are :-)

- norbert

ps: by the way, our guitar festival last saturday has been great. check the reviews and soon-to-come fotos on meinlguitarfestival.com

tomorrow on saturday, june 27th, the first meinl guitar festival will take place here on our premises in gutenstetten, germany.

guitar festival? how's that?

well, besides being a manufacturer for cymbals and percussion, meinl also is a huge wholesaler for many internationally renowned guitar- and accessory brands. that's why we will host a guitar festival and we expect a huge crowd of guitar lovers tomorrow to come and have good time with us. all our wholesale dept. colleagues have worked very hard over the last couple of months to ensure a safe and relaxed event. having organized five drum festivals myself, i know how stressful this is. kudos to stephan killermann and his entire team for doing such a great job!

one of the highlights will be steve vai's masterclass which will be held here in the exhibition room of our office building. and for all of us drummers: felix lehrmann will be the drummer in the house band of the festival. i am especially looking forward to that.

a big guitar exhibition will also be part of the festival.

check out meinlguitarfestival.com for a complete schedule. four webcams will also report live from the festival.

if anyone of you is interested to attend, there are still tickets available at the box office.

- norbert

some of the most important and satisfying duties of our job is without a doubt the developing of new cymbals and sounds. for the last two days me and my workmates udo and stefan sat down and decided about just that: which new cymbals and new series are we going to introduce next year and what will be our marketing focus? the meinl cymbal think-tank will be completed next week when our u.s. artist relations manager chris brewer joins us to share his valuable input. the decisions we are making these days in terms of new sounds, cymbals, and marketing focus essentially set our course for the whole next year. it's very exciting and i can already say that some of meinl news for 2010 will be groundbreaking developments for us. stay tuned!
- norbert

so, i returned from moscow yesterday. i was so tired that i slept almost during the entire flight. and, no kidding, i even dreamt about the festival while sleeping on the plane. all the hard work we've had during the last six months has been worth it. the first international meinl drum festival in moscow on june 06 has been a very special experience for everyone involved and a great success. about 1200 people attended the event and you could feel how excited everyone was to be there. unforgettable moments for our team, the artists, and i am sure for everybody in the audience as well. on behalf of meinl i would like to thank everyone who attended the festival, and our russian distributor o.k. + company for doing such a great job. this event has been among the best experiences i have had during my 20 years of being in that business.

check out the fotos here. you can see more pictures on our facebook site "meinl cymbals".

- norbert

ps: i forgot to say "thank you" to heinz kronberger, who took most of the festival fotos you can see here.

As an employee of Meinl Cymbals, it's my job to do everything I can to promote awareness of our company and its instruments. Wherever and whenever I have the opportunity, I make it a point to further spread the message about Meinl. This would be an extremely difficult task to manage, if as a drummer myself I didn't stand behind the instruments that we manufacture. One of the reasons I agreed to work for Meinl six plus years ago was because I did (and obviously still do) stand behind our instruments. Having worked in and around drummers for all of my professional career up through that point, I knew that there was no way I would be able to work in such an artist specific position (Artist Relations Manager, USA and Canada) and try to get artists to endorse our instruments if I didn't believe in them myself first and foremost.

In my position, it's necessary to have a broad and specific knowledge of each of our cymbal series and the cymbals within those series as well as a broad and specific of a knowledge as possible of our competitors' cymbal series and the cymbals within those series. This knowledge enables me to fit existing artists and potential artists into a cymbal setup that works for them. Interestingly enough, I have been forced to re-examine my notions of which of our cymbals will work for certain musical applications. My re-assessment has happened through a number of our cymbal artists and their search for certain sounds to help them achieve their musical ambitions. Quite unexpectedly I have stumbled upon cymbals that have fulfilled these artists' requests, however these cymbals were not what I had anticipated to be the conclusion of our search.

All of this is exciting to me because it opens up new possibilities for what Meinl Cymbals can achieve for any and every drummer out there. Whether you're playing country music, R&B, extreme metal, hard bop in a small jazz combo, or four on the floor rock and roll, there are literally many cymbal sound options available to drummers with Meinl Cymbals. While this may seem like I'm trying to make things more confusing rather than simplified, I'm really not. All I'm saying is that a cymbal is as unique as the drummer that plays it. If you hear a jazz ride pattern on a cymbal that another drummer might usually use for a wide open crash-ride, don't be afraid to utilize it as such. Every company, Meinl included, by necessity has to market their cymbals in a way that presents an organized approach for helping a dealer know which cymbals to stock and for helping drummers find their sounds. Don't be afraid though, to read between the marketing lines and listen to a cymbal that you might not normally approach, simply because you believe that it wasn't created with your specific style of music and drumming in mind. You might end up pleasantly surprised, just as I have lately, by what you find that Meinl Cymbals can really do for you.

i'm finishing up the last final drum festival issues right now before heading home to pack my suitcase. tomorrow morning i will fly to moscow and get everything rollin' there. we've got two days to prepare all the equipment and venue until the drum festival begins. everything should have been planned in the way that the whole festival will run smoothly and without any unforseen problems to make it an unforgettable day for every attendant. still i have never been more excited, but at the same time more nervous, before leaving on a business trip.

starting tomorrow, i will post status updates on our twitter (meinlcymbals) and facebook (Meinl Cymbals) page, as well as mobile-upload fotos there. so stay tuned :-)

- norbert

on the 6th of may we have shipped all the performance setups for our artists, merch, signing cards, posters, banners, and other equipment to moscow (see my blog about that).
today i got the message that it has cleared customs and has now safely arrived at our distributors warehouse there. on the 05th of june we'll move everything to the venue. it all comes together now.
- norbert

as our drum festival in moscow comes closer and closer, we are getting into the final stages of the plannings too. i spend almost all of my time right now with detailed festival preparations. i've been on the phone this morning with julia, who is the responsible and executing partner in moscow, discussing airport shuttle, load-in and curfew times during the set-up day, lighting, video transmission, press conference, and many other details for next week. besides that, i've still been working on some russian visa issues, foreign health insurance coverage for our team and artists, and audio recordings for the festival webvideos. still so many things to do, and only three more working-days left before i fly to moscow. all seems to be going according to our plan though and i am looking so much forward to finally kickin' off the festival on june 06 at 3pm moscow time.

and if this wasn't enough, i have made some first notes already this morning about a possible line-up for our 2010 meinl drum festival here in gutenstetten, germany :-)

- norbert

yes, you've read correctly.

normally us artist-relations guys welcome new artists, which is a nice and satisfying job to do. this time however, for all of you who care about it and are interested, i would like to tell about one of our artists leaving meinl.

christoph schneider, drummer of german band rammstein, has signed his endorsement deal with meinl cymbals on september 10th, 1997 and has played our cymbals ever since. about three months ago he emailed us and terminated his endorsement. he has decided to play the cymbals of a canadian company now.

we have really enjoyed working with christoph, rammstein's management, and his tech rossi rossberg very much. those guys are some of the most professional and hardest working people in the business. from day one i've been a fan of the band and christoph's playing. rammstein's live shows are unlike anything i've seen before. their lyrics to me are fascinating and deep (provided you're mother language is german and you're able to fully understand and feel them). i will continue loving rammstein regardless of which cymbal brand christoph plays.

why do artists change endorsement companies? well, there is no universally valid answer to that question. the reasons are always very individual. bottom line is that all major cymbal companies make great sounding products.

in our case, christoph has been happy with our sounds for the last 12 years. rammstein's new record for example, which is going to come out later this year, has been recorded on our cymbals. i have personally handpicked, boxed and sent them to the studio in los angeles in october of last year. i have received nothing but great comments from christoph and his tech about how the cymbals sounded during the session and how they ended up on the recording.

what i am trying to say is that i think it is not about better or worse sounding cymbals. i think that sometimes it's about getting inspired in a different way. artists want to stimulate their creativity and try different things. there's nothing wrong with that at all. but really, there is no universally valid answer. the reasons are always very individual and different in every case.

why am i telling you this? my job is called "artist relations". and after having worked with an artist for 12 years, a relation has definitely been formed. i feel that sometimes occurrences like this one should not be left uncommented or go unnoticed to those who care about them. given the fact that a blog is a personal communication platform, i felt that here is the right spot to tell about it.

we wish christoph and rammstein the very best for his personal future and musical career.

- norbert

last saturday i've been at a sold-out beyonce concert in zurich switzerland. it took place at the "hallenstadion" which is a huge venue holding about 13,000 people.

due to the nature of the music, the average age of the audience has been very young. at the same time however, the sound volume of the music has been very high. usually those two "young audience" on one side, and "high volume" on the other side, create an auricular conflict.

suffering from tinnitus myself, i was gladly surprised to see that a swiss initiative called "stop tinnitus - earplugs.ch" have handed out free earplugs to every concert visitor. i strongly support initiatives like this and would like to encourage everyone to be responsible and protect your hearing. especially us drummers are in danger of suffering from tinnitus real fast. once you have it, there is almost no healing possible.

- norbert