another year is almost over. in a couple of minutes we'll close the doors here and leave for holidays. 2009 has been an extremely successfull year for meinl cymbals. we have achieved a lot worldwide and still, everyone here is full of new ideas and inspiration for the next year. a lot will be going on again and is being planned right now already.

looking back to 2009, one of my personal highlights has been without a doubt our first international drum festival in moscow, russia which took place on june 06. this has been a fantastic experience and to be honest, i for myself have declared that event as the best-day-ever in my 20yrs long lasting meinl career. no kidding. it seemed as if all the years of hard work have climaxed for us in that phenomenal festival.

looking ahead, please mark your calender for june 26th 2010 when our next drum festival will take place here in gutenstetten again. this will be another highlight for us next year. have a sneak preview on meinldrumfestival.com already.

on behalf of the entire meinl company, i thank you all for your support, loyalty and believe in meinl throughout the last year. it means everything to us.

wish you a merry xmas and all the best for 2010. see you next year :-)

- norbert

Last Friday, December 18 to be exact, I left the office early to hook up with one of our US cymbal artists, Daniel Williams of the band The Devil Wears Prada. The band was playing a show that night at one of the few decent venues in Nashville for heavy music, Rocketown. Daniel and TDWP have been on a steady upward trajectory for quite some time now, and it's been a very cool thing to witness. So I was looking forward to some hang time with Daniel and to also see their show that night, as it was sold out. 

Pre-show, I was fed some obligatory beers by Daniel and his ever-hospitable band-mates while hanging on their tour bus outside the venue. Daniel and the guys talked about how fortunate they feel to be doing such good business touring during what is an extremely trying time for bands on the road. People only have a limited amount of money to spend on concerts and bands' merchandise, so TDWP feel grateful that they are selling out venues and that people are choosing to spend their money on them.

Along with biz talk, we also rapped about life stuff in general. My job is called artist RELATIONS, and it is always nice when it is indeed a RELATION, when the artist is genuinely interested in an exchange of ideas and conversation. In Daniel's case, it's definitely a relation. He's a super-great guy who cares about everyone around him and it certainly shows.

So showtime came along and I was glad to get some good video footage of Daniel at work.

Here are some links to that footage - 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gg5mZztzc4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDSKmJX1uLw

Daniel's cymbal setup is very musical. If you were to sit behind his kit, you would see the following left to right - 

 - Byzance 14" Medium Hihats in Traditional Finish

 - Mb20 20" Medium Heavy Crash

 - Classics 22" Medium Ride (his artist page says Mb20 22" Heavy Bell Ride, but he just changed it and we need to build that particular Classics ride into our setup program...)

 - Classics 8" Medium Bell

 - Byzance 22" Medium Crash

 - Mb20 18" Rock China

The Classics 22" Medium Ride that he just switched to is an interesting thing. So many artists these days are into a steady washing white noise sound. I've suggested this B8 alloy cymbal to a few artists and it's gone over very well. The alloy is durable and the sound is bright enough to cut through the dense wall of guitar and bass amplification. This cymbal is like a motor. Get it going with just enough wrist action and the cymbal will do the rest of the job for you. I suggested this cymbal to Daniel a month or so ago and he is super stoked to have it in his setup. If you have a hankering for a white noise wall of wash cymbal sound, check this one out.

Enjoy the footage of Daniel and Happy Holidays to all of you out there.

 - Chris

dinner was just about to be served at our annual xmas party last night when manfred haas, the longest serving employee at meinl, returned from the printing shop with the first 1,000 copies of our new 2010 cymbal catalog. it's such a good feeling to finally hold in your hand what you have been working on for several months. everyone who has seen it so far loves it. the cover design especially seems to be the favourite, including myself :-) i think its fair to say that this catalog is our best so far.

manfred delivered the 1,000 catalogs just in time. they were an essential tool in our today's meeting. our german, austrian, dutch, belgium and asian sales team got together this morning here in our headquarters. myself and my colleague stefan gave the team a presentation about the current and future meinl cymbal marketing, as well as about all new products for next year. reinhold meinl completed the meeting by giving some highly inspiring thoughts about the catalog's distribution. hearing him giving a lecture on his views always plants a seed in my ear. i get a lot out of his immensely clever thoughts.

some already asked us via facebook how they can get hold of the new catalog? soon it will be available on meinlcymbals.com for download (pdf). but in general, always check with your local dealer for an actual hardcopy. they should all have it in about 1 - 2 months. or simply stop by at our namm booth in anaheim next months. also, please dont hesitate to let us know your feedback about it when you checked it out.

i would like to thank everyone involved in the creation of our new catalog, especially tobias merkle, sonja baer, christian habermeier, sebastian jaeger, sven mihm, rick malkin.

- norbert

its the end of the year again. for us here at meinl cymbals that's equivalent with deadlines. not only have we just printed a new symphonic and marching cymbal catalog. more than that we are in the final stages of our 2010 cymbal guide. we are working on the very final corrections right now and then once again, off to the printer. deadlines

the 2010 namm show in los angeles coming up. same thing: deadlines! everyone involved in that show like the booth builder, freeman show services, colleagues, forwarders, advertising agency, and many others, need some final information from me in order to do their job.

distributor meeting coming up next week that needs to be prepared. same thing for another sales meeting coming up the week after in which we brief our domestic sales staff about all the news for next year. i still got to finalize my presentation for that. more deadlines.

and last but not least the daily artist-relations business of reviewing endorsement packages, sending out gear, tour service, and so on. not to forget working with all the drum magazines worldwide who also have their deadlines for their next issues.

all of that is what hits us at the end of every year. it's by far the busiest time for everyone here. one can actually sense a certain tension here in our office. some colleagues nerves are on the edge.

but look, i am not complaining. in times like these one can be more than happy to have a healthy business going on. i love that time of the year and working under time-pressure usually stimulates my creative output immensely . it's great and i can't wait to finally see all the final results! there's no better feeling in the job-world than when you see all the wonderful results and getting a postivie feedback for all the hard work you have done.

with all the crazyness and deadlines in mind, it just kind of hit me today that time flies so incredibly fast. it's been two years now today that our company founder Roland Meinl passed away. to me it does not seem so long at all. it's good to sometimes just pause for a moment and realise that life is not only about deadlines.