I‘m writing this from Japan, where 14 journalists and an equal number of musical-instrument distributors from around the world have gathered at the invitation of Korg. We spent yesterday visiting Korg‘s impressive new facility in the outskirts of Tokyo. After a short bus ride and a brief tour of the building (the lower floor of which contains a museum of Korg instruments from the annals of history), we settled down to a full day of new-product presentations, directed by Korg USA‘s Jerry Kovarsky and Korg International‘s John McCubbery. Also taking part in the presentation were Korg USA‘s Jack Hotop, along with additional members of Korg‘s international sound-design team and several in-house developers from Korg Japan. This is the first time Korg has staged an event like this, and it‘s going very well.

I‘m pretty excited about most of these new products, and I‘d like to share news of them with you, but I‘m sworn to secrecy until they are introduced at January‘s NAMM show. Today the journalists will have a chance to do a question-and-answer session with Korg employees. I‘ll be flying back home to Charlotte on Thursday, and you can expect to read (and hear, and see) some of the results of today‘s sessions after I‘ve returned. In the meantime, Korg has us on a tight schedule, so I‘d better be going now.