Haven't we all heard these before?

There are those people in music who will forever occupy the most important places in its history. Levon Helm was one of them.

As you watch the Grammys today, remember the legends behind the scenes who are such an essential element of making great music happen.

Gear, Talent, Genius, and a love of Music

It’s Grammy time! Welcome to our annual coverage of music's biggest night.

Four days of NAMM with virtually no sunshine. Really. So, it was up to the manufacturers to spread some light, and while with a few crucial exceptions, this show was not about revolutionary concepts, some trends came into sharp focus. Here are the top 10 trends I saw, and there were quite a few products to back them up.

Live performance takes center stage. From PreSonus's big splash with their StudioLive Active Integration series powered speakers, all the Mackie DLMs being used in various booths, Electro-Voice's ZLX active speakers, and new digital mixers for live performance from Soundcraft, Behringer, and PreSonus, live performance products were huge. Well, not so huge, actually; a lot of them were pretty compact. But you know what we mean. (And given all the subs, sometimes NAMM looked like a scene from The Hunt for Red October.)

Wireless everything. It's not just about iPads controlling things, but products like Alto Professional's Stealth system—a transmitter/receiver...

For a second year in a row, there was an exuberant feel at the NAMM show as record crowds packed into the Anaheim Convention Center and exhibitors showed off plenty of new products. And, like last year, mobile connectivity was the buzz throughout the various product sectors—both for iDevices and Android—as well as the exponential growth in the world of modular 500 Series products and Eurorack synths.

But the excitement on opening day revolved around four major hardware synth releases: the Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12, the Moog Music Sub Phatty, and remakes of the legendary Buchla Music Easel and Korg MS-20. Dave Smith told us that the Prophet 12 was the apex of his design work, providing 12 powerful voices, a collection of new effects, and the touch-control strips that were introduced on the Tempest. Moog's Sub Phatty, on the other hand, is a diminutive powerhouse of a monosynth that, among other things, has snappier-sounding envelopes than its stablemates, yet provides...