When your ancient Editor was a wee sprog, learning to play guitar was either a matter of ploughing through Bert Weedon's mighty tome, or trusting to luck, wax-free ear 'oles and the hints and tips of friends who'd worked out Chuck Berry's licks mere moments before he asked them how.

These days things are a bit better. The standards of personal tuition are higher — books are better written and presented and there are the new cassette taped tuition courses from the amazing Mr Arlen Roth. But there is still a vast gap between reading, listening to tapes and actually seeing how to play those licks we're all after. Enter, therefore, good old Auntie BBC who has at long last acknowledged that Rock and Roll won't make you a drug fiend, homicidal maniac or Channel 4 programme presenter. (Delete whichever you feel is worst of these three options.) The cause for this rejoicing is a brand new BBC 2 series called ROCKSCHOOL which begins its transmission on November 1st at 6.10 pm.

We at good ol' MUSIC U.K. have been watching ROCKSCHOOL's progress since early last summer, when the programme's inspired producer, Chris Lent (who I hope won't mind us telling you is a MUSIC U.K. reader!) first started to tell us about what he had in mind.

ROCKSCHOOL looks like being the best thing to happen for musicians on television since — er — ever? We've a special feature on what you're in for inside this issue and I promise you, from what we've seen and heard about this series, any reader who misses it is going to spend the next twelve years kicking his or her own backside — 'nuff said?

From the 'Whoops, sorry' department comes an apology for not having kept you informed about what we were up to on the keyboards review front. Monsieur David Crombie (star of synth, scream and word processor, who has written the majority of our keyboard reviews since way back to Issue No. 1) has recently departed this haven of verbal lunacy to open a shop of his own, based down in deepest Ealing. Being the honourable soul that we expect all MUSIC U.K. writers to be, Dave feels that it would compromise his editorial impartiality to continue reviewing keyboards which he was also selling. Accordingly he has given up writing for us and deserves tremendous credit for his integrity. Dave's place has been taken by Paul Wiffen, a specialist writer who has an extensive background in both keyboards and electronics. We're certain that Paul will keep up the high standard of our keyboard reviews and, just to whet your appetites, can reveal that he is currently researching a major feature for us on the subject of what can be done with — er, hang on, I gather that 'other eyes' may be upon this page — so I'll shut up on this subject and leave you to wait and see what Paul's up to!

This month we've got a major feature on the subject of 4-track cassette home recording equipment. We've assembled a complete 'overview' of all the machines on the market and attempted to draw some conclusions about what they offer the musician who fancies the idea of owning his own personal demo studio. We're taking that further, too, by organising a special competition in which you can win a FOSTEX X-15, probably the most desirable musician's notebook of them all. Entry costs nowt so out with those quill pens and have a bash — same goes for our super free CASIO KEYBOARD competition, too! Next month's mag will be out in plenty of time for the Yule festivities and my Druidical advisors tell me that they have foretold of a bumper Winter Solstice issue of MUSIC U.K. — complete with Holly (not Buddy) and Ivy (not League).

We'll be with you again on November 17th (plenty of time to get your entries in before the seasonal postal collapse!) so, until then, I'm off to sacrifice a few virgins (never could stand their records), and generally make a nuisance of myself — in the meantime, you could always pay for this copy (I know you're reading it in the shop — psychic, see!), take it home and get a whole month's reading for just 60p. 60p? We must be mad!