THE LIFE OF a magazine editor is supposed to be a glamorous one. Heavy responsibility. Great creative potential. Lots of freebies from interested parties seeking favour. But while the first two of those qualities have been present in abundance since I became editor of this magazine, the third has been conspicuous by its relative absence.

I was, however, lucky enough to be among a small group of UK journalists who were flown to Japan by Yamaha last year. I made brief mention of the trip on this very page 12 months ago, but one small part of it has now assumed greater significance.

On the morning of our third day in Tokyo, we were shown around Yamaha's R&D Centre in the city's Shibuya district. The idea behind the Centre is to find out what working musicians think about Yamaha equipment while they are in the process of using it. The musicians' comments are noted down by the resident staff, and then passed on to researchers and engineers at Yamaha's manufacturing plants.

In 1986, there was talk of the company starting up a similar scheme in London. In 1987, that talk has become reality, and the Yamaha R&D Centre London has opened its doors in Conduit Street, beneath the new Pulse music shop.

In common with its Japanese counterpart, the London facility isn't open to the public. Professional musicians and engineers get preferential treatment, which isn't surprising, since space and time will be limited in the months to come.

But the Conduit Street complex looks comfortable, well-equipped, and eminently capable of providing an environment in which users of Yamaha technology can make constructive criticisms of the way in which that technology has been applied.

Another angle on musical instrument research came to light as a result of a meeting the Music Maker staff had with a trio of representatives from Yamaha in Japan just after the R&D Centre was officially opened. The men - Messrs Iwai, Futamase and Oguri — form a quarter of an entirely new group of Yamaha workers whose job it is to look at long-term research projects. They came to Cambridge because they wanted to pick the brains of the people who produce this magazine and its sister publications. The question they asked us was simple. Where, in our opinion, should Yamaha be looking to develop their modern musical technology during the next five years?

Between us, we had plenty of ideas as to what Yamaha should be doing with their R&D money, and - despite the odd insurmountable language barrier - the gist of our messages seemed to get across.

Now, most of what we said was of a rather vague, nebulous nature. Ours were not the comments of practising musicians anxious to see specific improvements to certain items of equipment; they were the comments of people who are paid partly to give a broader view.

I'd imagine, though, that most of the comments that'll be passed at the London R&D Centre will be of the more specific variety. Musicians and engineers who are already familiar with hi-tech music gear are unlikely to make criticisms that are any more far-reaching than the predictable "I wish it could do more things at once, with higher quality, more memories, at a more affordable price, and in a friendlier way".

It's not that I'm sceptical of musicians' ability to look further into the future than the nearest RAM cartridge. It's simply that I question the value of an R&D facility that's more likely to arouse a string of fairly obvious comments, rather than the broader range of outlooks which would ultimately be of more use to the company whose foresight has brought it into being.

Essentially, I suppose I'm asking anybody who might have a chance to use the R&D Centre to adopt the same levels of responsibility and creativity that are supposed to be the reserve of people like magazine editors. I'm not sure how good we journalists are at making use of those qualities, but I sincerely hope musicians can make the most of them. Because if they do, the future will start to look very rosy indeed.