A MESSAGE FROM US

The response to our Readership Survey in January was an inspiration. Your invaluable feedback has enabled all of us here at MT to formulate a radical game plan to try, at least, the impossible: keeping absolutely everybody happy. It's clear from the Survey that you believe Music Technology to be the undisputed voice of authority in its field. It's also clear that there simply isn't enough room in the magazine as it currently appears to cover the ever-increasing range of related technologies which you need, which you use, and which you enjoy. For this reason, we have decided to pool resources with our sister publication Home & Studio Recording and create something bigger, better and stronger than the sum of its parts - titled, appropriately, The Mix.

From June 23rd, the first issue of The Mix (dated July) will be available to lead us into a very promising future: a future in which every aspect of music production is reflected in one definitive magazine. Having listened to what you have to say, this, we are sure, is the evolution from which you, the reader, will most benefit. See you there.

Ask any Editor. There's something peculiarly awkward about writing editorials: enough words to make it a task you have to sit down and think about; too few to really get stuck into those issues that need to be addressed.

Writing this particular editorial, however, comes with its own unique set of problems - what to say in the last issue of MT as you know it. I could, I suppose, rummage through the previous 90 issues of the magazine and highlight the milestones of almost a decade of continuous publication. I could offer warm thanks to all those whose efforts have gone to make Music Technology the undisputed voice of authority in its field. Alternatively, I could do what comes more naturally at a time like this: go down to the pub and dispose of several pints of strong lager.

Better perhaps, to leave the last word to a man who I like to count amongst my closest friends, and the person whose vision was the original inspiration behind Music Technology - Dan Goldstein.

See you in The Mix.
Nigel Lord, Editor.

I know it's a cliche, but it genuinely does seem like only yesterday that the phrase 'Music Technology' came buzzing into my head - and, like the perfect pop record, obstinately refused to go away. Actually, it was a decade ago. But the events surrounding the development of that title and the creation of the magazine whose market it described are still startlingly vivid.

The mid-1980s were a time of great change - musically, technologically, and in lots of other ways, too. In 1984, I had just become editor of a magazine called Electronics & Music Maker. The magazine itself was lively, influential, and prosperous. We were sailing on the crest of a wave stirred up by a new breed of digital synthesisers, affordable multitrack recording, Frankie Coes To Hollywood, and a curious thing called MIDI which nobody seemed to have quite mastered yet. But while the magazine was successful, its title - conceived, I assume by committee, in an earlier era of veroboard fuzzboxes and studio thermometer kits - was holding it back.

Hence Music Technology - a name which would surely endure in the face of any new developments the music industry could throw at us. If it was new and you could make music with it, Music Technology would cover it. The magazine may bend with the wind, but the title would not. Well, so I thought, anyway. And for a while I was right. Electronic drum systems, guitar synths, affordable samplers, the steady evolution of the recording studio driven by MIDI (we've all mastered it by now, haven't we?) - all these things were embraced by Music Technology with a self-assurance remarkable for a magazine whose lifeblood was constantly shifting in character.

Times change, however. People — musicians, especially — are no longer that impressed by technology for its own sake. A whole generation has grown up in the belief that digital synthesisers are useless (an impression the industry is still doing little to dispel). In the studio, valves are making the kind of comeback that would make Lulu weep. And in the clubs, the DJ keeps spinning his vinyl even when the rest of the world is CD'd, DCC'd, and MiniDisc'd up to its credit limit.

A title which seemed bold, essential, and exciting a decade ago now sounds clumsy, cliquey, crass even. The musicians of the millennium need a magazine that looks into the future, but which, equally, accepts the fact that in certain circumstances, a low-tech, mid-tech, or even no-tech approach may be the one that has most to commend it.

So it's farewell Music Technology. Hello The Mix – a magazine which picks up where the old one left off. A magazine that upholds the MT traditions of speaking its mind, of searching out new ways of expression both musical and technological, and of laughing in the face of hype. A magazine written by real people with real opinions, designed with flair and imagination, and edited by... er, yours truly.

You'll find details of the mix on page 27 of this issue. But there will be no substitute for the real thing. As someone who already derives great satisfaction from Music Technology, you owe it to yourself to reserve a copy of The Mix at your newsagent every month.

Yes, you're right. This is the end of an era. But, as with that perfect pop record, just when you think it's all over, the best bit comes and hits you right between the eyes.

Take cover.

Dan Goldstein, Founding Editor,
Music Technology