PUBLIC PERFORMANCE AND imagery are inseparable. Whether we're talking about a politician delivering a speech or a guitarist delivering a solo, the performance is incomplete without the appropriate imagery. In the case of the politician, the imagery may be invoked by generous waving of hands and accusatory pointing of fingers. The guitarist, meanwhile, has one of the best documented of all phallic symbols in his or her(!) hands. Then there's the modern keyboard... Not really a lot to commend it, is there - an ironing board with a few switches along one edge? Is it any wonder that the keyboard hero is dead? I guess they call it progress. That's what I'm going to call it, anyway. That way it may also help explain why more musical innovation has taken place around the keyboard player than the guitarist in the last decade.

It was progress that took music from its vocal origins and brought instruments into being. Progress that took the keyboard concept of the pipe organ, piano and harpsichord and endowed it first with the sounds of tonewheels and tines, and then with the assorted oscillators that give us analogue and then digital synthesisers and samplers. Now progress is pushing us forward once again.

The day of the synthesiser "wizard" has passed. The banks of keyboards that used to obscure their players and raise the heartbeat of a progressive rock audience have given way to MIDI controller keyboards that give no visual cues to their power. The young keyboard fan has come of age (although I hear the drumbores are still counting cymbals). As the 1980s draw to a close, what raises heartbeats is a computer screen crowded with pull-down menus and a sampler with a lifetime's worth of memory - not the most visual of instruments, I'm sure you'll agree.

Instead of posing around a stage with the rest of the kids, 1989's music technology enthusiast has chosen the solitude of a bedroom to explore methods of music composition no longer dependent on playing techniques, sight reading or understanding of music theory. That's one way to escape the 12-bar blues jam that's closed far too many rehearsals and passed as music at far too many gigs.

Now, certain persons are sure to point out that most of the best popular music is the result of collaborations between musicians, and that all this "one man and a computer" stuff is simply unhealthy. And, to my mind, they're right; there're aren't many musicians capable of producing their best work in isolation. But why must we accept that this new breed of musician works alone? What's wrong with a studio built for two? And there's another side to this - one that's sure to go down badly with the narrow minds. These "new" methods of composition often draw on existing recordings of music. Like it or not, a solo composer is already dealing with a musical "partner" in the form of the artist whose material is being incorporated in, or used as a basis of, a new composition. Like any revolutionary idea, making music out of other peoples' recordings is controversial. It has its advocates and its detractors, but that's progress.

So what are we going to do with the most powerful and most quickly evolving technology in music? Keep the images and limitations of the past or accept the musical challenges that progress offers us and map out the rules for a new generation of musicians? The answer, and the choice, are yours and mine.