Glancing down our almost-annual Index To Articles, which this month lists five and a half years of articles in Sound On Sound, I found myself slightly surprised at the range of product reviews and features we've run. On reflection, there's nothing particularly surprising about it, firstly because we respond to changes in the hi-tech music field, and secondly because any magazine with a little imagination and an eye on the future will, over the course of five years, cover a lot of editorial ground. On top of that, you'd get pretty bored of a magazine that only published 'typical' articles every month, and indeed two of this month's contributions are a little different.

In the final part of his Music Seminar, the one and only Dave Stewart puts the case for getting to know all those awkward chords and scales properly — we don't tend to write about music theory, but Dave's series on songwriting has been very popular, and in the context of such a series a few words about intervals and scales are hardly out of place. We are, after all, a hi-tech music recording magazine.

Paul Lehrman also ventures into uncharted waters, with an account of how he put together a video showreel of soundtrack music on a shoestring budget. Audio and video are coming ever closer together these days — even low-cost MIDI products may offer SMPTE support, and the computers that so many of us use for music are capable of some stunning animation — but more importantly, many SOS readers are producing (or aspire to produce) music for video or film. This is where Paul's article comes in, because producing a decent demo video of your work to show to potential clients can be a costly undertaking — unless you follow his advice, of course.

Another video first this month is the introduction of the SOS Video Shop (see p103). You may remember one or two previous editorials and letters in Edits on the subject of video manuals and why they are or aren't a good thing, but I'm pleased to say that interest in the medium has been rising steadily, and it looks like they will be far easier to get hold of in the UK than was the case a year or so ago. Having supported the idea for some time, we ourselves will be selling video manuals for a range of equipment, starting this month with an excellent one for the Alesis SR16. One of the problems with video manuals in the UK has simply been that the manufacturers with tapes haven't managed to connect with the people that might want them. We're only too happy to help, so if you're a manufacturer or distributor who wants to get their video manuals out to the Great Hi-tech Public, get in touch.