Ever since the invention of the wax cylinder, listening to recorded music has been a passive experience; now CDs are capable of holding MIDI and other performance data. Bob O'Donnell looks at the changing face of music.

The best music program ever?

Part 1: In the States, Coda's Finale has been hailed as the "the most exciting use of the Apple Macintosh to date" and "the most powerful, most intelligent, most flexible music software available today". In this lengthy two-part review, Kendall Wrightson cuts through the hype to discover whether the claims are fact or fiction.

New technology has already brought the music industries of East and West closer together, but how has that affected the music itself, and what will happen as the two cultures get closer still? Gary Larson gives his viewpoint.

The tuition course that breaks the barriers

WAP Spells Tuition — Lorna Read Investigates Music Course

The Jenkins Method

Argue with six string instructor and cult rock hero Billy Jenkins on the best way of teaching yourself to play.

Jonathan Sorrell is one of a handful of session programmers working with the world's most sophisticated sampling keyboard - the Synclavier. Paul Gilby discovers how it came about.

In fact, when is it a musical instrument? We start making sense of the silicon chip.

MoTU Freestyle

Interactive Mac sequencing

Pascal Bussy (SAF Publishing)

Bob Dormon finds the Royal Academy moving with the times

Music technology consultant Martin Russ reports on the recent Conference On Reproduced Sound held by the Institute of Acoustics.

PART 2: Greg Truckell winds up his two-part power user's guide to this popular LA expander with some applications techniques.

Into the Seventies

An instrument which has shaped today's electro-music

Exclusive reviews of two avant garde music festivals that saw technology pushed to its creative limits, Ars Electronica at Linz and the International Computer Music Conference at IRCAM, Paris.

Rikki Sylvan

The latest reports from the lands of Trade and Product

Suffering Lack of Creativity - a Doctor writes.

Richard Elen visits the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop and hitches a ride through 21 years of past and present music and effects production from Quatermass to Blake's 7.

The final disc in the Zero-G Datafile series joins Coldcut's Kleptomania in the growing library of sample CDs - Tim Goodyer checks them out, while Andy Neve loads The Sound Foundation's programming efforts into his Roland MKS70 in this month's Patchwork.

Gate, Trigger and Clock Pulses

Trigger, gate and clock pulses

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