Most pitch-tracking machines cost a second mortgage to get hold of, but Digisound's new offering offers CV/Gate compatibility for around £200. Paul White has the details.

In this age of the preset, you need all the help available to stamp your personality on the sounds you produce. Paul Ireson finds a new ally in the fight for individuality - ART's fully programmable, four-effects-at-once signal processor.

Software for Apple Macintosh

After the Jam Factory comes "M", an advanced music composition and manipulation system for the Mac. Jim Burgess investigates a variation on the theme of MIDI recording.

A ten preset voice electronic piano with touch sensitive keyboard and separate bass section.

Electric Guitar Bow

all publicity is good publicity - and even with limited funds, your band can still have a great image

Soaking your drum voices in reverb effects gives great sounds but it makes programming drum patterns much harder. Nigel Lord explains how to fit larger-than-life drums into a song.

In a world that's constantly changing

David Ellis buys a Commodore Amiga and looks at the latest software written for it. The music is good, the graphics are better - but what does the future hold?

Sampling clichés and how to avoid them.

With a little thought and a few 'tricks of the trade', it is possible to produce top quality recordings at home. David Mellor explains how.

Recipes For A Tasty Dance Track

Our dance music series continues with a selection of drum patterns, chords, and basslines for you to try out.

Studio Test

Jim Betteridge explores every nuance of the MTR mixer, but still doesn't reveal what MTR stands for

Mozart Meets C-Lab Notator

Proving that hi-tech tools are not the sole preserve of pop musicians, Richard Gonski, Music Director of the Electric Symphony Orchestra, tells how he and Francis Monkman took Mozart's Piano Concerto In C Minor, K.491, and sequenced the whole work using C-Lab's Notator.

Imagine buying a drum machine full of good factory preset rhythm programs - instead of the usual collection of cliches. Nigel Lord offers a solution to pre-programmed predictability.

Rudi Cazeaux explores the nature of sound and presents some basic guidelines for synthesizing the various standard groups of acoustic instruments.

SpeakerCheck

The Armoury Show's Russell Webb lends an ear to Celestion's new computer-aided Sidewinders, cheap speakers with a high-class sound

MSX Software

Is the Japanese computer standard a dead duck, or will the latest music and video software from Toshiba and Pioneer save the day? Annabel Scott has the answers.

Digital Audio Workstation

Korg are well known for making musical instruments, but the Soundlink takes them into the new field of hard disk recording/editing. David Mellor watches the price of hard disk editors descend to breathable regions of the atmosphere.

Software for the Atari ST

Until now writing MIDI software has been the preserve of a few dedicated individuals, but T-Basic offers to make MIDI programming accessible to the masses. Ian Waugh gets online.