Why the valve gave way to the transistor. And why some people still don't believe it.

Rick Palmer samples budget buy

Tips on miking up drums.

Drumcheck

Bob Henrit back in the land of real drums, with the latest from Remo

More cash, more crash

Since Yamaha popularised FM synthesis, a lot of attention has been paid to digital technology. Lorenz Rychner explains how a lot of this technology still uses analogue programming techniques.

The Acoustic Guitar

We begin a new series that looks at how to recreate the sound of acoustic instruments using various methods of synth programming and sampling. In the first part, Howard Massey turns his attention to the acoustic guitar.

Drums

The Snare

In the third and final part of our series on synthesising and sampling the sounds of acoustic instruments Howard Massey hits it off with the snare drum.

Cymbalcheck

Bob Henrit bashes out a few ballsy numbers

Busker Music

Billy Punter puts out feelers in the Fulham Road — and finds Busker Music.

Wendy Carlos still loves digital synthesis. Through her pioneering soundtrack work on movies like Tron, and her synthesised interpretations of the classics, she has done as much as Jarre, Kraftwerk and Eno in making synthesisers both respectable and popular. She also used to be Walter Carlos. Daniel Rue investigates

Keyboardcheck

The Fender Rhodes is re-born. Jim Betteridge gets down to some serious Jazz Funking

The Clarinet

The second instalment of our series on programming and sampling the sounds of acoustic instruments. This month Howard Massey turns his attention to Acker Bilk's favourite: the clarinet.

Electronic drum kits give superb sound separation for the studio engineer - but he still has to mike up the cymbals. We investigate a novel application for the C-ducer contact strip microphone, which helps alleviate this problem.

Lash out in excitement at the percussion set-up that offers three drums and a stand for a ton.

quality in the loudness