During a few hot days in August Roland UK held their Public Show at the Imperial Hotel, London. E&MM also took part in the event and presented a series of lectures that examined some of the latest micro music software and hardware.

Our Computer Musician editor, David Ellis, expounded on Apple II's and BBCB's and divulged some original sound sampling, visuals, and music printing software. Terry Lloyd brought along an Alpha Syntauri system complete with its Music Composer that reproduces music files and prints them out. Glenn Rogers did a magnificent job of keeping 10 micros ticking over and actually produced in a matter of days a ZX Spectrum sequencer program for Roland's JX-3P via the MIDI.

Yamaha had supplied latest MIDI stuff for Apple II and their DX-7 FM synthesizer, and we linked this up with the JX-3P and an SCI Prophet 600 to make a fantastic MIDI trio! Through the use of volume foot pedals and Spectrum-controlled interfaces on inputs and outputs, all was revealed.

Roland made a big contribution to the lecture's hardware and there's no doubt that if you're any way inclined to using a micro with your synth that they have enough products to fulfil your needs - especially with their superb microcomposers. Heading the interest in 'micro-drums' was the MPC Drum Computer and, of course, E&MM's projects also attracted a lot of attention.