This month's issue once again gives you the opportunity to play music by an important performer. Music is for musicians of any age and Ike Isaacs is one "master of his art" who is a great inspiration to young and old.

A glance at the Yamaha GS1 article might convince you of the need to digest all the technical information we give you with increased vigour — if music is to benefit from the technological developments, no musician or music company can afford to ignore the technical advances being made in instruments.

We also start a new video music column. The music video film is used a lot on television and most video shops stock them, but are they really worth buying? We'll be reviewing these to help you evaluate this new area of music entertainment.

If you're willing to build equipment yourself, two new projects should save you a lot of money and give you the chance to use digital effects and programmed drums in your music.

Since the December issue, Electronics & Music Maker has put its whole effort into providing a monthly magazine for the practical musician — with tremendous response from our readers. Not only does the magazine have a large U.K. distribution but it reaches a wide international readership as well.

An interesting development in LED displays has recently been unveiled by the Japanese Sanyo Electric Co. — a BLUE LED, which will complement the current red, orange, yellow and green types. With the combined red/green LED already available, it shouldn't be too long before we see a single LED package capable of emitting red, green and blue in combination for full colour graphic displays. No doubt these will then become a feature of musical instruments.

Looking at the year ahead, the availability of cheaper 8-track recording on standard ¼" tape, along with cheaper instruments that enable musicians to "arrange" their sounds, is likely to make 1982 the year that emphasises instrument portability, programmability and price.