Short Takes is THE MIX's very own bulletin board - this is the place for dealer information, recording courses, price changes and idle gossip

Soundcraft SM12 to blue box

Soundcraft has delivered the first SM12 Stage Monitor Console to leading PA hire company Blue Box. Purchased through LMC Audio Systems the 40 input console will be used for a variety of projects from one-off corporate shows to full tours.

Blue Box MD, Mark Metcalf, comments on the SM12's compact size to input ratio as a major advantage — especially when, as is the case in so many venues, space is severely limited.

Available in 32, 40 and 48 channel frame sizes the SM12's modular design meets a wide variety of on-stage specifications whilst working equally as effectively as a front-of-house mixer.

More from: Candy Davies, (Contact Details)

MIDI Tuition

For anyone wanting to understand MIDI, with £42 and an evening a week free to part with, then you could always pop over to our editor's house and get the low down.

Alternatively, Chris Russell is running a course in MIDI Music Sequencing for those who are completely dumbfounded by those confounded 5 pin DIN thingies and all that SysEx stuff. The eight week course involves an introduction to the basics, including equipment set up and connection, MIDI principles, and a hands on guide to creating a song using a computer.

More from: Chris on (Contact Details).

Akai S3000 Price Slash!

Akai Professional is pleased to announce that from the first of January 1995 there will be a price reduction on the S3000 series range of samplers.

Akai's Dave Caulfield said: "This range has been on the market for nearly two years and we are now able to pass on savings to the customer. We are also reacting to market demands. As the sampler market grows, more competition is appearing and we wish to retain our excellent market share. We will also be adding more features in the future through a regular program of free software updates".

The 82800 will now go for £1299 with standard 2Mb memory and four outputs. The S2800i (8 Mb with SCSI) will be £1799. The S3000 with 2Mb and eight outputs will be £2299. An S3000i (8 Mb and SCSI) will be £2799. And finally, the S3200 will sell at £3499, which is the same as the S3000i, only with direct to disk recording, SMPTE. SCSI and digital I/O. All prices include VAT.

More from: Toni Rutherford (Contact Details)

Abbey Road For TL Desk

The recently introduced TL Audio Valve mixer has been attracting interest from major studios and artists, with Abbey Road Studios and ex-Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones among the list of recent users.

Abbey Road used the mixer to record an Emily Van Evera solo vocal session at St. Andrew's Church in Toddington, Gloucestershire. Engineer Alex Marcou said of the unit: "It's a wonderful hand made console that is compact, light and very user friendly - we were very enthusiastic about what we heard. The desk was extremely quiet electrically, and the monitor mixes we did on the day could easily be used as a master."

John Paul Jones requested the mixer to record a string quartet session at Real World Studios recently. Jones - who was producing the American band Heart — pronounced himself "very happy" with the results.

More from: Tony Larking Sales (Contact Details)

BMF at National Hall

The 1995 British Music Fair will be held at the National Hall, Olympia, London from Sunday 23 July to Tuesday 25 July. The number of exhibitors has apparently grown, and demand for space is such that it is now impossible to satisfy the requirements of many of their exhibitors in Olympia 2.

More from: Arthur Holdsworth (Contact Details)

Shopping for Lexicons

Systems Workshop have recently been appointed main dealers for all those lovely Lexicon boxes. So if you want to know about the Lexicon range of products, including the brand new Reflex, then give the boys at the Workshop a call.

More from: Systems Workshop, (Contact Details).

Back to school

Barnsley college have recently upgraded all their music technology facilities to offer twenty-two workstations, each running Cubase (mostly the Score version on a 486PC, the rest with V3 on Mac and Atari), and with a multi-timbral module, MIDI keyboard, tape deck and headphones. The three recording studios also received seriously huge upgrades and now all have Alesis ADATs (one studio is 16-track, the other two, eight), as well as a multitude of other equipment too numerous to mention here. The courses covered range from foundation through to A-Level, HND, and finally on to degree standard.

There are also plans to add a comprehensive multi-media setup to the already huge stockpile of gizmos, with hard disk recording, video editing and CD-ROM facilities.

More from: Rupert Till (Music Technology Department), (Contact Details).

DC2000 At A Tangent

Tangent Music Productions has purchased a Soundcraft DC2000 for their newly completed studio facility in Stoke Poges, Berkshire. Based around the production talents of Ed Fermore and Richard Knox, the studio is already involved in extensive music and video projects, notably for computer company Commodore.

"We wanted a desk that we could get into quickly," says Fermore. "We had work on the go from day one and the DC2000 was great - the computer is easy to find your way around and the sound quality is amazing. Overall the desk is excellent value for money".

Other projects on the horizon for Tangent include plans to produce the world's fastest live-performance-to-commercially-available CD recording, and an album that will require the wholesale relocation of the studio to a temporary base in India.

More from: Candy Davies, Soundcraft (Contact Details)

Global Enthusiasm

Despite the best intentions of all those Internet services, there can be nothing finer than having your music pressed onto 12" vinyl or CD and sitting on the shelf of your local record store. The problem is most record companies are about as approachable as your friend's bad breath after a night swilling curry and beer.

Enter then, if you please, Last Unicorn, a new and enthusiastic record label willing to take on board your demo tapes and CDs, so long as they're good of course. Last Unicorn have added bonus of being a globally aware company, with offices in London, Sydney and California, so if you want to spread a little happiness around the planet with some of your finer tunes, send your demo with a biography to: (Contact Details).

Korg Puts on the Style

Korg has recently issued a complete new style library for the i4S Interactive Workstation. With a range totalling 25 disks, the styles are available now from your local dealer.

The disks include arrangements which enable you to expand every aspect of your creative play, from traditional dance to big band to rave.

Additional styles for i4S are also available from Labyrinth MIDI Music and BCK Products.

More from: Labyrinth (Contact Details)

Musical Chairs

The Islington Music Workshop seem to have more courses on offer than a Japanese menu. Their new programme, beginning in January, has training lectures in 24 track sound engineering (Jan 27th-29th, Feb 24th-26th, March 24th-26th, and April 21st-23rd) plus a course specifically for women (between 28th-30th April), Sampling/Sequencing and MIDI courses, backing vocal courses, plus a seminar on marketing your talent. The list is absolutely endless and would wear me out trying to write it. The best thing to do is to contact them yourself!

More from: IMW, (Contact Details).

FX expanding

FX Rentals, one of the UK's busiest pro-audio and backline rental specialist has commenced a £100000 purchasing programme to keep up with the increasing demand for equipment. The acquisition of five more Tascam DA88s bring FX's total stock of DA88s to nine units to keep up with the pace of demand for DA88s against the Alesis ADAT.

Other purchases include a Sony 7030, Roland JD990, Roland JV80, Massenburg 8200, Kurzweil K2000 (32Mb), SSL compressor (with autofade), an Apogee AD500, a Lynx KCU, an Akai S3200 (32Mb, SCSI), an S3000, a 32 channel Mackie mixing desk and a 900 Watt C-Audio power amp.

More from: FX Rentals Ltd (Contact Details)

Roland Freebies

If you haven't won the National Lottery then you might be feeling a little fed up, but Roland are all full of the Christmas spirit at the moment, and are offering anyone who buys any Roland products from them a free gift. You can choose from either some free Twiddly Bits, a year's free membership to the Roland Owners Club, or two free style disks for the E66/86. Obviously, you don't get something for nothing, and for your gift Roland will trouble you to fill in a short questionnaire. And that's not so hard really. (See page 89.)

More from: Roland UK, (Contact Details).

Top division

Two major announcements were made at Islington-based Sound Division recently. Roland announced that Sound Division would be their exclusive dealer in the DJ and disco market for their two new samplers, the MS1 and the JS30 (see Fast Forward for more info), and Clay Paky & Pulsar lighting announced that Sound Division would be the 'authorised London showroom' for their products.

The impressive showroom at Sound Division is aimed at the emerging breed of DJ/Producer, and on demonstration is the cream of both DJing and music production products. The new Roland samplers fit perfectly into their equipment folio, being extremely intuitive to use but retaining the impeccable sound quality of Roland's other samplers. With more and more DJs moving across to music production, Sound Division can look forward to continued success in the future.

More from: Sound Division (Contact Details)