All the snippety little secret bits of musicians' gossip that no-one else would print

Lyceum Ballroom, London

John Foxx at the Lyceum.

The non-musician has taken a lot of stick from his educated counterparts, yet he's contributed a lot to musical progress. What separates musicians and non-musicians?

To mime or not to mime, that is the question. Just when does miming stop being a convenient practice in presenting music TV programs and start to have an effect on the music itself?

How to be an engineer, what happened at these two trade shows and why John Lennon would turn in his grave

New music from Eurythmics, David Lee Roth, Queen, Genesis, ELP, and old-time Beatles.

No time to lose when it comes to odd metres. Nigel Lord takes a look at "difficult" time signatures in this month's instalment of MT's rhythm programming series.

Keyboards

SI in association with Dave Crombie Productions Inc present The Moog Story, starring Robert A Moog...

A collection of CDs which should be the sampler's delight are the stars of this month's Patchwork. If your music needs a boost from Ed Stratton, Coldcut or Pascal Gabriel, check out these disks.

What is one? Who has one? How can you get one? All these and more dealt with expertly by Bob Henrit

Drums

Pete Randall gives aid to skinbashers whose sound is bigger than their pockets, and goes hunting in second-hand land.

When is digital technology "better" than its analogue counterpart? Tim Goodyer measures the development of music technology against musicians' and technicians' abilities to use it.

From the profound to the downright silly, we wind up a year's chit-chat

Jez Ford raps his bits round this excellent budget price sound expander from Yamaha

Steve Hackett and Paddy Kingsland set out to test the merits and demerits of the Roland GR-500 and ARP Avatar. Synthesise watches, lads.

Backlash Fever

At last - the instrument with a name on everybody's lips receives an in-depth examination of its European version. Man-on-the-spot is Paul Wiffen.

Aria Competition Answers, Portland Studios, Introducing News Notes

Steinberg Scorewriter

Simon Trask looks at how the Germans get computers to print out staves, notes and time signatures, and is suitably impressed.