Acoustic Guitar

Recording the acoustic guitar.

The guitars behind five Roxy Music classics, plus a Skill Centre special as Phil shows you the chords to 'Love Is The Drug'.

Synthcheck

Is small beautiful? Jim Betteridge knows

Thrill to dynamic flanging as Dave Hastilow peruses the Micmix Dynaflanger

DrumCheck

The cheapest—and ugliest—way to add sampled sounds you your acoustic drums or drum machine. Tony Reed reports

General MIDI - what is it and where did it come from? Vic Lennard, who is also known as General MIDI having worked his way up from humble Private, explains all with some maps, a codebook and a sharp, pointy stick.

Something in the Shubbery — a new Capo, perhaps?

Poly Sequencer

Software for the Atari ST

The elite of ST scorewriting software is C-Lab's Notator and Steinberg's Cubase; their prices reflect this status. Ian Waugh makes the French connection and finds a cost-effective alternative.

Akai MIDI Effects

Three 19" rack-mounted modules that act as a delay, a dynamics controller, and an arpeggiator respectively. Simon Trask gives them the critical treatment.

Voice processor processed

Personal Keyboard

The words Siel and MIDI have gone hand in hand throughout 1984. Trish McGrath looks at what happens when the former puts the latter on a budget personal keyboard.

last episode

'When I Think Of You' by Janet Jackson

One good means of learning your way around the equipment you own is to use it to recreate somebody else's music. That's exactly what Mike Collins did last year whilst working at Yamaha's Research & Development Studio in London. Using nothing but Yamaha gear, he set about reproducing a Janet Jackson hit in full, by himself. Here, he recalls what was involved.

Our man Chris Maillard meets the Men for a man-to-Men chat

Synergy

Quantisation: the sequencer's revenge on the trained musician. Vic Lennard looks at this much-used but little-understood feature and finds that it has feelings, too.

A new studio standard?

Whilst the race is on to MIDIfy every effect under the sun, Korg suddenly leap ahead of the rest with their DVP-1. Ian Gilby delivers an exclusive preview of this unique rack-mounting device that combines a vocoder, harmoniser and pitch transposer with MIDI control.

Korg Mono/Poly

As analogue synthesis enjoys a return to popularity, yesterday's synths are becoming regular topics of conversation. Rob Norman rediscovers voltage control.

A crafty buyer's guide — what to look for.

'Can you benefit from something that doesn't make a noise?' asks Paul Gilby in his in-depth review of this interesting MIDI trigger device from the pioneers of the electronic drum. It might not generate sounds of its own but this unit certainly makes possible some marvellous effects when MIDI'd up to synthesizers. Check it out.