A look at some forthcoming products from the world of hi-tech music and recording.

Ignore them at your peril!

Your Paul Hardcastle Aspirations!

Steve Howell takes up his razor blade once again and explains the basis for extended remixes.

Drawmer 1960 Dual Valve Compressor

Valves and chips combine to produce a compressor that is flexible, flattering and very friendly. But then it's built in Yorkshire, so it should be.

Multi Signal Processor

Dave Hastilow fishes around for some new angles on recording technique — in the field or at home. Or in the river.

What makes one recording engineer better than another, and how can you improve your recording engineering skills? In this introduction to a new series on recording techniques, David Mellor outlines an engineer's role in the studio, and explains why a good engineer is so important.

Kawai's latest synth comes complete with their latest approach to sound creation: Digital Multi Spectrum synthesis. Ian Waugh checks out some serious competition for FM and LA.

ELECTRONIC PATCHBAY

Tantek enters the professional market with a patchbay par excellence.

in Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe

Session player Julian Colbeck tells the tale of how he got the gig as support keyboard player for Rick Wakeman on the recent Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe world tour, and runs through the instrumentation he and Rick used on stage.

A revised version of ex-E&MM staffer Pete Kershaw's electronic percussion system: it uses a hybrid of analogue and digital technology. Review by Paul White.

The long-awaited new box from Alesis gives the user access to up to four simultaneous high quality effects.

PRS - The Performing Right Society

The first of an occasional series in which David Mellor takes a look at the organisations that help musicians and composers earn an honest crust in this hard world. This month: the Performing Right Society.

Jan Hammer Talks Tech

Quasimidi Style Drive Realtime Arranger

A novel 'backing band in a box' comes under Paul White's critical gaze.

In the first of a two-part series, Chris Meyer looks into the workings of additive synthesis and how it can be used to accurately mimic naturally-occurring sounds.

Detailed notes on the design and construction of a complete synthesiser voice card you can build yourself, by the team that put it all together in the first place.

Guitarcheck

An instrument to put the Shadow in the shade? Paul Trynka has his doubts

Inside the Yamaha GS1 & GS2

This month's Advanced Music Synthesis explains why these digital synthesisers are 'very expensive and very good'

The Perfect Beat

Is this the ideal way to programme rhythm patterns into your drum machine? Paul Ireson gives Roland's updated drum-to-MIDI convertor a good bashing!

An Alternative To Tape

From the analogue to the digital era, magnetic tape has been the prime production medium for recorded music for several decades. David Mellor examines new developments in recording and speculates where they might lead.

Patch Librarian

Tired of swapping Atari disks to edit parameters on different synths - or of paying for a variety of editors? Send for a universal synth editor. Ian "Mr Universe" Waugh flexes Chameleon's muscles.

Opcode Studio Vision

Integrated sequencing/d-t-d recording