
Making Arrangements: Part 3
This month, some of the people who actually get their hands dirty with arranging — often for the household names in popular music — pass on their thoughts, hints and tips.
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This month, some of the people who actually get their hands dirty with arranging — often for the household names in popular music — pass on their thoughts, hints and tips.

For his latest musical project, Rick Wakeman chose to work with a travelling state circus. Jonathan Miller discusses the keyboard virtuoso's clowning glory, and delves into the man's 27-year recording career.

In their eagerly-awaited new flagship synth, Roland have harked back to the sampling technology of their respected S-series samplers, as well as adding some contemporary touches to equip it for the 21st century. Gordon Reid assesses past, present and future.

The studio business has seen huge changes in the last 10 years, and the equipment, techniques and fashions that were cutting-edge in the early '90s are often redundant now. Mike Senior meets a producer and engineer who, having made it to the top then decided to take a five-year break and is now back with a vengeance.

Martin Russ brings you the latest Apple news, benefits from an Opcode World Tour, reveals all about the new Power Macs, and passes an instant wallpaper music recipe...


Take a powerful PC. Add a clever bit of programming, a soundcard and some samples, and you have the reality software synthesizer. Not a revolutionary concept, but wait until you hear the sounds! Martin Walker picks himself up off the floor.

Big George looks at arranging for strings, brass and horns.

Using a sampler without some sort of hard drive is just not an option these days, which means that some understanding of SCSI is necessary. Devoted Akai samplist Paul Farrer explains some of the pitfalls that can befall the unwary user of SCSI'd up samplers, and examines some of the other cross-platform issues that can complicate sampling.

Paul White kicks off a new series for newcomers to MIDI.

With such a huge market to aim at, no software house can ignore the PC musician. Paul Nagle checks out Emagic's latest upgrade for Windows workers.

PC users have had to wait almost two years for many of the improvements which graced version 4 of Steinberg's popular sequencing package on the Mac platform. Now, however, they've leapfrogged straight to version 5, a major upgrade which incorporates all of those improvements and more. Martin Walker finds out if the wait was worthwhile.

Nick Magnus takes a look at the digital incarnation of Dynacord's popular CLS 222 Leslie Simulator.


Roland's impressive range of 'next generation' instruments have seen the company share a number of new technologies across a wide range of products. The latest of these is the VA7, an arranger keyboard which incorporates their revolutionary Variphrase technology. Paul Farrer makes arrangements...

Steinberg believe that now that PCs are so powerful, the days of dedicated DSP farm for professional computer-based recording systems are over. Martin Walker enters the native processing world of Nuendo.

Martin Newcomb opened his vast collection of rare electronic instruments to the public, but the public stayed at home. Now, therefore, he's changed his plans and built a studio — but some amazing vintage synths still feature prominently. Gordon Reid finds out more from Martin and studio designer Kevin Van Green.

Vintage producer/engineer Nigel Bates was one of the original devotees of the PPG Wave digital synthesizer, an instrument that is still a mainstay of his music. These days, he's also enthsiastic in his use of the latest software-based mixing tools. Paul Wiffen finds out more about his fusion of the classic and the cutting-edge. Extra material by Sam Inglis and Matt Bell.

We've all lusted after the shiny new gear that appears month after month in the pages of Sound On Sound — but how do you know what will make a real difference to your recordings and what will be an expensive luxury? Paul White picks out the areas where money will be well spent, and the products that will take your sound up a gear.

With Portishead's much acclaimed Gold selling debut album, Dummy, riding high in the charts, the West Country finally have an act to make a song and dance about. Jonathan Miller gets the low down on fame, fortune and M16 from co-producer and band member Adrian Utley, a man of many talents.