Synthesizers

Make your digital synth put on an analogue hat. Does the current passion for analogue mean you have to put your digital synth back in its box and track down an analogue instrument? Not if Nick Magnus has anything to do with it!

Though now discontinued, the K1 and its modular cousins enjoy continuing popularity on the second hand market. Setting this synth up for multitimbral sequencer use is straightforward — when you know how.

Synthesist Ian Boddy steps back in time to report on the classic British sound machine, regularly found haunting the electronic music departments of many a university, and a recent addition to the author's own sonic armoury.

Greater reliance on hi-tech instruments in the studio means there's more demand for people able to programme them. Paul Gilby spoke first to Karin Clayton about her recently formed agency that supplies programmers for studio sessions, and then to Fairlight programmer Simon Lloyd about his work.