Two into one DOES go! Or How I built myself a Roland D-50 Synthesizer

Part 1: The Roland D-50 Certain instruments can be claimed to have defined an era in music. In the 1980s, the Japanese synthesizer manufacturer, Roland created a unique-sounding digital synthesizer that was destined to appear on countless hit records, soundtracks and genres. Musically and sonically, it became synonymous with its era. I’ll describe the impact

Back to the Studio, 27 Years Later…

I ran a recording studio in the 1980s. The studio was known for getting great performances and sounds from the musicians we recorded. I stepped away from it in 1994 to raise my children. Now, on my MSc Audio Production course, I stepped back into a recording environment to carry out our assignment as a

Five Albums that have stayed with me for Decades

I posted recently about Adele having taken a stand against the use of shuffling to protect the integrity and sequence of tracks on her albums so her listeners would hear her albums the way she intended. That caused me to think about the album as an art form, rather than just being a carrier bag

Adele – saviour of the album as an art form?

Artists and record producers invest a great deal of creativity, thought and work into the creation of their albums. The order of songs or instrumentals on an album is an important element of the flow and progression of the musical and narrative themes the artist is communicating. In many ways, an album tells a story

Revelations in Audio: Stereo Sound on Loudspeakers and in Headphones vs Binaural Audio

I’ve always preferred to listen to recorded music on speakers. I’ve had high quality hi-fi systems since I was 15, including a superb pair of loudspeakers I built myself from a Wilmslow Audio kit design. For me, music reproduced through a quality system via loudspeakers, positioned carefully in a dedicated listening room, sounds natural and

My five favourite international musicians

Kebu – Sebastian ‘Kebu’ Teir from Finland is the most genuine and likeable synthesizer player. I’ve seen him play live many times around Europe. A friend to his many fans, his gigs are always joyful celebrations of music. Kebu’s compositions are at the forefront of modern analogue synthesizer music. He is widely considered to be a pioneering