Country Life

5 min read

IT’S all too easy to destroy a heritage that has taken centuries to build. In the case of Britain’s parish-church pipe organs—a rich and glorious element of our history, both musical and artistic—the statistics are stark. ‘About one organ per week is

Prog

2 min read

Analogue acolytes hail the majestic Hammond In a time before the dawn of the synthesiser, there was a glorious age when the Hammond B3 organ ruled the musical landscape. For everyone from bluesmen such as Graham Bond to jazz cats like Larry Young and

Audio Technology

6 min read

Story: Preshan John Live Photo: Anna Madden Midway through their popular tune What About Me, Snarky Puppy frontman Michael League calls out, “Hey, it turns out half the band tonight is from Dallas, so we’re gonna let the Texans jam while the rest of

Electronic Musician

2 min read

In a past column, I discussed using analog octave fuzz pedals for interesting effects like Sitar and metallic sounds. In that column, I explained that those sounds were unavailable in digital octave pedals like the Electro-Harmonix POG or the T.C. El

Electronic Musician

2 min read

Like the antagonist from a horror movie franchise, this classic transistor-based organ refuses to die. Released in 1962 and designed as a more portable solution than Hammond’s B3, Vox’s Continental was everything the Hammond was not. The Hammond was

Country Life

1 min read

The 9,999 pipes of the RAH's organ, the biggest in the world when it debuted in 1871, have resounded through the decades with powerful bursts from Camille Saint-Saëns to the Tron soundtrack and McFly. This 150-year-old instrument has many names, incl

Computer Music

2 min read

Back in issue 215 we claimed that the world was going through turmoil. Well, what did we know?! To get you through whatever your current troubles, be they COVID, Megxit or just not enough hard drive space (and we know which we’re more stressed out by

Audio Technology

3 min read

Review: Preshan John Korg keyboards are heavyweights in both market position and gravitational pull. The new Grandstage has a significantly smaller stand-print than the flagship Kronos LS we reviewed a few months ago but still weighs close to a toddl

Guitarist

1 min read

Q I’d love to get some keyboard sounds without the need to learn a whole new instrument. I’ve looked into MIDI guitar stuff, but I find it fiddly and a bit expensive. I know there are pedals that do this stuff now. Just how good are these things at n

Electronic Musician

1 min read

I first discovered the Maxi-Korg via producer Justin Stanley during the making of the Sheryl Crow record 100 Miles to Memphis. Justin had the Maxi-Korg as well as an old Hammond chord organ, both of which I became obsessed with used on the record. I

JazzTimes

10 min read

As I delved ever deeper into the 14 albums that document the Larry Goldings/Peter Bernstein/Bill Stewart trio to prepare for our January Zoom conversation, what struck me most was their consistent excellence as they evolved from promising 20-somethin

Reader's Digest UK

1 min read

The Hammond Organ was the first electronic musical instrument to become commercially successful when it went on sale in 1935. Churches made up the largest share of Hammond buyers, accounting for half of all sales in the 1930s as the instrument was ad

Total Guitar

1 min read

An exceptional budget alternative to the Strat’s golden era, this will get you those spanky tones. Classy tube tones from pocket change. The Thomann-owned brand is a budget-tone powerhouse. Respectful of your pedalboard space and budget, this is a

NPR

1 min read

Henry and his band would have sounded right at home on Stax Records in the '70s — no small accomplishment. Watch them perform three funky, soulful jams.

Music Tech Magazine

5 min read

There's something glorious about the sound of a Hammond underneath your fingers, especially if you’re lucky enough to play a genuine C3 or B3 coupled with a Leslie speaker. It’s a tremendously versatile instrument – from the soft, almost angelic soun

UNCUT

1 min read

1 Stations II 2 The Pelican 3 Ruminant 4 Still Lives 5 Stations V 6 Midlands 7 Play The Ghost 8 Stations IV 9 Passing Bell 10 Hanging Gardens 11 Stations I 12 Gold Upon White 13 Oldgrowth 14 Stations III 15 Canyon Walls

Future Music

1 min read

While it might clearly say Bassline along the top of the synth, there’s more to Erica’s latest instrument than just bass. Much like Moog’s Mother instruments, there are handy tools here for sequencing percussive parts as well as bass sounds. As well

Total Guitar

1 min read

TYPE: Orchestral Model electro acoustic TOP: Solid blackwood BACK AND SIDES: Solid blackwood SCALE LENGTH: 25.3” / 643mm NECK: Mahogany FINGERBOARD: Ovangkol HARDWARE: Water buffalo bone nut and saddle, die-cast tuners with black knobs ELECTRO

Pianist

1 min read

Born in Liege, Cesar Franck made his career in Paris as a teacher, organist and composer. This piece comes from L’Organiste, a grab-bag collection of 59 pieces for harmonium and organ, composed in 1889-90 and published in 1896 after the composer’s de

JazzTimes

4 min read

Choosing holiday gifts for the musicians in your life is always a bit tricky. Our advice: Unless you like embarrassed silences, stay away from novelty and buy something useful. Renewables (strings, reeds, cleaning supplies) are always appreciated, pr

Guitar Magazine

3 min read

Though Eastman’s elegantly distressed Antique Varnish instruments typically dominate the conversation, over at the brand’s Beijing facility you’ll also find guitars dressed in pristine nitrocellulose being made by hand on the same old-school producti

Country Life

1 min read

Coventry Cathedral's mammoth 5,000-pipe organ is worth a visit in itself. David Lepine, organist at the time of the consecration, wrote in the Coventry Telegraph in 1962 that: ‘There is very good reason to believe that [the instrument] will prove to

Total Guitar

1 min read

Nope, it’s not a sports car. The MX5 from Headrush distills the DNA of its Pedalboard and Gigboard modellers into a more compact, yet still mighty format. On board you get 50 guitar and bass amp models, 66 effects, 15 speaker cabs, 10 mic emulations

Future Music

1 min read

Full Review: FM338 Well-designed and versatile. For those who work with both hardware and software, this may be the best studio centrepiece on the market. Review FM363 A very decent upgrade with genuinely pro features, that cements its position in th

What Hi-Fi?

1 min read

Mozart or Moby? Sitars or synthesizers? The good news is we don’t have to choose. Thanks to our ever-evolving technology, we’ve long enjoyed the ability to listen to pretty much anything – old or new, classical or modern – at the flick of a few cleve

BBC Music Magazine

1 min read

Ears pricked up recently here at BBC Music Magazine when Bristol property websites advertised the sale of a terraced house complete with four bedrooms, two reception rooms… and a fully operational, two-manual pipe organ (left). While our diapason-dot

Future Music

1 min read

Audio has its restrictions. Once rendered, an audio file can’t easily have its individual notes changed, or its ‘tone’ swapped out for another and so audio files do tend to be associated with the latter stages of production; why print audio when you

Future Music

1 min read

The Pro 3 has dual effects, meaning you can run two at once, with separate modulation and overall control. Often feeling like an afterthought on synths, these are good quality and tied in nicely, so you can modulate them as with anything else. My top

Guitarist

3 min read

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of the American Professional series, not to mention its sales compared with the other USA Fender production lines. “It’s the centre of gravity of the Fender line,” states Justin emphatically. “It is the numbe

Future Music

1 min read

“For this album we had a little writing room in Out Of The Blue Studios in Ancoats in Manchester, that Rob Gretton [New Order’s manager/Rob’s Records/the Pleasure label] established. I did a lot of tracks and demos there, before Martin Desai, the oth