Welcome to AMPLINEX 007

Welcome to AMPLINEX 007 and the start of a new AMPLINEX year. I would firstly like to apologize for the late arrival of this issue of AMPLINEX - a combination of circumstances including holidays and the postal strike combined to put us about two weeks behind schedule. However, we hope to be back on track in November.

In this issue we have the second part of Scott Mackie's guide to MIDI interfacing which provides software to accompany the hardware he described in AMPLINEX 006. You will find that MIDI is also a subject much in evidence in our regular 'Questions and Answers' section.

Followers of Roger Cawkwell's excellent 'Music theory in practice' series will be disappointed to hear that he has been unable to provide a further instalment for this issue but he hopes to resume the series in AMPLINEX 008.

After the wealth of utilities in AMPLINEX 006 we have included only one in this issue - a new keyboard split program from Richard Bettis (the sideways RAM help utility mentioned in AMPLINEX 006 has been postponed until the next issue).

This has, however, given us more space for music programs (14 in all) including an interesting collection of original music from contributors new to the AMPLINEX music section.

One of the features which we intended to include on this disc was an excellent index to AMPLINEX issues 001-006, compiled by Patrick Black. Unfortunately, at over 27K in length it was not possible to fit it on to this disc.

To get a copy of this file (which is in an 80-column format, ready to print) you should send a blank, formatted disc to AMPLINEX along with the usual postage and packing. Please mark the disc 'INDEX' and indicate whether your disc is in 40- or 80-track format. If you wish to save on postage, you can include the extra disc with the one you send in for AMPLINEX 008.

This index has already proven a valuable aid here at AMPLINEX and we would recommend it to all our members.

In our first issue in September 1987 we included a short survey to try to build a picture of the interests of the membership and to find out what hardware and software people had available. As a year has passed since then and the membership has increased several fold, we have decided to issue another survey.

We would, therefore, be most grateful if you would spend a few minutes completing the various sections of the survey. We are especially interested in your views on the contents of AMPLINEX as this will help us to make the magazine even more useful to you.

We would like to publish the results of the survey in the next issue of AMPLINEX so please try to return your disc with the survey results by the submission deadline.

Thank you.

Kevin Doyle, Roy Follett and Jackie Follett