How many drum mics do I need?

It’s a matter of taste, but it’s good to have options! Great results are possible with careful placement of a single mic – then compressed heavily; but multiple microphones always give you way more options and you can choose which mics to have in the fina

Should I buy a mono or poly analogue synth?

Monophonic analogue instruments have been the big synth success story of the past few years, particularly at the budget end of the market. Their ubiquity and affordability has meant that pretty anyone can get their hands on one and add some analogue goodness to their productions.

The downside, though – if you choose to look at it like that – is that these synths can only play one note at a time, which means you’re restricted in how you can use them. A monosynth is fine for basslines and lead parts, but you can’t play chords on it.

That’s where polys come in but, as you’d expect, these generally come with much higher price tags and there are fewer of them to choose from.

So, should you buy yourself a monosynth now or hold onto your cash and save up for a poly? If you’re coming from a piano background and want an electronic instrument that supports your full playing capabilities then a poly is definitely worth having if you can afford it. Single-finger prodders, on the other hand, might decide that such an instrument would be wasted on them.

It’s also worth remembering that there are workarounds that enable you to turn your mono into a poly - sort of. You could create a multisampled patch of your synth, for example, and then play that back with full polyphony in software. Alternatively, you could record chords note by note on separate audio tracks, though this could be a little time consuming. There’s also the option of having an analogue monosynth and then choosing a more affordable digital poly.

The bottom line is that most synthheads will tell you that you need both types of instrument in your studio. Polys are, in many ways, more flexible, but some of the greatest synths in history are monos (did someone say Minimoog?) and they should never be discounted.

Will ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’ slow my computer down?

There was a certain amount of panic when the Meltdown and Spectre CPU issues emerged early in January, which probably wasn’t helped by the fact that they were called scary names like Meltdown and Spectre. To recap, it seemed that pretty much every Intel processor from the past decade was affected - there was a risk that sensitive data stored within your CPU could be hacked - and that a software fix would be required to resolve the problem. What’s more, it was speculated that said fix might end up slowing down your computer by anything up to 30%.

The picture quickly changed after that, with Intel claiming that it wasn’t just their chips that were affected, and that, when it came to the fixes, any performance impacts would be workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, not particularly significant. However, Microsoft said that performance drops could be expected, particularly in older computers.

Our guess is that it could be a while before we can determine the full impact of all this – there’s a chance that, if there are performance problems, they could

be lessened further down the line with additional updates. However, there’s no doubt that many musicians use their computers in a more than ‘average’ capacity, so there’s certainly a chance that some of us could suffer.

How do I make multiscreen videos like the ones I see on YouTube?

One man/woman band’ music videos that feature multiple clips on the same screen are all over YouTube, and can look and sound pretty impressive. However, they’re actually pretty simple to make: most desktop video editing applications will enable you to create them.

If you want a mobile option, Roland have just released 4XCamera, an iOS app that enables you to record up to four clips. You do this just as you would if you were building up a track in a DAW: record your first part, then use this as a guide for the others. Clips can be trimmed and volumes balanced before you export a final video.

You can download 4XCamera for free and record up to two performances; a £3.99/$3.99 in-app purchase will unlock full functionality.