Once again, it began as a throwaway Facebook exchange. Why, a Friend asked, do DJs have to invent new words and stupid spellings for everything?

Moving on from DJs’ assumed names and musos’ disdain, there is a wealth of worth in the language of the music business. It is constantly evolving to define, enable and exclude. And we need it as much as we need mics and mixers or ambition and opportunity…

For most players, the ‘feel’ of an instrument is an intrinsic and essential part of its character and its use. It can even be the most important part of your relationship with a particular instrument. To separate sound and feel would be laughable – unless you’re a keyboard player.

We’ve done this twice to date. First, when we used electronic keyboards to imitate other instruments. And now we’re doing it again with ‘soft synths’.

Two years ago, I blogged about apps ‘shaping future computer operation’. Not a bad call, on reflection – but I completely missed their potential role in ‘second screen’ television viewing.

Here the convenience and mobility of a tablet or smartphone conspires with a suitable app to become a companion device to live TV. Sounds trivial? Big broadcasters and serious numbers say that it’s not…

Wanted: Keyboard player/tape recorder technician for BBC Radiophonic Workshop tribute band. Knowledge of British 1960/70/80s TV and strong technical background essential. Must be able to patch unreliable synthesisers, splice tape and change valves in live performance setting. No time-wasters, breadheads or planks.

No takers? No surprise, really... Yesterday’s World is no place for today’s Tomorrow People. Or is it?

Midi has enjoyed a lot of press recently. In honour of its 30^th birthday, it’s been in the news everywhere from tech blogs to the broadsheets, from Twitter to TV. And deservedly so...

Against the odds, Midi has provided electronic music making with its lingua franca and rewritten the future of electronic musical instruments and music making. Thirty years ago, it was 1983 and Midi changed my life.

Just as a well-crafted thriller kicks up a gear when apparently unrelated threads converge, the collapse of UK music and media retailer HMV seems to have greater significance than ‘just’ the failure of another high-street shop in an economic crisis.

It feels designed. As if an unseen hand has pushed Nipper – presciently posed on His Masters’ Coffin – into the front line against the sinister forces behind the music download. And that a big reveal is just around the corner.