Complete index

Every entry in the magazine, in section order. This is the dense list; the front page is an edit of it.

The Machines
The TR-808 1.1	Roland's 1980 machine sounded nothing like a drum kit, sold badly, was discontinued in three years, and became one of the most consequential instruments ever built precisely because it sounded synthetic.
The Prophet-5 1.2	Five polyphonic voices with patch memory, which meant a sound could be recalled rather than rebuilt.
The Linn LM-1 1.3	Real sampled drums, expensive, and the reason a lot of early-eighties pop has identical snares.
The DX7 1.4	FM synthesis in 1983, hard to program and easy to buy, which is why one preset electric piano is all over the decade.
The Rooms
Townhouse Studio 2 2.1	The stone room whose ambience, through a reverse-talkback compressor, produced gated reverb more or less by accident.
A room as an instrument 2.2	Why the same kit recorded in two rooms is two different sounds, and what a live room actually contributes.
Cologne 2.3	Conny Plank's studio and a drier, more mechanical European use of the same technology.
The Desk
Gated reverb 3.1	Hugh Padgham's accident, how the gate cuts the tail, and why the effect defines a decade of drums.
Martin Rushent and Dare 3.2	An album assembled from sequencer parts and edits, and the argument that it is produced rather than performed.
The producer as author 3.3	When the arrangement is made at the desk, authorship gets harder to locate.
Tape
Splicing 4.1	A razor blade, a block and a grease pencil — editing as a physical act with no undo.
Multitrack 4.2	Twenty-four tracks change what an arrangement can be, and what it costs.
Sequencer lock 4.3	Synchronising machines to tape is the unglamorous problem that had to be solved first.
Formats
The twelve-inch 5.1	Wider groove spacing means more level and more bass, which is why the extended mix exists as a format decision.
The compact cassette 5.2	Portable, recordable and lossy — and the first format listeners could edit themselves.
Radio formats 5.3	What a playlist would accept shaped song length and structure more than most accounts admit.
The Wave
What the label covered 6.1	New wave was a marketing category before it was a sound, applied to bands with very little in common.
Punk to synth 6.2	The shift from guitar to sequencer happened faster than the story usually allows.
Disputed
Who invented gated reverb 7.1	Several people were in the room and the accounts do not agree; the honest answer is that it is contested.
The first sampled record 7.2	A claim that depends entirely on what counts as sampling.