I was the publisher of Making 4-Track Music and Making Multi-Track Music, in the 80s. John Peel (not the DJ) was a contributor to my magazine Making Music. The book was an early attempt to help de-mystify the then new electonification of music.

Thanks for your kind comments on Making Music magazine. I started this magazine in 1986 and took on the editorial team from the about-to-go-bust 1,2 Testing: Paul Colbert, later to become editor of NME, Tony Bacon, prolific historian and expert on guitars, and John Lewin, who in 1992 moved to BBC radio to produce the Danny Baker show.
The idea was to make music more accessible to young (and not so young) musicians and to try to interpret the burgeoning complexities of making music emerging at that time: ‘music is fun, not science’ was the clarion call. MM was iconoclastic in the way it presented features on making it in the business, dealing with subjects like touring in a Transit with four farting musicians, and dealing with the lead singer’s partner who wants to join the band (think Paul and Linda). It was also unique among its peers in testing instruments and equipment, warts and all, which frequently incurred the wrath of the biggest names in the industry. It’s 60,000 circulation, distributed free through music instrument outlets was by far the biggest of any musician’s magazine and made it a strong force in the business. Its annual ‘best instruments awards’, presented by luminaries such as Jools Holland, George Martin and Mark King at a glittering ceremony at the prestigious MusicMesse in Frankfurt, was much coveted by the industry.
I sold the magazine at its height in 1994. Unfortunately, the new owners had no empathy with the ethos of the magazine so it quickly shrank in size and reputation and within a very few years it closed.

Making Music was another pre-internet look into a world that was otherwise completely unobtainable. I remember it being a free magazine, I picked it up regularly when i was about 10-12 years old, the music shop didnt appreciate me not buying anything to go with my free copy though.

Thats a different cover to my copy, I think there must have been a few editions.

haha thanks man. Yeah ya know what that was the first time that I ever felt I had accomplished something sonically (as opposed to strictly musically). So, the beginning of the end so-to-speak. No pun intended.

thanks for writing in Chris! tell us about your current ventures. Still in journalism/music?