Producer: Sinclair
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £9.95
Language: BASIC
Author: Incognito Software

It's unlikely that the sound output of the Spectrum will ever rival that of the London Symphony Orchestra or that a budding Beethoven will claim his Spectrum taught him what he knew. Mind you, unless you significantly amplify the sound output for this Sinclair program, you might think you are simulating Beethoven's inability to hear what he was playing because of his deafness!

Musicmaster is a rather jolly tutorial program which allows you to create tunes and play them. The program can hardly be claimed as a utility, and it probably fails to be educational in a detailed manner. There are two modes available - stave or keyboard. Stave mode provides a range of two octaves upwards from A below middle C and uses the alphabet keys a to g and a to G. The notes may be prefaced by pressing keys S (sharp), L (flat) or N (natural). Keyboard mode allows the two top rows of the keyboard to be used as a keyboard instrument with 10 white notes and 7 black notes from middle C upwards. There is an overlay supplied for the keys to help you play.

The main menu allows you to select Notes On Music, a sub-menu with five sections otters reasonably detailed notes on music and writing it as it applies to this program. Note pitch, duration are covered, rests - the space allowed between notes: key and time signatures. Tune creation may be done in either stave or keyboard mode. In either case the notes played are shown on screen and heard. Before a tune can be written you must enter the time signature and whether sharps and flats are to be used. At this stage a knowledge of music would be useful but it isn't essential. At any stage, pressing K will end the tune and it may be played back at varying speeds up to 200 crotchets per minute. Tunes may be saved.

COMMENTS

Control keys: all by on-screen prompts
Use of colour: simple. But clear
Graphics: stave and note representation works very well
Sound: rather depends on you

The main drawback with any music program for the Spectrum is the Spectrum itself. Its sound limitations really make it little more than a toy when it comes to music. Obviously with one one channel it isn't possible to make up really interesting sounds and one is restricted to the familiar beep with different durations. That said, it is possible to write neat tunes with this program and the Notes section does help to make it a valuable early learning aid (not necessarily for children either).

Being in BASIC there are aspects which are slow. Some of the graphics take their time to build up, and you can get stuck for ages in the notes section on duration. I wouldn't think this is intended as a serious music learning program, although it could be useful for back up purposes in learning I was surprised to see that in Keyboard mode you can delete the last note written, but apparently you can't do so in Stave mode.

Musicmaster may be a way of learning about music, or a way of teaching people about music BUT being written in BASIC it is impossible to get any beats and tempos going realistically. It's odd that Sinclair have released something that is written in BASIC when they could have done a program in machine code and included far more features like synthesis.

MUSIC MICRO, PLEASE

Just to prove that Tech Niche isn't all soulless stuff about insensitive peripherals, JON BATES and GRAEME KIDD throw away their joysticks and take up the baton to conduct a round-up of sensitively musical software.

No matter how wonderful you believe your Spectrum to be, in arguments with Commodore, BBC or even Amstrad owners, you will have to concede that they have the edge when it comes to sound. The Amstrad, for instance, has three channels, which allows you to create a stereo sound and a white noise generator. Your 'umble Speccy doesn't have a chip dedicated to sound generation and gets by when it comes to making sound by switching the 'speaker' on and off, more rapidly for higher notes, less rapidly for the lower ones.

The BASIC Manual is a bit naughty when it tells you: '...because there is only one loudspeaker in the computer you can only play one note at a time, so you are restricted to unharmonised tunes.'

'Loudspeaker' it ain't, but the only reason why you can't play more than one note at a time is because there's only one channel which can be switched on and off to generate noise. Other computers, which have dedicated sound chips, let you use several channels and that allows more complicated, harmonised tunes to be put together. Like the manual says, if you want anything more than simple unharmonised tunes on the Spectrum 'you must sing it yourself.' As you might expect, there's quite a lot of specialised hardware and software available which extends the capabilities of the Spectrum, moving it towards (and maybe even past) the level of musical competence achieved by other machines. We'll be taking a look at these bolt-on musical goodies in future Niches; for the present we've confined ourselves to a close examination of the software which runs on the basic Spectrum.

We found six programs which, to a greater or lesser extent, take the pain out of programming tunes in the 'BEEP 1,0: BEEP 5,3:' format, and three musical education packages which go part of the way to helping the musically illiterate get to grips with the subject. Rather than plunge in at the deep end on our own, we persuaded a real live musician - Jon Bates - to help evaluate the software.

A professional keyboard player, author of a book on synthesisers and keyboard teacher, Jon invented a new rating for the purposes of these reviews - MUSICALITY. We've taken account of Graphics, Educational Value and User-friendliness, but Musicality is, in effect, a musician-friendliness rating and depends on the musical accuracy of the software. Before awarding the Musicality rating for each program, Jon asked himself the question, 'is it in accordance with the basic rules of how music is written and sounds?' 0/10 for Musicality would make a musician scream, he told us!

The other half of the dynamic reviewing duo, Mr Kidd, claims to know a bit about computers but is a self-confessed music illiterate. Nuff said about him.

MUSICMASTER
Sinclair/Incognito
£9.95

Musicmaster allows you to enter notes either direct onto the stave, pressing keys for the name of notes A-G and prefacing them with S for sharp, L for flat or N for natural, or you can use the keyboard overlay supplied with the cassette to make the two top rows of your Spectrum's keyboard simulate a real keyboard.

The program offers all the basic elements needed to start making music with your computer, allowing the user to 'music process' a tune once it is entered into the machine using the editing facility. Only one tune can be held in memory at any one time, which can be mildly infuriating at times, given that there is room for up to 1000 notes for events, as a rest counts as a note), but there is a facility which allows you to save a completed tune to tape so it can be loaded back into the computer at a later stage.

When you enter a tune and play it, the computer plays the notes sequentially from start to finish. If a section of music is to be repeated, it's necessary to edit that section into the sequential tune file. Another minor disadvantage of Musicmaster is the lack of a repeat command - to replay a tune you have to go back through the menu, but it does allow a tune to be played back at different speeds.

Overall Musicmaster is a reasonable package which assumes no musical knowledge on the part of the user. Between them, the manual and the help function in the program were good, giving the user enough to get by on musically to make full use of the programs capabilities. While it isn't intended to be an 'educational program' as such, being more for amusement, it quite neatly teaches a little about keyboards.

In striking the middle line, aimed at someone who is neither a dedicated programmer with no musical knowledge on the one hand, nor a keyboard wizard who's scared stiff of computers on the other. Musicmaster is a success. It's a realistic way of converting a Spectrum into a music processor and keyboard which presented our team with no problems whatsoever in use.

Memory: 48K
Price: £9.95

Musicmaster, for the 48K Spectrum is supplied in the now standard Sinclair presentation box and includes an instruction manual and a keyboard overlay. During loading you are given a screen display of two music staves which are re-drawn once the program has loaded. That is obviously a waste of time on a long program.

In use, the program, which is menu-driven, gives you the option of a stave display which spans two octaves or a keyboard display which has only one. You then have a choice of notes on music, create a tune, play, amend, save or load a tune, stop or switch mode - keyboard or stave; there is also the option to COPY your tune.

The notes on music begin by playing and drawing a very slow chromatic scale in both modes. It then explains the use of key signatures very well, using sound and a visual display. That is probably one of the most valuable parts of the program but is slightly spoiled because the Spectrum does not BEEP precisely in tune.

When writing a tune the program is again interesting and fairly effective. You set your own time and key signatures - you can use only accidentals in stave mode - and each note is sounded and appears on the stave as you key it it is possible to play back the tune at any point and at any speed by entering the number of crochets per minute. The only problem is that the stave is rather short, allowing you to see only about three bars of music at one time.

After a slow start it warms up to become an interesting program with educational possibilities, especially for children who are more excited by the idea of computing than ordinary music teaching. Available from Sinclair Research Ltd.

NOW GET IN THE RIGHT MUSIC MODE

Budding Mike Oldfields who'd rather stick with official Sinclair software can now try Musicmaster. Written by a company called Incognito software, it allows you to play and record tunes on the Spectrum.

When it's loading, the five music lines appear on the screen and the treble clef is printed at the start. The notes are crotchets, of which there are four to a bar,.Once loaded there are two possible modes you can enter - keyboard or stave mode.

Stave mode allows you to enter notes on the stave in two octaves (a total of 17 notes), by pressing the appropriate letter on the keyboard - lower case for the lower octave, and upper for upper.

Keyboard mode lets you use the top two rows of the keyboard as a musical instrument to play in real time. An overlay is supplied for using the program in keyboard mode. There are 10 white notes and seven black ones.

Whatever mode you are in, i.e, however you have chosen to enter the notes, you have the option of getting information on the characteristics of the music including pitch, duration, key signature and the like. As with the other Spectrum programs of this sort, length of notes is controlled by having a variable duration.

To create a tune you must give the program the required key signature. All notes will then be readjusted. Various keys are used to insert either a rest or a note, to delete a note, to print the stave to ZX printer etc.

You also have the option to play the tune at a chosen speed. If it's not quite perfect, then you can edit it, tabbing through the tune changing certain notes as you listen.

Once perfected, you can record the data onto cassette to impress you musical friends with at a later date. The maximum length for a tune is one thousand notes.

Overall, this program is quite easy to use, and certainly gives more guidance and information than any of the others. It's impossible to create any wonderful effects, though, owing entirely to the Spectrum's hardware.

Musicmaster cost £9.95 and should be available in your local computer shop.

KINDLY PAY ATTENTION CLASS!

MAKER: Sinclair/Incognito Software Ltd
MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £9.95

A much simpler program: the rudiments of music theory are explained onscreen in either a stave or keyboard mode using step-by-step instructions on pitch, time etc. Tunes are then constructed, played and amendid or stored as one wishes. There are no special FX to the program and the maximum length for a tune is 1000 notes.

"It's all there on the screen - you don't need to keep looking at the manual, which is good. Shame it's for a machine where the sound is so poor. I like it a lot - it's very good refresher stuff on all the things you forgot at school! it tells you what you need to know about notes or whatever and the way it teaches you about each part of putting music together is very clear. You can go straight to any part of the process so it's very user-friendly. Presentation is excellent and the display is very clear."

£7.95
Sinclair Research

A good program though rather expensive. S/Time and R/Time entry and good playback and printout options. Instructions somewhat sparse.

ZX WAXES MUSICAL WITH A SURVEY OF SOFTWARE PACKAGES FOR THE SPECTRUM.

Sinclair
£9.95

Written by Incognito Software this is a good all round package. I have been using it on and off for the last year or so and it did not take long to master.

At first I found the accompanying booklet, all four and a half pages, leaves a lot to be desired in the field of clarity. You are also assumed to know at least the rudiments of musical notation.

There are two modes of operation, keyboard or stave and these dictate the method of note entry.

The keyboard provides notes from middle C up ten tones to E and a keyboard overlay is provided, which is only of any real use on an early rubber key model Spectrum. Notes are played by pressing computer keys which represent a piano keyboard. In stave mode notes are entered by pressing a-g and A-G giving two octaves playing range.

One aspect which takes a little getting used to is that any incidental sharps and flats, and indeed the note lengths themselves must be selected before the note pitch is entered. However a 'delete last note' option is supplied.

The program is filled with prompts and I found it reasonably easy to get to grips with it, but the note lengths are displayed by their names and it is confusing unless you are familiar with such terminology.

Save, load and, of course, play options are included. Most important is the Amend option and this makes life less stressful if creating your own masterpieces.

The Spectrum cannot put any expression into its music and all songs tend to sound a little monotonous, however playback is fast enough and smooth enough to be satisfying to listen to.

In itself this is a great program for those who have a little experience and want a program to experiment and play with. A pity that there is no option to save songs and include them in your own programs/games.