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MINSTREL (KUMA) (Amstrad Action) | Medieval Minstrel (Amtix) |
JON 'LIBERACE' BATES lends an ear to Kuma's music utility and finds it falling slightly flat Kuma's Music Minstrel is a music display editor. That means you can enter tunes on its graphic display using standard music notation, which can be stored and retrieved for later use. It has the advantage of using all three voices of the CPC chip and displays and plays them simultaneously. It has an elephantine memory, storing up to 2400 three-note chords, which, if my fingers are working successfully, means about 7200 notes or aboutten minutes worth of tune, depending how fast you've told it to perform. It presupposes a working knowledge of music notation so don't expect any help in that department. On firing the program up, you can play its jolly demonstration tune, a piece of Johann Sebastian Bach's, which is both long and nearly accurate (sorry, lads, but I think you dropped a couple of clangers in the middle). The working screen is well laid out with all facilities easy to access. The note value is in the bottom left window and can be altered by keys 8 or 2. The other command windows are accessed by zapping the pointer across the bottom of the screen. The notes are inserted on the staves by running the cursor symbol around the screen, and when the cursor is at the required point the copy key is depressed and the note appears and sounds.
TAKE FT AWAY, MOZART So, let's bung in our first tune. It seems to works OK. The manual is reasonably easy to follow but it would benefit from a quick reference guide as, for example, the instructions on note deletion are scattered about on different pages. If you decide to write in a particular key the relevant sharps or flats will be displayed quite competently, but you will not be told what key you are in. The range of note values is pretty comprehensive from demi-semiquavers and triplet notes to dotted breves (that's fairly long.) However, that's your lot because you cannot tie notes together to form different lengths. It seems if you want bar lines you have to put them in yourself. That's because there is no provision to insert a time signature. Now let's enter the second voice. Change the relevant voice via the command window and start all over again. The screen still displays the part from voice one. Good, that saves having to remember what you did before. But, oh dear, I've tried to enter notes that are of shorter values than my melody. The notes won't align on screen and neither will they play back correctly. In fact, my nice piece of Mozart has been totally scrambled — at one point the tempo goes berserk and tries to ^ catch up with itself. And now I'm qettinq only bits of the notes printed. The program has obvious limitations and requires careful planning if you are going to enter parts with different but simultaneous note values. It copes well with chords but trying to put some moving inner parts again reduces the program to garbage. A shame.
TURN UP THE VOLUME The tone control only adds a low frequency oscillation to each voice in turn and could have done with a good deal more program space devoted to it, as the basic bleep of the chip is getting a little monotonous by now. However some degree of satisfaction can be gained from the ability to adjust the volume of each voice individually. This is pretty effective, so is the 'slur' feature which smooths off the hard attack, getting rid of that nasty click from each note—this is not a real legato phrasing as it would have you believe, though. You can get it to repeat sections without having to retype but only by going through the boring and time consuming task of dumping on cassette and reloading — hardly well thought out. Music programs like this should have a lot more logical facilities to gain respect. The accelerando and crescendo facility is good if somewhat eccentric in operation, using multiple bar lines (I!?). In other words, if you are going to use music terms and signs then use them conventionally or not at all because it only serves to confuse. EXTRANEOUS EXTRAS The program boasts two useless facilities, one being a metronome which will only sound when the piece isn't playing. It tells you how fast it's going to be but you know that anyway from playing it through. And I would like to know why we need a clock. This tells me I have spent one hour 27 minutes using it. Wow. The graphics are reasonable, although a wider colour choice would be welcome. The concept is fine but skimping on a lot of basic points has spoilt its performance and operation, especially when compared to Rainbird's The Music System or the Yamaha CX5 composing package. Considering the rather high price Music Minstrel is a mite frustrating to use. A little more thought would have removed its eccentricities and made it quite versatile. Music Minstrel is programmed by P Laidler and published by Kuma. It costs £14.95 on cassette and £19.95 on disk. Amstix |
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