I have some very firm ideas about the sort of facilities that I would like to see in a music composer, nothing ambitious mind you, but almost without exception I have yet to see a program that incorporates them all. Kuma's attempt for the 464 is yet another of this brood of curate's eggs - good in parts. To start with, it is a useful utility for people who not only want to compose music, but also for those who, lacking a musical ear, want to hear how a piece of sheet music should sound. For that reason we should be thankful that it conforms roughly to normal music notation, covers a range of three octaves (although it should have been the seven that the machine is capable of), has a wide choice of keys that can be altered during composition, and allows a large number of notes to be stored in memory (up to 1,000 for a single tune). Entering a tune note by note is pretty easy, taking from between 3-5 key presses to specify octave, note and duration, but editing them if you change your mind is a slightly more complicated and slower process. On the negative side, the program does not notate bar endings, etc, and tempo is only set in terms of absolute speed of playing, so it is limited as an educational tool. The smallest note length is a semiquaver and, more regretfully, only one channel of music can be played at once which hampers the scope of the composition. It should also, but doesn't, allow you to change the voice of the note that plays and ideally the tune should be able to be saved as object code which can be called from your own programs, or at least, the appropriate data statements required to recreate it, printed on screen. Taking everything into consideration, it's not a bad program. Just outrageously priced for its capabilities. Tony Kendle , PCW |
