| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION MUSICAL ★ THE MUSIC BOX (MELBOURNE HOUSE) ★ |
| THE MUSIC BOX (MELBOURNE HOUSE) (Hebdogiciel) | THE MUSIC BOX (MELBOURNE HOUSE) (Amstrad Action) | THE MUSIC BOX (MELBOURNE HOUSE) (Popular Computing Weekly) |
Electric Studio are well known for their lightpens and graphics programs, but this music package is something of a new direction for them. However, what with the liberal use of icons and the inclusion of a lightpen control option, there's still a familiar feel to things. The package is in fact two separate programs, Music Composer and Synthesiser. The former is a music editor - the musical equivalent of a word processor - while the latter is an envelope designing utility. MUSIC COMPOSER The editing screen is dominated by two staves, one above the other. The lower one is the editing stave. It has an arrow-head cursor, pointing to the place your first note is going to go. The cursor keys move this up or down, allowing you to place the note anywhere in a four octave range. Note values -crotchet, minim etc. -are chosen from a block of icons to the left of the editing stave. Each of these icons is selected by a different key on Arnold's numeric/function keypad. Thankfully the icon arrangement mimics the keypad so that the top left hand icon, for example, is selected by f7 - the top left hand function key. Because of this, you can tell at a glance which key you have to press. This works very nicely on the 464 and 664, but there's a slight problem if you've got a 6128 - because, of course, you've got a different shape of function pad. This does spoil the neatness of the icon block idea, but it's still easy to remember which key to press. The only keys that have moved are the decimal point and : the decimal point corresponds to the dotted note icon, and < enter > places the chosen note on the stave, so they're both quite natural keys for their respective jobs anyway. As well as note lengths, the block carries icons for accidentals - sharps, flats and naturals occurring in the flow of the music - and a toggle to switch between notes and rests. This latter is a nice piece of work, changing all the note-value icons into rest signs of equivalent lengths. Other keys give you access to slurs, ties and triplets. The pound-sign key calls up a menu of repeat signs; allowing for a different ending on the second pass through a passage and -less useful - for infinite repetition. BAR LINES As you add notes to the editing stave, bar lines are automatically inserted after the correct number of beats. It's up to you, though, to make sure that this is possible - if there's only room for a crotchet at the end of the bar and you select a minim. AA |
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