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If you want to face the music with your Dragon, then you've a long task facing you with Microdeal's offering. The program may be pretty versatile, but the method of entering the tune is rather long-winded.

The program, called Composer, is what Microdeal calls a Music Compiler. This means that you have to enter all of the tune into the micro's memory at the start. The machine will then convert the whole tune into a playable form and will perform it for you. For this reason, there's no facility to play live, i.e. in real time.

The system does, though, exploit the Dragon's impressive sound facilities to the full. In fact, the demo tune supplied with the program was the best sound that I've ever heard from a humble Dragon.

The main part of the program is in Basic, which probably accounts for the total lack of anything approaching speed when it comes to compiling. Anyway, the tune is entered note by note into DATA statements within the Basic listing. The Dragon has four separate voices, and you must enter a value for each voice for each note. Even if you're only using a single voice, you must still enter a rest for the other three. This takes some time, but I can assure you it's worth it in the end.

Once you've entered all the notes into the program you type RUN. The menu then appears and you can select the option to compile the tune.

Compilation is, in a word, slow. In fact, it's very slow - around one note a second. The demo tune supplied was 232 notes in length and took just over three minutes to compile. Once you have compiled, you can select a different option and then just sit back and listen. The final result if you're willing to spend some time at it can be very impressive.

If you don't think you're quite up to Ludwig's standard yet, then you can enter the demos which are printed in the manual. Unfortunately, I didn't have a spare week to type one in, but if they're as good as the one on the tape then I'd be very happy (I'd also probably have very tired fingers!)

To edit the tune is simple. You exit the program and can then edit the Basic program, just like any other. Changing notes is therefore possible, but hindered slightly by the machine's lack of decent editing facilities. You can also save the program (and tune) this way, too.

The best way to judge such a program is by the final result, and I think it's great. And almost worth the £15.00 charged by Cornwall-based Microdeal.