The book that accompanies this package is written by keyboard player Dave Stewart and concentrates on the reading and writing of music for rock musicians.

Unfortunately, the programs supplied ignore this idiom entirely and bases all its problems and exercises on folk and classical tunes with a lame excuse at the end to justify this.

The program is split into five parts covering clefs, keyboard and guitar fingering, note lengths, intervals and chords and composition. There are a number of bugs in these programs with two of them containing wrong line references, one failing to chain the next program and one causing a "Bad Program" as it does chain the next part.

For a package of this type, this is unforgiveable and shows a great lack of care and testing. All the programs are drill- and test-based, there is a little teaching content followed by a test and then more teaching.

A final major criticism is that when it is testing your manuscript writing skills, it never shows the tune written on staves. It uses a complex and unnecessary coding system.

One to avoid at all costs.

D.C.