Music Readiness by Dinah Embry is designed to teach elementary pitch and rhythm concepts to young children by playing a series of games of graduated difficulty. The target age range is 3 to 8 yesrs for the Pitch series and 4 to 8 years for the Rhythm series.

The slightly older starting age for the latter is because the games depend on the player being able to count up to four and use the numerical symbols 1 to 4. Each of the two discs consists of several games (five on the pitch disc and four on the rhythm disc) progressing from very simple to rather more complex musical concepts.

While the sequence can be used in teaching, a useful feature is that each game is independent of the others. Hence, a child can enjoy playing a game for its own sake, having first become familiar with the relevant concept. I found that children who already had some musical knowledge also liked to play the games, which served as useful and pleasant revision for them.

All the programs are easy to use. After choosing a game from the menu, games begin on pressing the S key and the player can quit by pressing Esc. If the player does not quit, the games terminate after a reasonable sequence of "goes", and the player is given feedback about performance level - either a "success" message, or a "review needed" message.

For some games the messages are accompanied by a percentage correct score. The most notable feature of these programs is the attention to detail in providing feedback as the game progresses. The duration or pitch of the sound is related in a meanginful and systematic way to the response required of the child, the appropriate musical symbol or keyboard position and to the feedback from the cheerful graphics.

Two manuals are provided, one for the parent/teacher, and one for the student. The parent/teacher menual is clearly written and presented, and does not require prior musical knowledge on the part of the parent. The student manual is not a do-it-yourself teaching aid, but supports the information given by the parent or teacher.

Although it is printed in large type, younger children would certainly not be able to follow it alone, but once it had been explained to them would be helped by the simple pictures. It contains exercises for the child and examples of concepts such as "high" and "low" as applied to notes.

Other examples and exercies refer to rhythm and the names for note values. These are not the names always used, certainly by British teachers - for example "half note dot" for what is, to me, a dotted minim or "three count" or "three beat" note.

However, this terminology does not appear on-screen, so the child can be taught whatever conventional names the teacher prefers without affecting the game at all. For young children with some knowledge of music and Apples, the system is so straightforward and well-designed that it is possible to play the games without reference to either manual.

I can say this with some confidence because my six year-old son decided to help me with this review, and played the games before I did (and recommended them to me!).

However, he appreciated more features after explanations based on the manual, especially the relevance of the more subtle details of the charmingly synchronised graphics.

There are four games in the series beginning with Highlow, an exercise in elementary pitch discrimination. In all the games on these discs, the child's action has a logical connection with the concept being taught.

In Highlow, a note is sounded. If the note is high, any key on the top row is to be pressed. If it is low, the spacebar is pressed.

If the child correctly identifies a high pitch, a bird flies up into a tree. If low, the bird flies down on to a fence post.

As with all the games, the child is given three chances for each question, after which the next question is presented.

At the end of this game, or on quitting, the bird sings if the player has been successful in learning to identify pitch, but simply flies silently off-screen if a review is needed!

In the Updown game, the first five notes of the C major scale are played - the "five-finger exercise" either rising or falling. The student's task is to identify whether the scale is going higher (any top row key) or lower (spacebar). No opportunity for reinforcing the message is missed!

A keyboard (notes C to G) is also shown below a picture of a ball and a slope. If the direction of the scale is correctly keyed in, arrows appear above the keyboard, also pointing in the right direction, and the ball rolls up or down the slope as appropriate. On ending or quitting, the C scale is played and the ball turns into a happy face is successful. Otherwise the ball rolls down the slope and a question-mark appears on it.

A nice, presumably intentional, touch applying generally to the games is that success messages are usually accompanied by cheery tunes, while most review messages are silent. Percentage success also appears on-screen.

There are two Stairsteps games, the object of both being to teach the child to identify the distance between notes - seconds and major thirds, called steps and skips respectively in the games. Once again, the physical representation of the concept makes sense, the child being required to press the arrow key in the appropriate direction once for a step and twice for a skip.

In the simpler game, the seconds and thirds are kept separate - seconds first which makes it easy for the child to learn what to do. On-screen is a picture of steps and after the child correctly responds to the two sounds presented, the child pictured on-screen jumps up or down either one or two steps mirroring the interval between the sounds.

The "ground" in the picture represents Middle C, step 1 is D and the top step is E.

Thus, if the pitches which are played are D to E, the child in the picture will jump from the middle step to the top one. The author argues that she has used these three notes because they are the three most commonly encountered in learning piano. Importantly, given this, the notes are in fact correctly tuned.

In addition to the success/review messages at the end of the game, a percentage correct is also given.

This reviewer must, however, immodestly, report a score of 107 per cent on the easier game!

Ultra-superlative scores were encountered elsewhere also, as well as the occasional score which seemed "unfair", but as cumulative scores are not presented, it is difficult to work out quite where the fault lies.

I think a cumulative score would be useful additional information, encouraging the child to try harder to maintain a good score.

In our trials, the reaction on seeing a percentage score after many trials was indignation rather than pleasure, even for high percentages. In the final game on this disc, Keyboard, the steps and skips are related to a picture of a three-note keyboard (C to E).

A note is sounded and a spot appears on the appropriate note on the keyboard. Then a second note is sounded, and the player indicates whether it is a step or a skip, and the direction. If correct, a second spot appears on the right note on the keyboard, and a butterfly sings. This is the one instance where a running total is shown, for all the butterflies remain on-screen to the end of the game.

My heart sank at the thought of reviewing a package for elementary rhythm learning. I remember too painfully the anguished admonition "Count" in the early, and even much later, days of my music education.

I can still feel my equally-anguised reluctance to comply perceiving this seemingly babyish counting out loud to be an outward, visible and hateful sign of inner ineptituce. It is, then, with deep emotion that I bring you the news that the games on the Music Readiness Rhythm Series are a delight, with well-thought-out graphics making the learning of rhythm sounds and note values a pleasure.

True to form, though, I resisted the instruction in the manuals to clap the rhythms. How, I thought, can one be expected to sit at one's Apple and clap hands? Well, by the time I decided to face the derision of my imaginary audience, I discovered that clapping definitely helped to structure the quite long (possibly overlong) note durations.

Teachers and students, please note - clappting the rhythms is not merely a trivially obvious exercise! The Demo program uses the clown who appears in the student manual to teach note values.

A note duration symbole appears in one of his eyes, and the value of the note appears in the other eye. This is where the clapping first comes in. Pressing the spacebar gives a demonstration of different note values.

The first of the game programs, Rhythmfish, was everyone's favourite. After a note is sounded, its musical symbol appears (1 to 4 counts) and the student is to press keys 1 to 4 as appropriate. If correct, fish appear, the same number as the note value, and wag their tails and open and close their mouths, also the same number of times as the note value.

If a review is needed, only bubbles appear at the end, but if there is a good performance, a larger fish comes and "sings"! This was your reviewer's finest hour, for she was regularly able to score 111 per cent!!

In Rhythmvan, numeric keys 1 to 4 again represent the note values 1 to 4 beats. In this game, four lines differ in length in proportion to the note values they represent. When a note is sounded, the symbol for that length of note appears at the end of the correct line.

If the player then presses the correct key, a van drives along the line. The van disappears before the symbol does - another subtle touch, I thought, emphasising the importance of the lingering musical symbol.

Vans come out on every line and flash their lights and sing for success. One reverses silently off-screen if a review is needed!

In the last program, Rhythm clown, this friendly character is used to teach the values of a sequence of notes whose durations add up to the four-beat bar, or "common time" the first signature most students experience.

I was impressed that, while the point about time signatures was nowehere stressed as part of the teaching, the design of the game implicitly prepared the student for further learning.

A series of notes is played, adding up to four beats, and the student must press key 1 to 4 as appropriate in the same sequence. After the sounds are heard, their symbols appear, taking the same length of time to do so as their values. If successful on any question, the clown juggles stars, again synchronised with the duration of notes presented.

This is the only program in which the Return key has to be pressed to enter a response, but if the student is up to the game, then that certainly will not present any problem. These rhythm and pitch packages are imaginative and entertaining ways to teach some fundamental musical concepts.

I was mildly sceptical of such an enterprise to begin with, but I was very inmpressed by the grading of the material and by the tremendous attention to detail.

The games are not a "teach yourself" scheme, nor are they intended to be. But with the explanation given in the teacher/parent manual the child will rapidly be able to put in a lot of amusing and useful practice, without the constant attention of an adult - just what such a teaching scheme should do.

Someone needs to look at the percentage calculations - they are particularly frustrating for the older child just grasping the notion of percentages. I did wonder too. If the emphasis on the notes near Middle C was entirely sensible - some teachers are concerned that children become too Middle C centred.

I wondered if it might at least be possible to have an option which could give the same notes an octave higher or lower, to introduce the child to the idea that the relations between notes are consistent, regardless of their absolute pitch.

There are, however, minor caveats, and do not detract from the value of these packages.

I would like to see Dinah Embry produce versions for more advanced pupils - teaching the recognition of more difficult pitch intervals and more complicated rhythm patterns, at rather more challenging speeds. While unlikely to be more popular with children than interstellar war games, they will nevertheless be enjoyed - and none of the friendly little graphics was ever sufficiently exasperated to leer at me from the screen shouting "Count!".