This program allows the display of musical notation on the screen for any tune that is entered into the computer. The tune can then be played back at any tempo you wish with a small dot pointing to each note as it is played.

A tune can consist of up to 75 notes including all notes from semi-quavers to semi-breves, sharps, dotted notes and all rests.

The music can be input in one of two ways. Either as musical notation, entering each note one by one with its pitch and duration, or by using the computer as a musical keyboard.

Once in memory the tune can be edited if desired and insertions and deletions made at any point. Single step playback can also be used to display the full Basic sound statements for each note, enabling the tune to be copied out for use within a Basic program of your own.

Use of the program is quite easy with the options being selected from a main menu which can be jumped back to any time. The display used for the music is a white background with the notes and stave shown in black.

I let my twelve-year-old niece use this program as she is at present taking her first steps in learning music. Her reaction to it was most favourable and she had little trouble understanding how to use it.

Music Tutor is certainly an interesting and useful program but on its own will not teach you the rudiments of music. In fact, it assumes you already have a certain amount of knowledge of music, because without that it is impossible to enter any musical notation.

In effect, all it really does is enable a student of music to enter simple tunes via the keyboard or by notation and then play them back. Watching the note being printed at the correct position on the stave whilst it is being played is obviously very helpful in learning to recognise small differences in pitch which some people find very difficult at first.

In conclusion, I would say that, used in conjunction with other music studies, Music Tutor is certainly of value, but on its own will do very little.

Peter Rochford