SongWriter allows the user to write music, save to and retrieve from disc, and play it back. It is a very simple matter to get from one mode to another. The sound output from the Apple may be played directly into a tape recorder or a music centre, and a suitable lead is supplied for this purpose.

Having managed to boot the disc (I had to try four different drives before I could get the review copy to boot), the basic screen layout consists of a two-and-a-half-octave sector of a piano keyboard with black and white notes displayed in blue and orange respectively.

All the keys are shown the same length, and I feel it would be easier to use if the black notes were shown shorter, as on a real keyboard. It is possible to move the whole keyboard left or right so as to have the correct layout for the key being used for the current time.

On the left of the keyboard is displayed the note length as a fraction and, optionally, the name of the note being entered or played. The program uses fractions to indicate note lengths and a range from 1/24 to 24/24 is available, which should be ample for most purposes.

In practice, you set the longest note to be used in a piece as a fraction with a value of 1 (say 16/16), and all other notes are calculated as fractions of this. So, if a semibreve is used as the base, then a crotchet becomes 4/16, a quaver 2/16 and so forth. This means that you have to make sure you've found the longest and shortest notes before starting, since you cannot use double-length notes.

Any permutation of fractions is possible to suit the music being written. The value of the fraction is set by means of the -, / and * keys. You move up and down the keyboard by means of the arrow and <, > keys, which move you a tone and a semitone respectively. Having chosen your note and its length, you press the spacebar to "record" it.

If you don't like what you've done, you enter X to cancel it.

The notes are entered are depicted above the keyboard by variable length blocks rather like a pianola roll. It's possible to play a note at a time, go back a note, change, insert or delete notes and generally edit your tune as much as you like as you go.

The tune may be saved to disc at any time, or other tunes may be loaded from disc and combined with the piece already in memory. I didn't manage to run out of memory, even when I loaded all the example tunes from the disc and played a concert of nearly 20 minutes!

A rather less satisfactory facility is the "idea" mode. If you wish to be able to repeat sections of a tune, say a phrase or a refrain, it is possible to record this as an "idea", by pressing L.

After the L, all subsequent notes entered are saved as an "idea" file, which may be used as a whole later on.

At the end of the idea session, entry of a letter such as Q terminates the idea file, and composition reverts to normal. To recall the idea, you move the cursor to the appropriate staring note, press the letter which ended the idea (say Q) and the entire idea is repeated as originally keyed in.

The manual says that you may enter up to 100 steps in an idea file, but as these include instructions to change note length, move up and down the scale, etc. The actual number of notes is rather limited - it certainly wasn't enough to store the refrain from Yellow Submarine!

We tried this program out on the family and showed it to a music teacher and the general opinion was that it was quite entertaining for a while, but had several shortcomings.

As it had only two-and-a-half octaves, the actual range is rather limited. Since the "keyboard" can be moved up and down, it would seem to have been a simple matter to extend the range of notes. The type of sound used is rather unimaginative.

Although the Apple doesn't have the advantage of sound envelopes, it is quite capable of producing sounds of varying timbres, and the SongWriter sound becomes rather monotonous after a time. However, it's possible to play about with short pieces, and quite a lot may be learnt about the effects of changing speeds, note lengths, etc.

So, as a backup to format studios or as an introduction, it could be quite useful, although I don't feel one could actually learn musical notation from it. A useful attribute is that tunes saved to disc may also be used in Basic programs, which could save a programmer an awful lot of PEEKing and POKEing.

The manual supplied with the program is obviously aimed at the younger user, but is well written and very easy to work through.