Make micro music

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Although I have a fairly good musical ear and can just about cope with the piano and guitar, I have never actually sat down and composed anything. However, the idea really appealed to me when I was asked to review The Synth by Musicsoft.

When I first loaded the program I was a little dismayed by the number and length of on-screen instruction pages to be read in addition to the small instruction manual.

Nevertheless I read every word and complied with the contents. If you don't want your first experience of Synth to be disappointing, I suggest you do the same!

The program recommends you don't try to write your "magnum opus" the first time at the keyboard, so I settled for something simple.

Full credit to Musicsoft. The first thing the program allowed me to do was to make a backup copy - on disc in my case—with its own built in routines. Very commendable.

Once my copy was loaded, I was able to select which of the four channels - including the noise channel — I wanted to record. p> Not wishing to be too adventurous on my first expedition I chose channels one and two.

A menu of eight options was next displayed on screen: Record a tune enables you to play up to a preset number of notes by the use of an on-screen piano keyboard using the top two rows of keys. Replay allows you to hear what you have just recorded on a particular channel, and Alter Rhythm allows you to replay your piece in an alternative rhythm using a single key.

You can also Replay all the channels at once. p> Alter Speed changes the tempo of the whole composition, and Input Repeats allows you to repeat complete sections of music. It is a bit tedious to implement but it can save time later.

Load and Save are self explanatory, and finally Tidy is of great assistance if your rhythm is not too good. It gets rid of all but gross inaccuracies by lining up all channel rhythms with channel one.

I quite enjoyed my first introduction to The Synth, and I'm sure that with a little more practice I could become quite proficient in the art of "Microcomposition". p> It would be quite entertaining to enter in pre-written music from script and playing it at a variety of speeds with different rhythms.

At £8.75 it is good value for money, virtually guaranteeing hours and hours of musical merriment.

Eat your heart out Lloyd Weber - the BBC Micro musicians are on their way!

Brian Livesey