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Many recent software releases have tried to make the most of home computers as music making machines. So, being somewhat musically inclined, I was interested to find out what Music Maker had to offer.

The aim of the exercise is to choose a musical key - and by using the notes within that key, create your own melody, which can be played back at various tempos.

The program came in cassette form, with a fairly bland cover. Instructions on loading and how to use the program were on the reverse side.

The program proved easy to use, and I became familiar with it fairly quickly.

After loading the tape the central area of the screen displays the range of musical keys available from C to D flat. Next to each key is the number of sharps and flats.

I chose Eb by using the K key, which moved sequentially through the list of keys.

Next on the musical agenda was a selection of time signature. The number of beats per bar - 2, 3, 4 or 6 - is selected by using the B key. The value of the note - 2, 4 and 8 - is selected with the V key.

The next step is simplicity itself. After pressing the obligatory K key to continue, you selected the tempo, which varies from 38 to 188 beats per bar, by using the keys 0-9.

Then things really began to take shape. After I hit the K key, the screen greeted me with a colourful display of all the notes in Eb.

Rest can be entered simply by pressing R instead of selecting a note.

A maximum of 200 notes can be stored and there's a counter to display the number of notes used. And when a bar is filled a new bar line is drawn automatically.

There's also a nice facility provided to either shorten or lengthen a note's duration by using the right and left arrow keys.

Selected notes are played back as they appear on the screen. The screen then displays a menu option to replay the melody, change its speed, add more notes to the melody, SAVE it on tape or create a new practice.

I found Music Maker both entertaining and instructive. There is no provision to produce chords, because the Spectrum doesn't have a three-channel sound chip. But overall, it's a good program that is well worth a listen.