Music Maker is another program that allows you to write your own tunes in four part harmony. The tunes still sound as synthesised as they did with, for example, Microdeal's Composer program, but this program is leagues above any other in its field for the simple reason that this is a composer designed to racompoers, nota programmer.

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Basically, there's no conversion needed of music infolines of code because all music is entered onto a rather nice graphic stave. Nearly anything can be entered, and I haven't found anything missing while I've been inputting my own compositions.

The program is controlled mainly with the cursor keys with other functions being provided by other appropriate keys (e.g. 'R' for rest, see, pretty easy isn't it!).

It's very difficult to write a long review about a program like this because all that you can say is, yes, it sounds okay; yes, it's user friendly; yes, it's graphically easy to read. The only other thing I can reaily do is give you a list of its capabilities. So here goes.

You can set the key and time signature, enter notes (of any length including ties and dotted notes) onto bass and treble clef with an option to use some descenders, and a facility to cover notes not available on the stave. You can enter rests, inset and delete notes, repeat bars or bits of bars, change the tempo, transpose the tune at any time, save to and load from tape, play the tune (pretty obvious one that!), and put half bars on the start.

The manual makes it very easy to understand and use the program, and the table at the back of the program allows the user who is less well acquainted with the theory of music to enter his own tunes as well.

The final important feature of the program is that any tune written using Music Maker can be used independently of the master program within your own programs.

So, in summing up, this is the definitive music-writing program for the Dragon, and if you thought Composer was essential you simply must get this.