Who says there are no synth packages for the C16 and Plus/4? There is now, courtesy of geordie software house Tynesoft - aan it's oonly a tenner, pet.

Although the C16's musical capabilities are somewhat modest, it is still above to produce a wide variety of complex sounds and noises. Up to now though, much of the C16's sound capacity has been well and truly out of reach of the likes of you and me. Tynesoft's Music Synthesiser package is undoubtedly what C16 owners have been waiting for!

The package is cassette based, and at under a tenner, shouldn't hurt your pocket too much. However, loading takes around ten minutes, a bit of a drag but it gives you enough time to put the kettle on before ploughing into that symphony you've been meaning to write!

When loaded, you'll see a schematic of a piano keyboard in the centre of the screen. Pressing a key on the computer's keyboard flashes a grey blob on the appropriate piano key.

The computer's keyboard is arranged so that the top row of keys (1 to DEL) play the white notes, while the next row down plays the black notes. This seems a bit irrational to me, I would naturally expect the black notes to be above the white notes. Still perhaps they see things differently up there in georgie Land!

You can record your music, one voice at a time, and up to 304 notes (over 2000 on the Plus/4) can be stored on each stave. You'll need to tape your foot in time to the music though, there's no metronome to guide you!

On playback, the notes appear on the stave as they are played while the whole stave scrolls across the screen. Once you have written your masterpiece, you can edit it to correct any minor mistakes.

Editing is somewhat limited, you can alter the pinch and length of each note, even insert and delete notes, but you can't repeat blocks or copy from one stave to another! The stave notation is rather tacky too, no key or time signature, or barlines!

Another disappointment, all the notes appear on the stave the same length, the system totally ignores musical protocol and assigns each note a length value. That value is directly proportional to the length of time you held the key down (a value of 2030 lasts for one second). This means you have no control of the overall tempo, and you'll need a bit of mental arithmetic to deal with things like dotted quavers and the like!

Your compositions can, of course, be saved to cassette for future playback, or for use in your own programs.

Thankfully, the sound editor is a definite improvement over the composer. Most of the functions are controlled by on-screen faders, worked by the cursor keys, simulating a real synthesiser control panel. A whole variety of functions can be controlled: glide (portamento), vibrato, tremelo, pitch bend, ADSR etc. The program also includes a six step dynamic filter to help you produce some really weird noises! The best way to get to grips with the sound editor is to experiment (if all else fails, read the manual!).

The manual is brief, cassette-sized, and twelve pages long and you'll have to read it carefully if you want to get the most out of the package. A fair amount of sound theory is explained, although I still found some areas of the package a little grey even after using it for several hours! There is some useful info hidden away at the back of the manual.

To be fair to this package, you must take several factors into account; the C16 is not particularly well endowed musically, and it's not got a lot of memory to play about with! The only real grumbles I have is the lack of proper stave notation and, more seriously, the lack of a metronome to help you keep time! Still, Music Synthesiser does do what it says it will do, no more, no less, and is currently number one in a field of one!