The first thing I have to tell you is that, judging by his picture on the cassette inlay, Ubik is a complete nobhead. Unless you happen to think that looking like Michael J Fox with shoulder length hair, a headband, holes in the knees of your jeans, a denim waistcoat and studded leather wristbands is a really cool way to dress of course.

Anyway, Ubik's style, or rather his lack of it, hasn't really got very much to do with Ubik's Music, which is a complex, but cheap, synthesiser package. Before I get on to what it actually does, I'd like to moan a lot about the instructions. As I said, it's a complex program and you'd expect pretty lengthy 'how to get a note out of this thing' type explanations. Now I appreciate Firebird trying to keep the cost down and all that, but trying to fit a 30 page manual onto the back of a postage stamp just doesn't work. If you buy this, make sure you've got a magnifying glass.

From what I could make out the program is an editor which enables you to create and sequence music using the SID chip's three channels. Commands are entered via a text editor which is split into three columns - one for each channel. You can create sequences by entering the notes to be played in order and there are several additional commands that can be used. Voice, for example, selects the voice definition to be used for subsequent notes. Tempo alters the playback speed. Slide and Drum you could probably guess at. So the dedicated composer could build an entire piece assembled from individually created sequences in this manner.

Apart from the editor there is one other major part of the program and that is the live play/edit voices section. The screen here is divided into two sections, the top half being a keyboard; the bottom displaying all the voice, waveform, filter and other SID chip parameters which affect the way notes will sound. The temptation is to do the obvious and have a good old bash on the keyboard, but while this is good fun it's vastly underusing the potential of the program. From this section you can also play back music created in the editor through any one, or all three channels. So you could, for example, play your bass line through channel three and accompany it on the keyboard through channels one and two.

All the parameters in the lower half of the screen can be changed to alter the sound while it is playing - this part is quite good for experimentation, but it helps if you know what you're doing.

Ubik's Music has all of the filing operations you would expect to find on a more expensive program. You can load and save music, get a directory if you're using disk and even use the DOS commands from within the program. You can also compile completed compositions for use in Basic or machine code programs.

This really is a very extensive sound/music editor and there's no doubt that, at three quid, you're getting a lot for your money. All the same, I'd advise against buying it if you just want to bash around on the keyboard and have a bit of a laugh creating special effects - pick a synth package that's easier to understand. User Friendly is one thing this isn't. It looks like it may have developed into a commercial program out of something the author wrote for his own use. As such to get the most out of it you will need to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of the SID chip.