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Budding Mike Oldfields who'd rather stick with official Sinclair software can now try Musicmaster. Written by a company called Incognito software, it allows you to play and record tunes on the Spectrum.

When it's loading, the five music lines appear on the screen and the treble clef is printed at the start. The notes are crotchets, of which there are four to a bar. Once loaded there are two possible modes you can enter - keyboard or stave mode.

Stave mode allows you to enter notes on the stave in two octaves (a total of seventeen notes), by pressing the appropriate letter on the keyboard - lower case for the lower octave, and upper for upper.

Keyboard mode lets you use the top two rows of the keyboard as a musical instrument to play in real time. An overlay is supplied for using the program in keyboard mode. There are ten white notes and seven black ones.

Whatever mode you are in, i.e. however you have chosen to enter the notes, you have the option of getting information on the characteristics of the music including pitch, duration, key signature and the like. As with the other Spectrum programs of this sort, length of notes is controlled by having a variable duration.

To create a tune you must give the program the required key signature. All notes will then be readjusted. Various keys are used to insert either a rest or a note, to delete a note, to print the stave to ZX printer etc.

You also have the option to play the tune at a chosen speed. If it's not quite perfect, then you can edit it, tabbing through the tune changing certain notes as you listen.

Once perfected, you can record the data onto cassette to impress your musical friends with at a later date. The maximum length for a tune is one thousand notes.

Overall, this program is quite easy to use, and certainly gives more guidance and information than any of the others. It's impossible to create any wonderful effects, though, owing entirely to the Spectrum's hardware.

Musicmaster cost £9.95 and should be available in your local computer shop.