Making Music
  Computer Music Software and Hardware

Hi tech computer music software and hardware reviews, practical hands-on tutorials, music-making hints and tips, written by professional musicians, seasoned computer users and professional writers

The reviews are divided into Software and Hardware - see a full list on the Site Map.

How we score

In truth, very little music software released by the major music software developers is poor and a lot of it is cracking good gear. The main questions most users need to ask are: how well does it do what it says on the tin, how easy is it to use, how much does it cost (unless you're starting your third World Tour), and does it do what I need?

We can help with the first three - only you can decide if it does what you want - but, inevitably, they are all intertwined. If a product only does a couple of the things you need but it's cheap, it could be a worthwhile buy just to get a couple of features.

A problem many people have with much music software is that it's often seen to be expensive. However, music software is among the most complex and demanding to create and much of it is quite specialised with a relatively small market. Compared to the price to mass market software, music software is generally not unreasonably priced. But if we think it is, we'll say so.

Ease-of-use is another major factor. It's probably taken you a few weeks to master your main music production software so you don't want to spend any longer than necessary getting to grips with a new program. After you've played with a few bits of software for a while, you get a feel for it and you have an expectation that other software of a similar kind will work in a similar way.

For example, Windows' Open and Save File dialog boxes are familiar to all computer users (okay, except Mac users but the Mac also has its standard dialog boxes, too) and the standard system of menus - File, Edit, View and so on - along the top of an application window is also familiar. Some software has its own file handling dialogs and its own menu system. If this offers major benefits over the normal layout with regard to the program and if it's easy to understand then we accept it's been done for good reason.

But sometimes software has non-standard features with no advantages in which case we may refer to the non-standard or idiosyncratic interface. This doesn't mean that the software is not good, just that the learning curve may be a little longer and without major benefit for the user.

Our scoring system brings together all these aspects of the product for easy and fast reference but you will want to read the main text, too.