percussion, bass, guitar, keyboard and synthesiser samples to choose from. A selection of the riffs can be chosen and arranged on a 16-track sequencer to create complete music tracks. Using the ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ functions, repeated song patterns can easily be duplicated, either individually or in blocks, making it relatively straightforward to build a song since many passages will repeat throughout. The presentation is excellent with a clear and colourful display enabling the user to easily see and edit the various tracks of your project. You can play your song (or sections of it) at any time during the creation process enabling you to tweak and edit as necessary.

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Other more complex editing options are also available, such as altering the volume of each individual track, adding effects and changing the tempo. Furthermore, the library riffs can be accessed and re-programmed, adjusting the key, the instrument used and even the notes and timing, giving the user a free-reign to create entirely new riff patterns. This makes the package enormously powerful and offers the opportunity to build virtually any song from scratch.  

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Music 2000 was released two years after the original and expanded the options, allowing sampling from CDs and increased the library to an amazing 3,000 instrument sounds and 1,500 different riffs.

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It must be said that the software is not initially user-friendly, especially if you are looking to explore the more complicated editing options. As there is no mouse, the various functions are accessed using controller button combinations. When I was finding my way I would frequently select the wrong combination accidentally, causing something inappropriate to happen, the undoing of an action or even exiting a project altogether. This did cause a lot of frustration and swearing. However, this is a title where you can really reap the rewards of time spent becoming proficient. Once the various control combinations are learnt the software is actually very flexible and feels more user-friendly; significantly more so than other P.C. based (and far more expensive) sequencer programs of the time. That said, the deeper editing options can still be fairly daunting and do take a lot of getting used to. A simple song created using just the included stock riffs can be put together relatively quickly. A song where riffs are edited or created from scratch takes much longer however and can take weeks or even months to complete, with a lot of trial and error being necessary.

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Now it must be said that I am writing this review from the viewpoint of a musician and, having a basic understanding of timing, scales, key and song structure, I am sure that my learning curve was easier than it would be for a non-musician. Nonetheless, the basic function of track-building using the library riffs is relatively straightforward and doesn’t require any musical training. Even without delving into the more complex editing options there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had and impressive results can still be achieved.

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During the 1990s and 2000s I played in a band and each time we recorded an album in a studio we would hide a secret bonus track at the end. These were ‘techno’ versions of rock classics that I had produced using Music or Music 2000. They included: Golden Earring’s ‘Radar Love’, ‘Poison’ by Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osborne’s ‘Crazy Train’ and Motorhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’, all with vocals recorded in the studio (with varying levels of silliness). Everything else on the tracks was produced exclusively using the PlayStation software (with the exception of the guitar solo on ‘Poison’). You can hear the results here: