I just tried out Melody Assistant, and it seems like a good capable program--BUT--there's one thing I miss compared to Deluxe Music Construciton Set--DMCS had keyboard shortcuts which made transcribing music a book very easy--[number key] gave you a note or rest of particular length, so you could change the time value using your left hand on the keyboard and simply move along the staff with your mouse in your right hand changing the pitch. I haven't found any such shortcut, which means everytime you want to change from an eighth note to a quarter note, you have to drag your mouse off the staff and up to the notes palette and select the new note length and drag you mouse back and find the place on the staff you left off and click there. Part of me is hoping that the other program I downloaded from them, the music optical recognition program, works well enough to make this unnecessary, but I haven't tried that program out yet.

And John in Brisbane--I've been doing music notation on my Mac since before 1990 (starting with my old Mac Plus). In fact, I met my significant other because of it. She complained that she was having trouble booting her Mac (well, that's the way she put it...). When I came over to help, I showed her that the Mac could do music, and brought up a transcription of melody by Lena Bourne Fish I had transcribed from the Warner collection. It had an unusual rhythm I wanted to get right, so I had my computer beep it out accurately. She's also a lover of traditional music--and had no idea the Mac could play notes at all, much less that it could play Lena Bourne Fish!) We've been together ever since.

--Charlie Baum