Customer Reviews

Making Music: Create! Play! Experience! Win/Mac

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a third grade teacher, I had this product in my classroom for years, until one day it inevitably got lost. I have been looking for a new copy for a while, and was glad to find it available on Amazon. It is, in my opinion, the best program of its type. The concept is very easy, children paint in a KID PIX type of format onto a white board, and that painting is then translated into music. If you draw at the top of the screen you will have a high note, at the bottom a low note. The longer you draw the same pitch horizontally the longer the note will be held. The simplicity makes it accessible to kids as young as kindergarten, but there's lots of features that make it riveting for older kids and adults as well. You have a wide variety of instrument to "draw" your music with, and there are lots of options that allow kids to experience their compositions in different ways. Hear your opus backwards or learn what it sounds like if it were flipped upside down. This is a program that people of all ages will enjoy (it was one of everyone's favorites on parent night). Sometimes simpler really is superior, and this program is a perfect example.

My two boys (8 and 6 years old) both really loved this program when we first installed it and couldn't get enough of it. The interface is easy to use and the screen is bright and colorful. The problem was that it just didn't hold their interest. After a few days of playing around with it, they got bored. You can only create very simple compositions and the novelty factor quickly wore off. It's not a bad buy for the money (the "real" composer software is much more expensive), but it just didn't have the long term "playability" of what I would consider a good software program.

I was excited by the concept of this product but was disappointed with the experience. I ran into troubles installing it, as it was forcing me to uninstall a newer version of Quicktime and use the older version on the CD. It also took longer to learn how to use and my kids 5 and 7 were frustrated with it quickly.