Have you ever looked at a sequencing package, got into it and thought "whoever wrote this obviously hasn't tried using it", then fear not - Micro Music take an exclusive look at a music package written by musicians, for musicians and what's more it's British! Darrin Williamson reports.

When someone rings me up at MM HQ and says they've got a great new sequencing package for the ST, my initial reaction is one of "ho hum what's so special about this one". But when I was told that four programmers have been working on it for nearly eight months not in some plush programming suite in California but from the offices of well known Distributor - Audio Software in the depths of North London I had to admit, I was intrigued.

It then transpired that all the programmers on the project were also keen computer musicians who had used many of the packages currently on the market and decided that they could, and furthermore would do better.

The scene was set for Virtuoso.

Trash the TOS

The first problem the team faced was the notorious operating system found in the ST. They wanted the package to be multi-tasking but the OS just couldn't handle it. So how could they get around this? Simple, just write a new operating system!

With this done we have a multitasking environment which, for instance, will allow you to record a sequence whilst formatting a disc.

This may well stop a lot of ST owners trading in their current system for machines such as the Amiga.

With the OS now rewritten the graphics can be tailored to suit the program. Gone are the pull-down menus as everything you need to see is up there on the screen.

So what else is different about Virtuoso? Well the whole program is designed to be modular so that additional items such as Generic Patch Librarians, Synth Editors, SMPTE generators, etc can be incorporated into the main program - all of which is in the pipeline.

To get a better idea of what Virtuoso can do just take a look at these shots we took...

Just a few of the many facilities on offer within Virtuoso. Don't miss the first in-depth review in the next issue

Product: Virtuoso
Price: £375 (provisional)
Supplier: The Digital Muse Ltd, (Contact Details)